Mazzio’s Italian Eatery is a 108-unit pizza brand based out of Oklahoma. For the past several years, the brand has been overhauling its existing restaurants and building its tech stack.
Evolution is a natural part of a restaurant brand, especially one with longevity like Mazzio’s Italian Eatery. The brand began as Ken’s Pizza Parlor in 1961 when founder Ken Selby, a teacher by trade, wanted to moonlight as a pizzaiolo and opened his first pizzeria.
A second unit opened in 1965, and the company was rebranded as Ken’s Pizza. It was a simple concept with thin-crust pizza, salads and sodas. Selby grew the Ken’s Pizza concept to more than 100 locations. Later, Selby, a serial entrepreneur, wanted to expand the menu, so he created Mazzio’s Italian Eatery in 1979, which now offers multiple dough types, sandwiches, buffets and larger footprints.
Many of the Ken’s Pizza locations were later converted to Mazzio’s restaurants, though there are a handful of Ken’s still operating under licenses. Mazzio’s Italian Eatery now has 108 units in seven states, with a good portion of those located in Oklahoma, where Mazzio’s is based. Sixty of those are corporate owned.
The restaurants are counter service, with a few still operating as full service.
Though Selby passed away several years ago, the company is owned and operated by his children, said Stuart Myers, VP of sales and marketing, in a phone interview. Lori Carver serves as president and CEO.
On the menu
Mazzio’s still offers the signature thin-crust pizza on which the company was founded but also has a hand-tossed original dough, a pan pizza and a stuffed crust.
“The thin crust, because of the Ken’s heritage, is really where we got our start, and to this day it still represents probably 40-45% of our pizza sales,” Myers said. “The thin crust is really what got us where we are today.”
There are a number of sauces, including the original Ken’s version, a zesty tomato sauce.
“We’ve got a customer base that is insanely loyal,” Myers said. “A lot of our customers are still with us since back when we were Ken’s, and as such, a lot of people will order thin crust with Ken’s sauce, and it’s basically a replication of the original Ken’s pizza, which you can still get today at any Mazzio’s location.”
Create-your-own pizzas are the top sellers, with pepperoni and cheese making up roughly 50% of pizza sales. The Combo, with pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, red onions, mushrooms and black olives, is a top specialty pizza, as is the Four Meat featuring pepperoni, sausage, Italian sausage and beef. The Six Meat has all the toppings of the Four Meat with the addition of Canadian bacon and bacon. Mazzio’s is also known for its Taco and Greek pizzas.
Pizza represents 75-80% of sales, Myers estimated.
Still, the menu’s wing offerings have grown significantly. Myers said the brand operates in some small counties and towns where good wings are hard to come by.
“We realize in a lot of these smaller towns, the consumer’s access to a great wing product is fairly limited,” Myers said. “We’ve got an excellent wing product and as such, we feel that there’s room for us to capture market share in the wing business in a lot of our markets. That’s going to be part of our future growth plans as far as building transactions and sales at our existing locations.”
To reach Millennials and Gen Z, Mazzio’s began offering oval-shaped street pizzas in varieties like the Boss Hog with mini pepperoni, ham, pork sausage and bacon and the Mama Mia, which features an herb oil blend, grilled chicken, artichokes, black olives, feta cheese, tomatoes and pepperoncini.
“From a marketing standpoint, we’re always conscientious of bringing in that next generation of Mazzio’s customers,” Myers said. The brand wanted to create a product that would appeal to a younger guest it has dubbed the “flavor adventurer” who enjoys bold flavors and is willing to take risks to discover new tastes found at places like food trucks.
The brand makes its dough in house, chops and roasts vegetables on site and makes its own sauces using a proprietary blend of seasonings. Even Mazzio’s famous Ranch dressing, known fondly as “Oklahoma ketchup,” is made daily in five-gallon batches.
“We still do a lot of stuff from scratch that people aren’t willing to do anymore,” Myers said.
Provided by Mazzio’s Italian Eatery |
Operations
Like its food, Mazzio’s places great emphasis on its operations as well.
“New-store growth has really not been part of our strategy for the past several years,” Myers said, adding the brand has instead been focusing on upgrading and modernizing its existing locations. “Keep in mind a lot of our restaurants are mature. And since Lori has been CEO, we’ve been placing a lot of our emphasis on upgrading our existing facilities.”
Mazzio’s execs are also creating a more profitable business model.
“Now that we’ve got a lot of our existing locations upgraded, we’re looking at different models for sales capacity and profitability because over the next years, we are going to be shifting into a unit-growth mode,” Myers said, adding “both through franchising and developing and building more corporate locations.”
Like many pizza brands, Mazzio’s has become more focused on off-premise dining, including carryout and delivery. The buildings the brand constructed 30 or 40 years ago “don’t necessarily make sense in this environment for the pizza category,” Myers said, “so that’s the direction we’re moving in.”
Myers said Mazzio’s was ahead of its time with its focus on technology early on by utilizing a call center. The call center transmits orders to the stores, and the company’s POS technology must focus on accommodating that call center, which is less common for pizza brands.
The brand has also been upgrading its online and mobile ordering platforms as well.
“As far as a lot of the tech goes, we focus on making sure that we’ve got a very user-friendly and a great user experience on mobile phones and desktop … a lot of the technology that we’re chasing down is actually back-of-the-house technology. Cooking technology,” Myers said.
That doesn’t include robotics, he said, but focuses on efficiencies available to restaurants that aid cooking speed. It isn’t necessarily consumer facing, but the brand is trying to give its staff the best possible tools to create consistently great food every time and maximize time during peak hours, especially on the weekends.
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Mazzio’s Italian Eatery added single-serve street pizzas to attract a younger audience. Photo provided by Mazzio’s Italian Eatery |
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.
