In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace, chats with Genero Perez, chief marketing officer for Peter Piper Pizza, a legacy brand with more than 50 years in the industry.

The brand has about 115 restaurants in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and the northern part of Mexico.

The restaurants all have a lunch buffet Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Peter Piper "is an interesting concept because we target different demographics at different times of the day," Perez said. "So (the) lunch buffet is for those workers or families or a lot of construction workers, nurses, officers, people that need to grab a bite and obviously they don't want to break the bank. So our lunch buffet in the Arizona market is $10.99 for all you can eat. And we have pizza, pasta, salads, desserts and literally there's people that stack their plates with like 15 slices of pizza. Hey, no one's judging, right?"

Perez, who was born and raised in Mexico City, moved to the U.S. about 25 years ago to further his education. It's important for Peter Piper Pizza to understand the cultures and values of the communities in which they are situated.

"One of the things that I noticed being truly bilingual and native in Spanish is that a lot of brands translate. And with Peter Piper Pizza, we don't do that," Perez said. "We truly trans-create our programs and our campaigns. We want to make sure that we are using the cultural nuances from the community and that what we're trying hard to truly understand the different, you insights and holidays and traditions. So it's not only about the language, but understanding the cultural values."

The brand creates all of its PR in both English and Spanish.

"Obviously the Spanish language is integrated in everything we do — our website, our app, our campaigns, our messaging," he said. "Even when we reach out to media, we reach out in both languages. So it's really important for us to meet the consumer where the consumer is at, because a lot of the Hispanic consumers also may not necessarily speak Spanish, but consume news in Spanish."

To learn more about Peter Piper's community involvement, listen to the podcast in its entirety.

Riko's Pizza is redefining America's love affair with pizza, and with five corporate stores and seven franchised units, the full-service pizzeria sells thin crust, tavern-style pizza.

The pizza is what drew Carl Bachmann, president and COO of Riko's, to the brand. They're taking over the East Coast one bite at a time.

"That's really what enticed me to join the brand was the uniqueness of the product and the process of how we make the product and certainly the founder himself who is so passionate about this product," Bachmann said. "This process was one of those I couldn't say no kind of opportunity. So that's how I ended up here."

Rico Imbrogno, founder and CEO of Riko's Pizza, loved thin-crust pizza, and so he made it the centerpiece of his brand. It's an artisanal pizza — one Imbrogno and Bachmann have worked hard to replicate over and over as the company grows.

To learn more about this classic style of pizza and how Bachmann plans to growth the company, listen to the podcast in its entirety above.

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace, talks to Scott Wiener, director of Slice Out Hunger, about the Pizza Across America even that brings together pizzerias across the country for a good cause.

The week of National Pizza Day, Feb. 9, pizzerias are encouraged to donate 10 pizzas to their local hospitals, first responders, shelters or soup kitchens.

Registration is open now for the event. Every pizzeria who signs up tells the orchestrators how far they deliver and what days they can deliver. Wiener and his team take that data and pull into that destination points charities and hospitals that can receive on one of those days.

"Everything that we do with Slice Out Hunger is always to make life easier for the pizzeria, but still allow them to do the community service that they want to do," Wiener said in the podcast.

To learn more about Pizza Across America, listen to the podcast in its entirety.

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, talks to Jennifer Jackson, vice president of public relations for Hungry Howie's.

Jackson spoke about the public relations and advertising the pizza brand does. Hungry Howie's differentiates itself by offering flavored crusts. Jackson said the butter cheese is the top crust flavor, but the brand does unique LTOs like a sweet heat bacon.

Hungry Howie's also has a deep dish pizza and recently launched a Detroit-style pizza. Jackson said Detroit-style pizza accounts for up to 8-9% of pizza sales right now.

"To be an authentic Detroit style, it's having the sauce on the top. And most of the other brands claim it's Detroit style, but it's not, because it doesn't have the sauce on the top," Jackson explained.

The brand's strategy for communicating the brand's commitment to quality ingredients and food preparation standards for the public involves top-quality ingredients and fresh dough.

"We still make our dough fresh in store every single day," Jackson said. "We also use 100 % real mozzarella cheese. I believe we are one of the only brands that can say that we use 100% real mozzarella. Most of them are a blend. A lot of the larger pizza places are now using the frozen dough. So we're going to continue to stand by being that fresh pizza that we want to give our customers. So we'll continue to do that as long as we can."

To learn more about Hungry Howie's operations, growth and public relations success, click the button at the top of the page.

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb.com, talks to Eric Soller, founder of Old Scratch Pizza in Dayton, Ohio.

With a formal culinary background and years working with mixer giant Hobart, Soller said he was primed and ready to open his own restaurant.

"I love pizza," Soller said. "I was thinking about a lot of things, but I kept coming back to pizza. In my experience with Hobart and then later in sort of corporate world, I traveled quite a bit for work. And when I would go to a city, I would go to three or four pizza places in a night. I'm more of a student of the business.

"I'm more of a restaurateur than I am a pizza chef. I love pizza. I can make pizza. My team is much better at it now than I am. But I saw some concepts out in the world that I thought I could morph into what would be a really great opportunity would eventually turn into Old Scratch Pizza."

The brand uses wood-fired ovens, and Soller calls his pizza "Midwesternly Neapolitan." Soller opened in a mostly industrial area, which he drove past every day coming home from work.

"And I saw that it was a couple of blocks away from our big hospital," Soller said. "It was right around the corner from University of Dayton. It was the it's right on the edge of downtown. It was close enough to University of Dayton Stadium to be one of the closest places with a parking lot to UD Stadium. And I just saw that I saw the potential in it. And, you know, we were pretty busy from day one. We took off right off the bat."

To learn more about Old Scratch Pizza, listen to the podcast in its entirety.

In our most recent Pizza Marketplace Podcast, Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace, talked to Dallas Massey, senior vice president of Papa Murphy's Take N' Bake Pizza. Massey discussed the brand's $10 Tuesdays promotion and how it has evolved over the years.

In the beginning, consumers could purchase any pizza in any size for $10 on Tuesdays. Over the years, however, with the rising costs of labor and ingredients, individual Papa Murphy's stores have altered their $10 Tuesday promos. Today, guests can get any pizza for $10.99 to $13.99 depending on the location, and some Papa Murphy's operators have limited the type of pizza that can be ordered.

"I would say Papa Murphy's was built on $10 Tuesdays," Massey said. "I've been around the brand now a little over a year, year and a half. And I don't talk to anybody that doesn't bring up the Tuesday promotion. So I would say that there's a lot of brand equity that is built into $10 Tuesday. And ultimately, it's something that our franchise partners know and love."

To listen to the podcast in its entirety, click the link at the top of the page.

Michigan-based Saroki's Crispy Chicken & Pizza pairs delicious chicken and pizza in a mega gas station setting. However, it wasn't always this way. The brand, which has 19 location, used to have good pizza, but not great pizza. Owner Todd Saroki went to California to study under master pizzaiolo Tony Gemignani. What he brought back was a pizza product customers love.

Todd Saroki and his brother Curtis Saroki cut their teeth working in a kitchen in a uncle's gas station. They eventually took what they learned and opened Saroki's in a large gas station pavilion.

"We opened up with just our own recipes," Todd Saroki said. "We learned as we went, and we were doing well in the pizza space. We liked our pizza, but we didn't love it. When we were thinking about opening up our second location ... we said we have to have better pizza."

Todd Saroki went to a pizza show, sat in one of Gemignani's seminars, and eventually went to Gemignani's International School of Pizza.

Today they use high-quality ingredients and brick ovens to make their pizzas. Curtis Saroki said they tried using conveyor ovens in some of their restaurants but didn't like the way the pizza came out, so they eventually went back to brick ovens again.

"We're very involved in operations," Curtis Saroki said. "Both of us were operations guys before we started franchising and I'm still going to locations to make sure that everyone's keeping up with the quality."

To learn more about the Sarokis' pizza journey, click the link at the top of the page to view the podcast in its entirety.

In this episode of the Pizza Marketplace Podcast, host Mandy Detwiler, editor of Pizza Marketplace, chats with Tory Williams, general manager of Bright Penny Brewing Co. in Mebane, North Carolina.

The brand has three locations, all of which operate differently. The main restaurant and brewery is in downtown Mebane where the brand does all its beer manufacturing.

Neapolitan pizza is the brand's biggest food seller, with favorites like cheese and pepperoni the favorites. There's a pizza called Family Friendly which has cheese, pepperoni and a local sausage. The 412 is a barbecue chicken, bacon, local hot honey and jalapeno, and the Sweet and Salty features prosciutto, sliced figs, goat cheese, arugula, and a balsamic glaze.

"We make our dough," Williams said in the podcast. "We make our sauce. We typically buy in a lot of shredded cheese, but we do slice our provolone and slice our Swiss cheese as well. We do some sandwiches as well so we do cross utilize some ingredients there."

To learn more about Bright Penny's brewery and how well beer goes with pizza, click the link at the top to listen to the podcast in its entirety.

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