Podcast

Urban Bricks founder on taking a pizza brand beyond the pie

Host & QSRweb Editor Shelly Whitehead talks with Fast Casual editor, Cherryh Cansler, about Euromonitor's latest restaurant trend data. The spotlight interview in this episode focuses on Urban Bricks founder Sammy Aldeeb, who shares his learnings on taking a pizza brand beyond pizza & using restaurant technologies to "wow" customers & drive sales.

December 7, 2018

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Transcript

Q&A - Cherryh Cansler, Fast Casual Editor

Shelly: Welcome, Cherryh.

Cherryh: My pleasure.

Shelly: Please first tell us why Euromonitor undertook this research into new food service concepts and why restaurant operators might need to know about these findings.

Cherryh: It's the end of the year and we're always gearing up for our new production, restaurants always needs to know what's out there and what their customers are demanding so they can be competitive to deliver those needs.

Shelly: So you identified four trends and discussed them in the first part of your series on this research, beginning with the demand for restaurants to truly fulfill a clean and green living promise. What exactly does that mean on a restaurant management level?

Cherryh: Well, I think we've seen this trend a growing for the past several years. Customers really wanting to eat healthy, but they are focusing more on clean eating where they're not having, you know, the extra artificial flavors and additives and restaurants are trying to meet those demands by also giving them more transparent information. Customers, especially millennials and even younger customers want to know where the food has been grown, so a lot of restaurants are looking into that and we talked to one restaurant in particular B. Good who is based in Boston. They actually started their own farm just a couple of years ago. It's called Hannah Farm and they grow a variety of produce that they use in their restaurant, but they also donate to some nonprofit organizations as well. So it's all about that combination of giving back to their communities and also providing their customers with the health healthful foods that they want.

Shelly: That's so invigorating to hear. Euromonitor's reported some pretty unusual things about how an increasing number of restaurant customers are dining solo these days. Is this the dawning of the solo dining trend?

Cherryh: I think that might be a fun way to look at it. There's just a lot of younger people who are working, you know, they're in an office environment and they're wanting to eat quickly and they're looking at their lunch as more of I need to meet my hunger needs, not necessarily as a social thing, so they're not afraid to eat alone. Restaurants are going to change their format to try to focus on that. One restaurant that we chatted with was Three Pop and they are based in India and their focus is delivering single portion meals to customers. So a customer might be working and they can, you know, call up or just online order food and then it within 30 minutes it'll be there and it's a healthy small portion for them to enjoy.

Shelly: This next trend in your story, it sounds like it might actually be geared more towards groups of diners because it sounds like restaurants really need to get their game on as in Gamification. As it's described in your story, it's really gaming with kind of a marketing purpose, isn't it?

Cherryh: So gamification is becoming very popular fad. It is just the way for restaurants to engage with customers. Our Commerce play a couple of years ago launched an online gaming component where customers could go online or use through the APP and they play this game where they're crushing Avocados and they win points, so it's just a fun, unique way to get customers connected at pita pit. Did the same thing earlier this year and they are allowed their customers to win prizes or discounts off and so I think we'll see more of that.

Shelly: Last, we come to the great burden of the modern age, that none of us have enough time anymore. Why did Euromonitor think this was a need that limited service brands should address?

Cherryh: I think customers are in a hurry. They just want their food, want it now. They want it when they want it, they want it. They want it now so more restaurants are going to be trying to deliver that frictionless experience where customers can order their food and pick them up or get it delivered as soon as possible. There was this new restaurant in Dubai that is kind of taking that to another level. It's very interesting. It does not have a mobile app, which I found interesting because most restaurants are really going that way. They're using it as a marketing tool. If you sign up, you put in your info and your credit card number and everything on the website and then every single day they send you a menu like at 9:30 in the morning and then you respond back with what you want and then they deliver it to right to your office or to your house. It's prepaid and everything. It really is frictionless. So I think we'll see more of that as well.

Shelly: Wow. They're making it awfully easy to eat. It's really good for people like me. Thank you so much. This is just the beginning of the series, right?

Cherryh: Right, this week we will also have a focus on menu trends and then we will be looking at more technology based trends to watch out For 2019.

Shelly: Thank you for dropping by. It's really enlightening information for our audience.

Q&A - Sammy Aldeeb, Urban Bricks Pizza Founder

Shelly: Thanks to Urban Bricks founder Sammy Aldeeb, here with us today. Wow Sammy, this brand has really come a long way in a little time since its launch, what three years ago? You're up to 20 plus locations and how many are in the works?

Sammy: We've got probably another location in the works opening up within the next six months or so. We've been building a lot and fast. It's big growth.

Shelly: So a lot of people know this brand by its big egg shaped lime green pizza ovens. What I understand is that you've taken on pasta recently and I wonder what was behind that?

Sammy: So strategically, the pizza segment is very crowded. I would be a fool if I don't realize that and see that. See the writing on the wall. We sat back and said, how do we reach out more to more customers while we keep coming? New, simple. And the key. Simple, right? So we got to be simple pizza. It's easy, it's fast. How do we use that to our advantage? Use the oven that we've got. Usually having the front of perfect, but fresh toppings and fresh ingredients are and utilize what we have without having to change the model, right? The quick answer was, let's go ahead and sit down. Let's try to go ahead and do salads, right? You see a whole bunch of restaurants out there that's built your own salads. It's really see a whole bunch of build zero period, right?

The new generation wants everything fast. They want everything fresh. They want to build their own. Nobody wants the super supreme or the boring Caesar Salad, right? Everybody's got a twist. Everybody wants to do it their way. Everybody wants to customize their lunch or dinner, so obviously we've got that. We're an open kitchen concept and we've decided to part start offering salads. So everything that goes on a pizza from cherry tomatoes to cheese, green peppers, onions, mushrooms will actually go on a salad. It'll go on a pasta and it'll also go on a Panini. So why not expand our menu without really having to add anymore SKU's? And that was the genius move. That's very, very simple. So how's it going over? It's doing fantastic with a world that's very health conscious. It's definitely taken off. We now cater to both mom and dad. Right? So if somebody wants something light out, whether it's for lunch or they're simply on the diet.

Shelly: Urban Bricks has also got a reputation for having cool gadgets, but they all have purposes like that hand sanitizing station and the bottom filling beer dispensers. How do those kinds of items work?

Sammy: The world we live in is all about entertainment. People eat with their eyes. People want to go ahead and check it on Facebook and other social media. That's what they want to do. What we did is we created a cool atmosphere, edgy, cool gadgets that we have in our store where there's a spinning pizza oven, right? Or our hand washing station, which is probably Instagram pizza or the bottoms of beer machine, right? So everything's got a purpose. The hand washing station is obviously a huge hit with the kids. I could see kids wanting to go to Urban Bricks simply because we have the cool hand washing station. I know my kids do, right? The spinning and rotating oven is there to ensure a good quality consistent pizza. So our pizza is very consistent no matter hhow long the lines are, we're always pushing out the same quality pizza each and every time. Right? And that's because our, operations is monkey proof, right?

You simply put the pizza in, wait for it for two rounds. Each round is literally 60 seconds. You pull it out and it's perfectly cooked each and every time, just like magic, right? But yet it works as entertainment and it acts as a pacifier for hungry consumers that are just watching their pizza getting baked or somebody else's getting baked or Panini cooking and rising inside them. The bottoms up beer machine, which is a huge success for us. It's a big factor in us selling more beer and it's simply because it's very entertaining. I mean our cups have a hole in the bottom of them, right? They fell from the bottom and I can't tell you how many times we get customers that are like standing in line behind another customer that's ordered beer and they're like, what just happened?

Shelly: So tell me where, where this brand is going, big growth plans or what's your pace?

Sammy: We're going to be in Panama, the country, next quarter we're planning to open up the first quarter of 2019.

We should also be opening up our Puerto Rico location and probably first or second quarter of 2019. We get franchise inquiries for international countries all the time. We're in deep negotiations right now with people from India. We simply have a very fun concept. It's fun. Investors are looking at it and saying, this could really work for us and in our country. People love American products, American brands.

Shelly: Does it translate well to other cultures or have you had some speed bumps there being an extra franchisee and somebody that was born and raised in Dubai?

Sammy: I think I have an advantage. They're not really sticking in the box. And I tried to, I tried to get out of the box and see what might work in different geographics. You know, the, the conversation that we have with Panama is different that what we're having in Oregon, what we're going to have on the line over there.

It was going to be a lot more different than what we're going to go ahead and have in Florida. So we're open to not being boring. We're open to adapting to the geographics and to the population demographics for each and every location. I got kosher meats where I need to have kosher meat. I got Urban Bricks with a full bar where full bars are needed, right? We're a franchise. When we got to be very uniform and all our stores are lime green, right. They're all very edgy. Will adapt. So yes, our conversations with international locations are completely different. We're not going to do now, we're talking heavily with India or not, it's more of a vegetarian. We're going to focus more on our vegetarian and our salads are build your own salads more than anything else over there. It's different. Interesting.

Shelly: I want to thank you for talking with us. I wish we had more time to go on, but it keeps a sense of mystery going. I'm sure that the road is paved with gold. Maybe a few lime green tiles in there as well for Urban Bricks and I seriously do appreciate your coming in and talking to us today.

Sammy: Thanks for having me.