We Bought A Franchise!

Cascadia Pizza: The Rise of Authentic Neapolitan-Style Franchising

• Jack Johnson • Season 2 • Episode 13

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Authentic Neapolitan pizza finally gets the franchise treatment it deserves! In this captivating conversation, we sit down with Trey Reinhart, a Cascadia Pizza franchisee who's redefining what's possible in pizza franchising.

Trey's story starts far from the world of food - managing truck stops and gas stations - before recognizing an opportunity when the corporate world began squeezing his entrepreneurial spirit. When his brother started developing Cascadia Pizza, Trey spent seven months learning the craft before taking the plunge to ownership. Now, just six months into operation, his two-story restaurant with rooftop dining regularly reaches capacity on weekends, despite having opened during November (typically a restaurant's worst month).

What makes this concept unique? Cascadia Pizza features authentic wood-fired ovens imported piece by piece from Italy, assembled by specialists flown in from New York. These ovens cook perfect Neapolitan-style pizzas in just 90 seconds, creating an efficient operation with impressive margins. Trey has already optimized his business to achieve approximately 23-24% labor costs and 21.5% food costs - remarkable efficiency for a new restaurant.

The most exciting development? Trey just added a food truck to his operation, allowing him to cater weddings and events while simultaneously marketing his brick-and-mortar location. He's already booked six weddings without advertising, showing the tremendous demand for quality, authentic pizza in non-traditional settings.

Want to explore this unique franchise opportunity in an underserved pizza niche? Text us at 305-710-450 to check if your territory is still available. With Cascadia Pizza's proven concept and growing popularity, these territories won't last long!

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From your pals in franchise ownership, Jack and Jill Johnson.

Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, welcome back to the we Bought a Franchise podcast. I'm Jack Johnson, I'm Jill Johnson and we're here today with Trey Reinhart from Cascadia Pizza. You guys, cascadia Pizza is one of the newest franchises in our portfolio, but it is so special to me and Jill because Cascadia Pizza makes beautiful Neapolitan-style pizzas, which any of you that follow us know it's a passion of mine. Trey, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today. Hey, thanks for having me. So, trey, what's it like? Sort of pioneering a new pizza franchise brand? Are you guys mobile? Is it mobile only? Do you guys also have retail locations?

Speaker 2:

So we have retail locations. I started out at just having a brick and mortar and I actually got my food truck on Thursday, so just a few days ago, and I'm excited to start that venture out. I kind of did it a little bit backwards. Usually a lot of people start with the food truck, build the clientele, build the base and then go into a brick and mortar. But I had a deal that came up that was kind of hard to pass down, so I kind of jumped head first and got a brick and mortar and then now I got my food truck.

Speaker 1:

So Trey Jill and I have been talking about this for years. We believe there is a massive hole. Pizza obviously is a well-developed sector in franchising right. We've got a lot of big names out there but there's not a lot in terms of Neapolitan. There was a company about maybe eight years ago that came from the Menchies folks and they tried to franchise but maybe they grew a little too fast. So there really hasn't been anyone since that's come into the franchise world on the Neapolitan side. For those of the listeners out there, they're sitting there saying what on earth is a Neapolitan pizza? How would you describe it?

Speaker 2:

It's more artisan type, it's 100% wood fire. I would say there's like three main things about like our pizza it's the red sauce, the dough and the cheese.

Speaker 1:

It's mainly just traditional kind of pizza that you would see in Napoli. You went to Italy. That's what you would get, right? Yeah, exactly, it's like the pizza that they're eating. And for you guys, how fast do you cook these pizzas?

Speaker 2:

It takes about 90 seconds to cook. That's great yeah.

Speaker 1:

And did the franchisor help you source, like the oven and all that? Did they do that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so they helped me source the oven and also a wood guy, because I moved to a new part of the United States. Like I'm from Seattle, I moved down to the Portland area and I didn't know where I could get wood. I didn't know where I could get a lot of like, yeah, oven, hvac stuff, like random things. The franchisor helped me out a ton on kind of sourcing out where I can get wood, where I can get that pizza oven, and what's really cool is where they get their pizza oven is from Italy, so it comes from Italy, and then they ship it piece by piece in my case, and they sent out a team from New York that put it, assembled it all together in my restaurant. Yeah, it's really like closest thing that you can get to Italian is my oven.

Speaker 1:

So that's exciting. So trade, take us back. You know, here you are. You own a pizza franchise. You're a franchisee. You're six months into your journey, yes, yeah. So six months is usually one of the hardest parts of franchise ownership. How are you feeling these days?

Speaker 2:

I'm feeling good man like. I think the first like month was extremely challenging, even before we were opening, just getting all of the different like uh, red tape, bureaucracy, stuff with the city and the state, all the permits. I would say like I've never been more stressed in my life for the first like three weeks of just getting everything up and running, training the crew. And then I was working two, three hours before open to an hour and a half after close, because I'm also my own accountant bookkeeper, I'm the manager of the pizzeria. You know I did all the hiring, all the training, so I was wearing a lot of hats. Luckily, six months in, I'm starting to kind of outsource a lot of the small stuff because my team is now trained for the most part. First like first two months were pretty challenging and I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. So it was fun, but I don't want to go back to that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's. That's normal for starting a business and very normal.

Speaker 1:

It gets easier as you scale and you build revenue and add on more people to help Um and so, Trey, what were you doing before franchise ownership?

Speaker 2:

So I it's kind of a random thing, but I was working at truck stops and gas stations. So, completely different than food service, I was managing multiple like gas stations and you know big type of like yeah truck stops. I started working there when I was like 12. And I kind of just like worked all throughout college and then after college and I really enjoyed it. I liked interacting with people but and it was a small family business and then it got bought out, it became super corporate and it wasn't really my you know type of thing anymore, because I liked being able to know all the customers, I liked being able to, you know, be in the weeds in a lot of things. And then, when it got so corporate, they said, hey, here's your box, stay in your box, you can't do anything else. And I was like, well, I'm super ADHD, I need to move around, and they wouldn't let me.

Speaker 2:

And my brother started Cascadia and I said, hey, you know what I really don't like, what I do. I did like it. Now it's super corporate, I'd like to franchise from you. Because he was starting to get that ball rolling, and so I worked for him. I quit my job, so I worked for him for about seven months just to kind of learn the craft, because I had zero experience in the food industry and also kind of my personality I like to just kind of build the skills and become really good at like understanding how a restaurant works and everything like that. Not everybody there's a lot of people that can just jump in but for me I wanted to really like focus on learning how to all the facets of a restaurant. So I worked for him for about seven months and then opportunity arose and I took it. So yeah, it's the American dream.

Speaker 1:

And you guys started in Seattle, right? Is that where the first location is?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, seattle area.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so Jill's family's from Seattle, um, and we go, uh, we live in Boca Raton, florida, but we go back to Seattle two, three times.

Speaker 2:

So there's a store in Bellevue, maple Valley, enumclaw and then a food truck in North.

Speaker 1:

Bend. Very cool, excellent. That's exciting. Yeah, so when you guys came into our portfolio, we were so excited about this because it really is very different For those of you out there. I think the points that Trey is making are very good. Now. He started with a retail location, but I'll bet the franchisor is okay with you starting with the food truck and scaling. You're right, you're a better listener than me.

Speaker 3:

You are proof that you probably could do it both ways too. So, there's an opportunity to do that. But yeah, I mean, I think that's very cool to be able to do that.

Speaker 1:

And do you guys with the truck? Did you get a new truck, a used truck?

Speaker 2:

Tell me about you know what you guys look, because obviously it has to. It has to kind of tow the the oven around. How does that work? So I got a used truck and the oven's actually inside the truck, which is really nice, so you can all your cooking and stretching a pizza dough, topping it, expo can be done inside the truck. It's about like 16,000 pounds. It's pretty big truck but you don't need a CDL to drive it. So that's, that's really nice.

Speaker 1:

Well. So I'm interested in this because even for those of you out there, this ties into a question that that a lot of prospective franchisees ask, which is around section 179 tax deduction. So when you buy even a used truck, you can typically capture that as a write-off. So let's say, your truck cost, you know, and if you're buying it used there's rules around how much you can collect, but it is a major tax write-off, things like that. So that's the beauty of being a business owner, especially in states where you have higher taxes, is a lot of these things that we buy for our businesses are great tax write-offs to knock down some of that tax burden. So for those of you out there, that is an advantage for a business like this, especially if you're going to deploy a fleet of trucks to go out there Nice for revenue production, nice for writing off taxes. And so now you have the truck and you've got the location. Do you guys do alcohol or no alcohol In?

Speaker 2:

the restaurant I do beer and wine, Okay, and then on the food truck occasionally we do like soda pop and water that we sell. I don't want to sell alcohol. I don't know what the laws would be for selling alcohol out of a truck. I'm sure they're a little bit more stingent. So I just kind of stay away from that and just focus on pizza.

Speaker 1:

Go ahead, jill. I'm sorry, so many questions, so many questions.

Speaker 3:

So with the truck, are you seeing like, are you parking it in like a business park? Are you doing events Like how does that work with the truck?

Speaker 2:

So I'm kind of searching for events. I'm in the Willamette Valley, which there's a lot of wineries where I'm at, so I do a lot of wineries, elementary school, like carnivals or fundraisers. Then there's a lot of weddings too that I'm going to be doing. I think I didn't even have the food truck and I wasn't really advertising it, but I had like six people come up to me, maybe like the first month that I was opening, saying, hey, we want to cater a wedding. I was like, hey, well, I don't have my food truck, but I'm going to get in May. I would love to cater your wedding. So I have six organic leads, without advertising, for weddings.

Speaker 2:

And, yeah, like, everybody loves pizza, so it works out for weddings and that's where you make your bread and butter on those food truck shifts. It's like weddings weddings aren't cheap, so you make good money on the weddings. And yeah, and what's great too about food truck is you're getting paid to advertise. So every time I'm driving I have a big thing that says Cascadia pizza and then, like I'm going to customers for them to try our pizza. Now they're saying, oh, my gosh, I love this pizza. Where are you guys located? And then, boom, now my restaurant sales are going up as well because I'm just getting building, building the brand.

Speaker 1:

How big is the restaurant? How many people can sit in the restaurant?

Speaker 2:

So I have mine's two stories so I can fit about 50 downstairs. And then I just opened up. It's like a rooftop bar type deal and it's about 60 people up top. How cool is it? It's going to be awesome, yeah. So what's cool is a lot of Friday, saturday nights. I reach capacity. First few weeks I was reaching capacity because the franchise team really built us up on social media so we were getting. I opened up in November, which is the worst time to open up a restaurant and it's usually like the worst months for restaurants is that winter time and because of the social media marketing that they did, um, and my December and January were fantastic sales with 50 seats. I was, you know, I just packed every Friday Saturday night. It was pretty cool, yeah, wow.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. That's excellent.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, congrats to you.

Speaker 1:

That just shows you the power. If you have great pizza, if I think having the wine and beer is a crucial thing, especially, I mean in any market, but where you are in particular, how hard was it to get the license for beer and wine?

Speaker 2:

So the OLCC, which is the Oregon Liquor Cannabis. Anyway, it was a little bit harder than most like states. It took me I had to buy a bunch of like temporary permit. It took like two months to get uh from application process to get it finally approved, but I was able to do like where I could like do temporary permits. So it was like 200 a week until I was finally approved for uh yearly license. But like that was probably the least challenging part of that. It was just more wait and see and then pay your fine. I had like weird laws about how big my sign could be and that was a huge pain in the butt to go through as well as gosh, I'm trying to think where else the HVAC. I'm in a meeting, so the um, the HVAC was really challenging and same with the signs, but the liquor was kind of actually pretty easy at the liquor license. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So so, like I make Neapolitan pizza at home, it took me a long time to figure it out, Like I was terrible when I first started, but I loved it Right Cause we, we would go to these restaurants that make these great pizzas and I'd be like I've got to learn how to do that. How hard is it to teach people how to make good Neapolitan pizza? You guys have a good system in place for that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a good system. I had the franchisors come down. They were here for the first, probably a couple of weeks of training, maybe the first week, and it is. It's definitely a little bit more challenging than like dominoes. You just throw it in the oven and let it sit, like for us it's crazy on how like you got to put your wood in a certain place and that helps it breathe better and you get a better flame.

Speaker 2:

Doing the making sure the temperature of the floor is not too hot or too cold, but making sure the air temp is right on point too. So there's a lot of like little things. There's probably a million little things, but I we have high schoolers making pizza and they can pick it up, so but the the training part is just like anything. It just takes time. I would say I had a good crew that had done had pizza experience in the past, so it took them probably like a month to really like those people that really get good at making pizza. For the kids that are 16 years old, it's their first job ever. They don't really have any experience with food, even at home. That has taken like probably probably get two, two and a half months of training yeah, I mean work.

Speaker 1:

Didn't you work like some type of like thing where you were making pizza?

Speaker 3:

but you microwave. Pizza in a microwave, yeah, sometimes a toaster. What?

Speaker 1:

was? That is, that like a country club country club, joe was in the snack bar you could make pizza. What else did you make?

Speaker 3:

Sandwiches and the big pretzels. I had to microwave those and actually you had to then wet it with paper towel and sprinkle salt. So it was kind of complicated.

Speaker 1:

Look at that methodology. I mean come on. But I was on. Tv, so I didn't have to do it.

Speaker 3:

So we all got to start somewhere.

Speaker 1:

I mean, that's where my first job was making pizza. Yeah, it was called round table pizza, and I remember they had like the assembly line and it was like, okay, here's how much cheese, here's how much topping. So it was all very much, you know, structured, which was great. But there's something here, for those of you out there listening, I'm going to tell you, joe and I for those of you that are new to the show, we are franchise consultants. We've helped over 600 people become franchise owners over the years. We're franchise owners, and Paulton Pizza is a very unique space and it's one that nobody owns. And you're hearing it here. Look what Trey is doing. In just a few short months, trey, you'd never operated a restaurant before. And look at the scaling that you guys are doing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It took a lot of work, but we made it so far.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, what would you say with that in mind? What were things that surprised you that maybe you didn't know?

Speaker 2:

going in both positive and negative, I guess the thing that surprised me the most was all of the like red tape. I mean with the government and getting all the permitting and all that stuff. As someone that's never owned a business, I had no clue on all of the paperwork that's involved, whether it's with the food department or with just everything that revolves around that. I have an accounting degree, so like I thought bookkeeping was going to be easy. Taxes are way different. As a business owner, I felt like I learned a lot in school, but they didn't really teach you how to run a business that well. I would say those are the two most surprising things. For me is just really learning how to navigate the red tape in the area and each city and each state is different is a little bit more challenging, I think, than a lot of states. Yeah, there's just a lot of dumb things. In my opinion.

Speaker 2:

I would say that's the most surprising thing. I guess. Like shoot, yeah, I don't know, everybody loves the pizzas. I think. Uh, training is a lot harder on. The hardest part is you're going to make mistakes and make bad, bad pizzas, but training your staff on hey, what's a, what's a good pizza? Like what? What does this look like? You know how do you inspect it before we give it out to the customer? That was a hard hurdle because a lot of people go into like a nine to five job and they don't really take like look intricately at every single pizza that comes out. So that was hard to train people. I'm like, hey, what's what's a good pizza? Uh, what's good customer service? Look like all that kind of stuff. But yeah, hardest thing for sure it was the red tape.

Speaker 1:

That's the thing with Neapolitan is you've got to make sure you've got that right leopard spotting. You know it's got to have it's that there's intricacies to it and I'm glad to hear that you guys are taking that in as part of the details, and you're so right. I mean, there are so many franchise owners that Jill and I talked to that do not know their numbers that if you say give me a P&L, they're like hold on, let me talk to my accountant. You've got to have that stuff. You've got to know your numbers. You've got to.

Speaker 1:

In my opinion, you better be checking that P&L three times a week. I think if you can keep your labor not talking about like your manager or something like that, but the talent that's making the pizza if you can really pin that to 25% of your gross revenue, I think you're doing great. But yeah, the magic to success in business ownership is knowing your numbers and having urgency around sales. What does this week look like? What does next week look like? How are we doing compared to last month? Knowing your numbers, being urgent to drive sales and grow that's really the key to being successful and it sounds like you guys are on the right track to doing that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, what's great is I mean we have, uh, I had to carry a heavy labor for the first few months because of training, where I'm creeping up into that 33%, uh, you know, labor to revenue, which is not where you want to be as a restaurant, um, but as my team's gotten better and then I can kind of just have aces play, you know the best player at each position, where now I'm at 23, 24% labor. That's including, you know, all my admin. I'm doing most of the admin myself, but it's including, you know, all the front of house staff, the dishwasher person. It's um, where, as I've gotten better, my labor's gone down.

Speaker 2:

My food costs have gone down as well, just because I'm not throwing away as many pizzas. I'm at like 21%, uh, 21 and a half percent on my cost of goods. Pizza might cost just a few dollars to go out. We're selling it for 14. So it's uh, we're in a really good, um, neapolitan style. It's high demand, it's cheap to make and you can sell it for a lot higher uh price point than a domino's no no, and you're doing great.

Speaker 1:

I think, honestly, in your first year, if you're even under 40 on the labor, you're great because you, like you said, you get up time to figure it out and I I think, by year two, if you can even under 40% on the labor, you're great Cause you, like you said, you get up time to figure it out and I think, by year two, if you can get it to 25%, which sounds like you're already almost there um, then you're doing it right. I mean, it sounds like everything you know that you're doing is growing in very positive direction. Now, now we just need to come try some of this pizza.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to, I'm in Salem. Yeah, yeah, you got to, I'm in salem, oregon. So if you ever find yourself in oregon or go up to seattle or idaho, there's a franchisee in idaho as well, so it's really good pizza.

Speaker 1:

We're going, we're going to be in seattle next month. We're going to go and we're going to uh, we're going to document it, but this has been so great. Thank you for joining our podcast and and just to share with everyone out there, for those of you that are interested in casascadia Pizza, you know the drill Text us at 305-710-450. We'd be happy to check and see if your territory is still available. My thoughts are is that this one's going to grow pretty quickly, so it's a good opportunity to get your hat in the ring and start exploring this really unique franchise opportunity in a proven sector. Jill any other thoughts? Questions.

Speaker 3:

No, I think it's really exciting. We've been kind of waiting for this for a while so we've had a lot of like prior interest. We have obviously interest ourself personally, just because we love it. So it's really fun to hear your story and your guys' success and you know we wish you guys all the best and let's see how many we can help you guys.

Speaker 1:

So absolutely right. Thank you for joining our podcast. Yeah, thank you have.