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When Mike Burns He became the CEO &pizzaHe arrived on the first day ready to work. There was only one problem: no one told him that he had no office.
“I appear in DC and I am INHere you go?“He recalls.” They send me to the address. It’s just a restaurant. “
But Burns wouldn’t prefer it in any other way. “A type of beauty and pizza [is] It’s about a restaurant – he says. “People. Atmosphere. You cannot get it in the office.”
But what he entered was not a prosperous brand that needed only a few corrections. The operations were inconsistent, culture has fallen and drifted the current customer base once. So he did what every recent, rational general director would do. He got a tattoo.
Many years earlier &pizza began the promotional offer Free pizza For a 12 months to the first 100 people ready to tattoo the characteristic Ampersand of the brand on their body. What once seemed a one -time promoting feat became something else when Burns restored him. 2,700 people signed up the first day.
“And then I knew,” he says. “The brand still had her. People were not just customers. They were believers.”
Burns rolled up in his sleeve and got a tattoo on the forearm, which is difficult to miss.
Loyalty went beyond ink. Some fans even tied a knot in AT & TSA stores – literally. In Pi Day (March 14), the brand hosted weddings in which couples tied dough nodes and liked pizza.
“People met AT & Pizza, engaged at & pizza and got married at & pizza,” says Burns. “It’s more than food. It’s a culture.”
Reconstruction from the inside
Of course, no number of tattoos or weddings can fix free tickets or a disappearing sense of goal. Burns focused on two things: culture and performance.
First step? Cleaning most of the upper management and promoting from the inside. “I don’t care about the CV,” he says. “I fall in love if you know how to start the line at midnight.”
He hired the Vice President of Operations with Sleeve Tattoos to match the brand’s climate and elevated district managers, who began as pizza creators. Suddenly the management didn’t observe the front line; It was the first line.
The band restored loud music, sharpened food quality and leaned into the company’s most disrespectful instinct. Proof A: The Dickle, Pizza with a dill called, when the supply chain manager incorrectly works at the meeting.
“We had mascots running around DC, distributing a free Dickle pizza,” says Burns. “Abe Linkoln with Mohawek. Ben Franklin with a neck tattoo. It was chaos. But the right kind.”
Burns organized his executive team like a modern basketball composition: without stiff positions. There were titles, but the HR leader also ran competitive marketing products. The IT head was rushing at OPS conferences. Burns glued himself to his shirts and rear hats, signaling franchisees that Pizza didn’t return to corporate formalities in the near future.
Their first leadership meeting turned into a busy argument. Burns considered it a good sign. “In basketball, until a fight breaks out in practice, you are not ready to play,” he says. “The same goes here.”
The moment, which convinced Burns to take up work, was not a pitch of the conference room. It was a conversation with a bartender who noticed his shirt and pizza.
“The best fucking pizza in DC,” she told him. “But he lost his advantage.”
It was true. He believes that Burns believes that honesty is the most precious currency in hospitality. “We lost our way before Covid-19”-he says. “And during Covid? Forget about it. But when almost 3,000 people signed up to tattoo your brand on your bodies? This is not nostalgia. This is the second chance.”
The second likelihood pays off. Customer movement is climbing. Amendments at the back of the house, from the quality of food to ticket times, are strong. And above all, the energy that built cult and pizza.
“We don’t try to be safe,” says Burns. “Safe pizza does not get tattoos. Or in a wedding.”
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When Mike Burns He became the CEO &pizzaHe arrived on the first day ready to work. There was only one problem: no one told him that he had no office.
“I appear in DC and I am INHere you go?“He recalls.” They send me to the address. It’s just a restaurant. “
But Burns wouldn’t prefer it in any other way. “A type of beauty and pizza [is] It’s about a restaurant – he says. “People. Atmosphere. You cannot get it in the office.”
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