There are endless surprises when opening your first brick-and-mortar pizzeria location. The second and third time, “You kind of know what to do,” says Nick Sanford, owner of Toss & Fire pizzeria in Syracuse, New York. In addition to a fleet of three food trucks, Sanford opened his third Toss & Fire location in January 2024.

Looking back on the experience, he points to a few things that made it go more smoothly. “Don’t jump until you’re ready to jump from one to two. One to two is the hardest for sure,” Sanford tells Pizza Today. “I went from one to two without all the systems I should have had in place, and I was playing catch up.”

To avoid this, he recommends operators have a system for everything – from schematics of what pizzas should look like when they go into the oven to where the mat in front of the dishwasher should be placed.

Colorado-based Simply Pizza owner and CEO Melinda Carbajal agrees, adding that handbooks should be ever-evolving. “I rewrite them all the time,” she says of the business that includes a food truck as well as two (soon to be three) standalone locations.

A lot of stress can be relieved by waiting until your business is financially ready to grow – even if that means eschewing loans in favor of building a nest egg, Sanford says. When equipment breaks or other problems occur during the build-out phase, you don’t want to be leveraged to the hilt.

Finally, don’t be afraid to start with a small menu and add more dishes gradually. You might find that keeping inventory tight improves profits and serving times. Keep reading to learn how four pizza operators grew into four very different locations – and what lessons they learned in the process.

Photo courtesy of Simply Pizza.

Company: Simply Pizza

Location: Denver Zoo — Denver, Colorado

Opened: May 2023

Simply Pizza is not monkeying around. After years of operating a food truck and catering business in the Denver metro area, the company is positioned to serve the Denver Zoo’s nearly 2 million annual visitors.

Simply Pizza’s owner and CEO, Melinda Carbajal, credits her partnership with SSA Group – the culinary architect for aquariums, museums, zoos and other U.S. attractions – for the opportunity.

“This relationship … led us to open doors at other facilities where they hold contracts – the Denver Zoo being one of those opportunities,” Carbajal tells Pizza Today.

Having started Simply Pizza out of a converted cargo truck, Carbajal says she felt confident they could operate out of a shipping container at the zoo. Still, she remembers using masking tape to create an outline of the space on the living room floor, imagining how staff would navigate cold and dry storage, a prep station, dough sheeter, wood-fired pizza oven and guest counter. Simply Pizza already operates from the outdoor patio at a neighborhood brewery, so the company has experience outfitting a shipping container to serve as a pizzeria.

“Tailoring our operation for each audience is something we exceed at in the zoo and at the brewery because of the truck,” Carbajal says. “The brewery is where we get to be creative and test out new items. … If we have an item that works, we come up with a scale-up plan and push it to the zoo.”

While Simply Pizza’s zoo location has a curtailed menu, the operation pivots during the holiday season to capitalize on Zoo Lights – a seasonal event where nighttime visitors see animal exhibits draped in Christmas lights. “In the month of December, we really become a giant, wood-fired cookie shop,” Carbajal says.

During the summer, the zoo kiosk offers strawberry-and-cream cups, which Carbajal says are simple to prepare and appeal to customers between mealtimes.

Other concerns specific to the zoo operation include lack of staff parking and at-will food deliveries in addition to zoo-specific training. (There is protocol for dealing with animals who have escaped their enclosures, for example.)

Since Simply Pizza’s contract is with SSA Group rather than the zoo, communication can be tricky, but Carbajal calls operating at the zoo “a dream.”

“This trifecta at the zoo is something I’m really proud of,” she says. “The little guy brings a different touch to the operation, and the big guy facilitates and nurtures that entity.”

Photo Courtesy of Mikey’s Late Night Slice.

Company: Mikey’s Late Night Slice

New Location: Ohio State University Main Campus — Columbus, Ohio

Opened: October 2024

During fourth-quarter 2024, Columbus, Ohio-based Mikey’s Late Night Slice opened a new storefront each month. One of those spots – located on The Ohio State University campus – was a ground-up build with prime access to the university’s 66,000 students.

“This just happened to be a new building right in the center of the Ohio State campus,” says Mikey Sorboro, who launched Mikey’s Late Night Slice from his apartment complex in 2009. “We were one of the last tenants in that development, so we essentially took the last good space.”

With nine locations currently operating and two underway, Sorboro and his team are well-versed in launching new pizzerias. Building at the university, however, came with new challenges. The university required specific materials, which used advanced technology and had commensurate price tags.

The number of people on campus during Christmas break, spring break and summer semester can be a blow to business at the university location, so management rotates workers to busier spots during slow times. Ahead of the fall 2025 semester, Sorboro expects the team to grow by 50 percent.

Unlike many pizzerias, where the kitchen closes at 9 p.m., all Late Night Slice locations are open until at least midnight, and the Ohio State campus location stays open until 3 a.m. to cater to student night owls.

Knowing that the dining area would be frequented by co-eds of questionable sobriety, Sorboro says, “We needed to make everything very durable.” Most of the high-tops are solid wood paired with steel barstools.

“The experience of going to one of our shops is very Instagramable. Everything is really meant to be eye candy in our restaurant,” Sorboro says, pointing to two long tables that have swings for seats.

The unprecedented growth of Mikey’s Late Night Slice in Q4 2024 was no accident. Now, the regional chain has plans to expand beyond the Columbus area – but not too far.

Customers who grew up going to Mikey’s Late Night Slice after a night out are now in the suburbs, Sorboro says, and some of their kids might even be patronizing the university location.

“Some of their parents grew up with us. Now, we meet them in college, and we’re going to follow them through our traditional locations in the business district and are now making a concentrated effort to look at the suburbs to follow our guest life cycle.”

Photo courtesy of Toss & Fire.

Company: Toss & Fire

New Location: Harvey’s Garden – Syracuse, New York

OpenEd: January 2024

The owners of Harvey’s Garden – an indoor beer garden in Syracuse, New York – tried running their own concessions for about a year before approaching Toss & Fire pizzeria about taking over the space. Thirty days later, Toss & Fire opened its third standalone location – one fixed in place but designed to resemble a food truck.

“I like second-generation spaces so that I’m not building out restaurants from absolutely nothing, because that gets insanely expensive,” owner Nick Sanford tells Pizza Today. “We took over their existing kitchen, expanded it forward and put the food truck façade up front.”

Toss & Fire helps the beer garden by having a constant food option, while the beer hall aids the pizzeria by selling beverages. “We’re basically two separate businesses operating in one area,” Sanford says.

He admits the Harvey’s Garden location was easier to bring to fruition than the first and second Toss & Fire sites. “I knew the city required a fan on top of the chimney, so I already knew what the part was, where to get it and who could install it,” he says.

Due to frigid winter weather, Syracuse has a limited food truck season, which frees up Toss & Fire’s mobile staff for the Harvey’s Garden site. “We take a lot of our strong people to get everybody up to speed,” Sanford says.

A year and a half into the new business, the pizzeria can operate with three to six employees, depending on foot traffic. Since opening the Harvey’s Garden location, Toss & Fire has expanded its hours to meet demand.

Customers also can rent out the space for parties and corporate events, for which Toss & Fire provides catering.

“We have a commissary that’s three minutes from the Harvey’s Garden location. It has a full kitchen and storage,” he says.

Due to the small space, Sanford keeps inventory tight at Harvey’s Garden, and he says the small menu has proved to be such a boon to profits that he’s trimmed the menus at Toss & Fire’s other properties as well.

Sanford recommends other pizzerias considering such a partnership get systems in place before attempting to open a new location.

“We’ve been in business for 10 years now, but this past year, we finally put in place schematics of exactly what a pizza should look like when it comes out of the oven – step-by-steps, because it is so easy for things to get lost in translation,” he says.

Photo courtesy of Slice House.

Company: Slice House

New Location: Franklin, Tennessee

Opened: April 2025

For the first several years, Tony Gemignani’s Slice House sought franchisees to establish new stores near California and Nevada, where the pizzaiolo operates Capo’s, Pizza Rock and Tony’s Pizza Napoletana. This spring, a new franchisee opened the first location east of Salt Lake City.

Together with a franchisee, Slice House opened its doors in downtown Franklin, Tennessee, in April 2025, marking the first of 11 locations that eventually will serve the state.

Slice House works with Prime Site, a real estate platform that provides data-based suggestions about where businesses are most likely to find success based on demographic, geographic and psychographic data.

The pizza franchise selects new locations based on a mix of Prime Site’s quantitative data and franchisees’ qualitative insights about proposed areas.

The first Tennessee location is in downtown Franklin’s historic district, which means Slice House was restricted in modifications to the building exterior, including signage. “Other than that, the interior is all built to our stack,” Slice House Managing Member Trevor Hewitt tells Pizza Today. “In most cases, everything is standardized, but we allow for a little bit of regional variety, and we also try to be reasonable when it comes to cost-benefit analysis.”

When the first Slice House location opened in 2016, the 900-square-foot location was intended to be a one-off store. But over time, management concluded 1,800-2,500-square-foot locations perform best. “A larger front-of-house for seating – instead of it being just a counter – increases customer satisfaction, increases revenue,” Hewitt says.

First-time franchisees are required to have 250 hours of training – or 50 hours per week for five weeks. The required training drops by one week with each subsequent location until franchisees hit one week per store. By that point, Hewitt says, the franchisee is well-equipped to train new staff themselves.

“We spent a good part of 2023, 2024 and even now – into 2025 – building out our team to support multiple location openings at once, to be able to send our training team and our operations team to further locations outside the West,” Hewitt says.

When finalizing property, Slice House insists leases are at least as long as the franchise agreement. Ten-year leases with an option to renew for five years are preferred.

KATE LAVIN is Senior Editor at Pizza Today.

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As I always do in averting crises, I pulled together our team of the sharpest and brightest talent over the years –– a well-rounded group, I would say. There’s the fi ery Italian girl with a competitive edge that would challenge Pete Rose; our petite and professional conservative who someday soon will manage to buy out of all of this; the dark and gloomy guy whose glass will always be half empty; our workhorse who gets everything done but still feels he never does anything; a disciplinarian who answers the door with a gun if it’s too early in the morning; and then there’s me –– the one who is always in denial in the face of adversity. Times can’t be that tough, right? As we talked, we agreed that the one thing that is most important for our future growth is that we stay true to the core of what we are: quality pizza. We need to move forward with the same purpose and direction in bad economic times as we have done in good, by fi rst and foremost covering the basics. Staying true to our brand, heightening our leaders’ awareness of the stores’ finances and regulating our labor budget has enabled us to improve our bottom line despite the economic downturn.

I have always tried to avoid investing resources in shortsighted trends that may lessen the value of the Reginelli’s brand. As an independent, we need to reinforce our brand as one that people can always trust. For years I have watched so many trends come and go in this business, such as altering menu content to promote the latest fad diet and beefing up the appetizer menu with low cost fi llers. Low-carb pizza crust, for example, is always on the wish list of a handful of our customers; however, without the tools or strong desire to jump right in and change our focus to whole wheat, it will never be the route for us. I feel that now, more than ever, I have to defend our brand. Others can do whole-wheat crust, but that’s just not us.

The Reginelli’s focus is consistently serving great pizza. Our customers understand who we are and appreciate our commitment to the quality food that has made our brand successful. They can count on us for that in both good economic times and bad.

Secondly, I have made it a priority to stick to our financial standards regardless of the economic circumstances. I have always felt we held high expectations for our locations with regards to food and labor costs. All of our managers understand that control of these numbers is crucial to Reginelli’s future success. But with our vendors tightening their belts and our customers adapting to more fi nancially prudent lifestyles, we are forced to look at the bigger picture. Knowing the importance of having good food and labor numbers just isn’t going to cut it. Our managers need to really understand the situation we face, because the time for excuses and poor performance has come and gone. There isn’t breathing room to leave the water running in the sink, because we can’t afford it. We now expose our managers to the full P&L for their location when monthly financials are received.

At first, I was hesitant because I have never before provided them with such detailed information; however, I feel that for them to really understand where the stores stand, I need to show them the bottom line and everything that leads to it. They have to see the big picture in order to appreciate the importance of the small details. Going line-by-line shows that all decisions have a financial impact. Once we all understand where we are falling short, we are able to set goals for these areas. With clear goals set, we can make specifi c plans to achieve them. Every new financial period brings a new struggle, but at least now we have the tools we need to fight the battle.

Finally, I have become more conscious of where we are investing our labor dollars. Maybe it’s a New Orleans thing, but I pride myself on “keeping it casual” and avoiding too much formality in the way I deal with my managers; however, as the economic “slump” turned into an all-out “recession,” our starting rates and rate increases didn’t take into account what individual locations could realistically afford. The need to evaluate people’s performance has become more important than ever. So now we use a grading system for our management performance that ties rate increases directly to the scores managers earn for themselves. This allows high-scoring managers who meet budgets to see the increases they deserve, and prevents increases at lower scoring stores who can’t afford them. Additionally, we began limiting management and employee rate increases to one per year. These increases are pre-scheduled and incorporated into performance evaluations, so that everyone knows where they stand across the board. We have made it our focus to find the most qualified applicants for the price that each store can afford. If an applicant can’t settle for what we have to offer, then our only option is to keep looking. While keeping our payroll numbers under control, our more structured approach has offered our employees a payment and benefit system that is transparent and gives them the security of knowing what they can expect for their efforts.

Today, the alarms are sounding as the current economic crisis looms like a Cat-5 over the Gulf. As New Orleanians, we got an early wake-up call in 2005 with Katrina. Our parents got theirs in ’69 when Betsy came. Their parents endured World War II, and their parents suffered the Great Depression. There’s a natural ebb and fl ow to life, and many people today haven’t encountered such life-altering events. As history continues repeating itself, new generations must adapt, new ideas must spring forth. Some will succeed where others will fail. Faced with this new world, weíve entrusted and empowered our staff with the knowledge and tools to help us weather the changing times. 09.09.09

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