Operations
From burgers to 'many pizzas': John Eucalitto's co-branding vision
John Eucalitto, owner of Wayback Burgers, launched Molte Pizze, a new multi-brand concept offering diverse pizza styles (New York, Detroit, and tavern-style) within a single franchisor structure to simplify operations and strategically complement the daytime sales of Wayback Burgers, as demonstrated by their first successful co-branded location.
November 24, 2025 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group
John Eucalitto, the owner of Wayback Burgers, is leveraging his franchise expertise and a passion for Italian food to revolutionize multi-brand ownership with the launch of Molte Pizze, or "many pizzas" in Italian. Born in April 2023 within his development hub, Hubspoke Kitchen, the Molte Pizze concept aims to simplify operations for franchisees by offering diverse, high-quality pizza styles — currently New York, Detroit, and tavern-style thin crust—under the umbrella of a single franchisor, a strategy that recently culminated in the opening of the first co-branded Wayback Burgers and Molte Pizze.
"Why not have the franchisees operate with one franchisor rather than being a franchisee of three or four different franchise concepts," Eucalitto said. "We started testing products and cooking different pizzas, eating a lot of them, to see what we can roll out. We put with the concept of Molte Pizze to have many types of pizza."
The brand settled on three styles initially: Neapolitan, New York-style and Detroit-style, "but what we quickly found out was that while we loved Neapolitan, it's not an easy product to serve," Eucalitto said. "It cools quickly, so it's mostly for eat-in, not takeout or delivery. And you need someone at that oven turning that pizza or watching it go around … all the time because it cooks in 90 seconds or two minutesv. It's not an easy thing to deal with."
The brand pivoted and launched tavern-style thin crust pizza instead. That's worked well because it's a lighter pizza, it serves well at lunch and people still grab it as a snack as it cools.
New York-style is Molte Pizze's top seller, but it's Detroit-style gets the best reviews because it's different and not saturated in the market.
The pizza chefs do test other styles often, and "that's the goal of it – to be passionate about pizza and the offerings that we have with it like the salads, too, which get creative reviews also," Eucalitto said.
The first co-branded, franchised unit with Molte Pizze and Wayback Burgers recently opened in Emerson, New Jersey, where pizza accounts for 30% to 35% of sales. There are two more locations in Bridgeport and Orange, Connecticut under construction that will also be co-branded locations.
"Our pizzas are traditionally (sold on) nights and weekends, specifically Friday night, Saturday, Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening," Eucalitto said. "So (Molte Pizze) goes well with the burgers. Burgers, we do really well at lunchtime. It's a grab-and-go type thing. You're in and out and fast and you can eat it in the car. So, it complements it really well."
 |
Photo: Hubspoke |
Operations
Dough was made in-house for the first few years, but then Molte Pizze aligned itself with a co-packer that makes a proprietary dough for the brand.
Toppings, like sausage, are prepared and cooked on premise.
"If we're going to build it to scale, we've got to have the consistency, so while we made everything from scratch, we're now going out to key partners to take the recipes and work with us to co-pack for us," Eucalitto explained.
The brand bakes pizzas in a couple of different styles of ovens. There are some old Blodgett deck ovens and they're testing conveyors and other styles. The goal is to satisfy all styles of pizza.
Wayback Burgers has more than 170 stores and is leading the charge in how Molte Pizze works. Hubspoke has a big staff with six brands under it. They took three or four people out of the Wayback team when they first launched Molte Pizze and designated them into Hubspoke.
"We have all the experience and resources coming in from Wayback over the years," Eucalitto said. "That allows us the ability to test, test, test and then execute and bring those people along to assist in the training and the execution. This is the first year we've actually takedn some of our Wayback staff that have not only focused on Wayback up to this point but crossover."
The Emerson, New Jersey location, for instance, had Hubspoke staff when it opened and trained some of the existing Wayback support team and the franchisee and their staff. "So now we're starting to cross over as we start to develop," Eucalitto added.
Those Hubspoke and Wayback Burgers staff have been with the brand for many years and bring the experience to help Molte Pizze grow. Wayback Burgers still has its first employees from when it started back in 2008, illustrating happy employees who make satisfied team members.
 |
Photo: Molte Pizze |
The brand's culture relies on a stress-free environment as much as possible for its employees. Employees' lives come first, Eucalitto said, and business comes second. There's no micromanaging.
"We tell everyone to leave their issues at the front door. We all work hard together. I can be in there assisting making something from top to bottom and everyone's hands on and we pride ourselves with the company that we have and the staff that we have, and wouldn't be able to do this without them," Eucalitto said. "We strive to be perfect every time but in reality, you can't. You're only as good as what you do after you make a mistake, and they all know that."
There's little turnover from a staff perspective because they built Hubspoke and Wayback for people to build careers. At Hubsoke, they offer benefits, there's the latitude to be creative as pizza chefs at Molte Pizze.
There must be buy-in from the franchisees. "We only have one customer, and that's the franchisee," Eucalitto said. "They're the only ones that pay us."
The brand uses NetSuite for back-office management which integrates with its POS systems. There are a couple of different POS systems that they're using like NCR and Square. They're piloting a program with Qu and use Deliverect and Olo as well.
"We're not great operators, but we're passionate about food and we know how to set up systems in the franchise model," Eucalitto said. "That's been my career since 1990 with a couple different brands like I became the franchisor of Wayback. But, our focus is to develop systems so that franchisees can operate them and do it well and be consistent from location to location to location."
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.
