1-on-1 with Pizza Leadership

Fired Pie's Doug Doyle talks winning the fast-casual pizza game

Fired Pie has 20 locations in Arizona. Co-Owner Doug Doyle explains how the fast-casual market is perfect for pizza, and how quality ingredients and attention to detail make a concept stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

Provided

August 30, 2021 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group

Doug Doyle's the kind of guy who's a jack of all trades. He's tried a little bit of everything, from sailing to working in a Sizzler steakhouse. But it was his time with a full-service pizza chain that gave him the foundation upon which he built Fired Pie, a brand operating 19 units across Phoenix and one in Tucson, Arizona, and launched in July 2013.

"Basically, I've been working in restaurants since I was 15," Doyle told Pizza Marketplace in a phone interview. "I tried a few different things, but I always ended up back in restaurants."

That included a 17-year stint with California Pizza Kitchen, where he traveled the country opening stores.

"In 2013, I decided that I didn't want to work for anybody else again," he said. "I'd been working in restaurants most of my life and at that time I thought 'you know what? I've got the experience. Why don't I do my own thing?

"The custom pizza market was very, very hot in 2012. Pizza has been done for over a hundred years, but it had never been done custom and it had never been done fast. So that's when we decided to do our own thing."

Getting a leg up on competition

While many concepts struggle to open a second location, Doyle calls his expansion aggressive — he opened three locations within three months and had four within the first six months.

"At the time there were three of us, so we had that kind of support," he said. "We thought we had the experience. We had the facilities experience. We had the menu experience. Coming from California Pizza Kitchen, this is actually a fairly simple concept. The food is fairly simple. We just do pizza and salads."

The company's fresh, scratch-made ingredients give it a leg-up on their competition, according to Doyle.

"We have a unique dough recipe — and old, Italian-family dough recipe," Doyle said. "We make dough daily in each store. Our sauce is an old Italian recipe and we grate our own cheese. There's no commissary. We think we differentiate ourselves through our ingredients.

"I think a lot of people hopped into this (fast-casual) market thinking … you can cook any type of pizza because it cooks fast. We always thought that it still has to taste good. Our goal was to make a premium fast-cooked pizza, so we use premium ingredients."

Premium means even the vegetables are cut fresh and the meats cost a little more. Doyle said it makes a better overall product that consumers won't find in most casual-dining restaurants.

"Just because we're making our own dough doesn't make it more expensive," he said. "Yeah, our meats are a little more expensive, but we don't buy prepared product. We cut all the vegetables ourselves. … to keep costs down, maybe we do a little additional prep where our competitors will bring in pre-sliced onions and peppers. … I don't want a cookie-cutter look to it. I do want to be consistent from store to store, but I don't want items to come out of a bag."

Maintaining continuity

When it comes to maintaining continuity across locations it's all about being hands-on.

"I have two regional managers who have come up with Fired Pie, and I don't have a home office," Doyle said. "As for myself, I'm in a restaurant every day. We are locally owned and operated."

Although his background is in full-service dining, Doyle said going with a fast-casual concept was more economical and simpler overall.

"You can do it in a smaller space, so the economics worked out better for us," he added. "We would have never been able to open up four (full-service) restaurants in four months, especially in 2013. Fast casual was exploding and casual dining was suffering.

"We also try to give the type of service where, yeah, there's no server involved but we try to develop and train our staff to give hopefully a full-service dining experience. After guests place their orders, we bring the food out to the table. We clear the tables for them. After the ordering process, we try to make is a full-service experience."

Though he's now at 20 locations, Doyle hasn't seriously considered franchising but he's open to the right kind of outside investor. The Phoenix market is saturated at 19 locations, so he may expand in Arizona but outside Phoenix.

"I think we've seen our competitors have problems with franchising," Doyle said. "I think for us to be corporate owned and not franchised helps us to maintain consistency throughout the chain."

One big challenge in the post-COVID-19 environment is that hiring has been challenging for Fired Pie. Doyle said he is currently working on strengthening operations and making sure training is in place for when growth will happen again. "I think six months from now, we'll be looking to expand outside the Phoenix area," he said.

When asked what he wish he knew in his early days, Doyle said he underestimated the hours he'd work. It wasn't unusual to put in 80- or 90-hour work weeks.

"When you open a restaurant, you're running a business that's open seven days a week, so it really never stops.

"I think one of the most important things is to have experience," Doyle said. "I know when they say 80% of restaurants fail, I think that's a lot of people coming from outside the restaurant industry. When we started Fired Pie, we had years of experience, and it's still a challenge. I think you need to have restaurant experience and executive-level experience. I think you need to have strong interpersonal skills so you can have established systems such as training. You need a very strong training program. Don't be afraid to reach out and get feedback from others who have already done it.

"And make sure you have the financing in place. That's probably why all restaurants go out of business. They ran out of money."

Operations

About Mandy Wolf Detwiler

Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the managing editor at Networld Media Group and the site editor for PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com. She has more than 20 years’ experience covering food, people and places.

An award-winning print journalist, Mandy brings more than 20 years’ experience to Networld Media Group. She has spent nearly two decades covering the pizza industry, from independent pizzerias to multi-unit chains and every size business in between. Mandy has been featured on the Food Network and has won numerous awards for her coverage of the restaurant industry. She has an insatiable appetite for learning, and can tell you where to find the best slices in the country after spending 15 years traveling and eating pizza for a living.

Connect with Mandy: