Emerging Chain Restaurants: Extreme Pizza
Born as a take-and-bake concept, Extreme Pizza now offers guests a variety of ordering and dining options.
By Christine LaFave Grace, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, September 1, 2009
Concept: Extreme Pizza
Category: Fast casual
Headquarters: San Francisco
Founded: 1994
Locations: 40
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For Extreme Pizza, a California-born concept staking its reputation on more-adventurous-than-your-average pizzas, flexibility is the name of the game. Started as a take-and-bake concept, the chain changed its store model to allow for in-restaurant baking and eat-in dining in response to customer requests. It also introduced delivery service, which now accounts for 50% of sales. Today, whether customers want to place an online order for a take-and-bake pizza, grab a freshly made calzone to go or dine in-store, they have the option of doing so.
"We didn’t want to leave anything on the table," says CEO Todd Parent, who notes that the chain will open five to 10 more stores by the end of the year and has around a dozen additional locations in development.
On the menu side, Extreme Pizza offers traditional favorites among its selection of thin-crust pies, but its hallmark pizzas are out-of-the-ordinary varieties, such as the California Cactus, with black beans, ground beef, onions, cilantro and Cheddar cheese, and the Peace in the Middle East, with hummus, tomatoes, olives, feta, fresh basil, pepperoncini and mozzarella. Whole-wheat and gluten-free crusts are available; organic ingredients are used "wherever possible," Parent says.
The chain currently operates in six states: California, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Florida and Virginia. (One unit, run by a former schoolmate of Pizza Express' founders at the University of California, Berkeley, is open in Ireland.) "We're trying to grow at 10 or so units a year," Parent says. "We want to continue to help our existing franchisees open up their second, third, fourth locations."
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