A half-decade into the fast-casual, fast-fired pizza boom, two concepts have separated themselves from the pack. Over the last two years, Bellevue, WA-based MOD Pizza and Pasadena, CA’s own Blaze Pizza have collected more investment capital, sold more pizzas and built more stores than their next-generation pizza rivals (Pie Five, PizzaRev and Pieology, to name a few).
At this point, growth is the word. MOD jumped ahead of Blaze last year by building out 110 new location (increasing its footprint by greater than 50%) while Blaze opened 65 new locations. Both concepts have stated that the new-store goal for 2018 is 100 openings.
Blaze will have to prove it, as the company has yet to hit that target. We’re estimating more like 85-90 units for 2018. However, the franchisee pipeline is full and franchisees are chomping at the bit. If 100 aren’t in the cards this year, certainly the next, and you can expect the rate of growth to increase.
Unlike Blaze (98% franchised), the MOD model is heavy on company-owned stores (roughly a 75/25 split). With another round of funding closed to the tune of $33 million at the end of 2017 and a $40 million credit facility, MOD has the means and ability to meet and beat that target.
Subscribers to our Leading Chain Tenants Database can check out updated company records for these concepts and 9,200 other retail and foodservice chains to access the areas of growth, unit and site specs, and contact information for key real estate, construction and facilities decision makers.
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Updated: 3/19/2019 This month we are looking back at our most popular articles and reviewing where the companies are now. March 2019 Update: A year ago,CSG wrote about, two west coast based pizza companies on the rise: MOD Pizza out of Bellevue, WA and Blaze Pizza from Pasadena, CA. While both companies had slightly different business models, both had stated their plans to open 100 new stores in 2018. CSG collected the data and predicted that while MOD was on trend to hit their 100 store goal, Blaze would likely fall short and only manage to open 85 to 90 units. So how did these two companies stack up in 2018? MOD, as predicted, not only hit their 100 unit goal but exceeded it, opening 107 new units, a growth rate of 35.43%. Blaze, unfortunately, did not meet expectations of the 85 new units as predicted by CSG’s analysis of previous years. Blaze fell significantly short of their goal with only 76 new openings in the last year or a growth rate of 31.6%. But though Blaze might have fallen short on opening their 100 stores in 2018, their fan base on Twitter (58.8K) and Instagram (151K) are remarkably higher than MOD (14.5K Twitter, 35.5K Instagram) which, in the age of social media could help Blaze reach their goals in 2019. |
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