Operations

Sal's Pizza an empire on Eastern seaboard

Sal Lupoli started his pizza business in the northeast and has grown the company to 130 units.

Photo: Sal's Pizza

January 9, 2025 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group

Sal Lupoli knows what it takes to run a pizzeria. After all, he's got a 130-unit empire across the Eastern U.S. seaboard.

Lupoli came up with the idea for Sal's Pizza in college.

"I decided that I wanted to use pizza as the venue to buy real estate," he said in a phone interview. But being just 21, he couldn't find a lender to loan him the money to launch his business. With little knowledge of the industry, Lupoli jumped in and found an entrepreneur in Boston's North End and worked in a restaurant while still in school. With time, he figured he could run his own pizzeria.

With the advice of his parents, he created an operating company. Lupoli sold his car, his parents took a third mortgage out on their house and he paid a 17% interest to a finance company to purchase equipment.

"I just felt like there was plenty of market share to jump into," he said.

He inked a lease on a place in Salem, New Hampshire about 30 miles outside of Boston while still in college. He said he couldn't afford a better location in the city.

"It was a B- location but it gave me the opportunity to get my feet on the ground in business."

Nine months after opening his initial location he had saved up enough money to open a second store in North Andover, Massachusetts. He said he would "cut and paste" the idea of finding a location, renovating the space and putting a pizzeria in.

That idea worked. He now has 130 units and a 110 thousand-square-foot food manufacturing facility.

"Today, we're the second largest developer in the state of Massachusetts, and that's a pretty big deal when you're in the innovation center of the country," Lupoli said, "so there's always a lot of development going on in Massachusetts."

Photo: Sal's Pizza

On the menu

The pizza is a traditional New York-style, classic pizza. It's thin and crispy with a prominent heel at the end that showcases the dough. It's foldable, and the brand sells a 19-inch three-pound pizza that is cut into quarters. Sal's has a tagline of "Now That's a Slice!" and the sizes of the slices are a testament to that.

Ninety-five percent of sales are pizza based. The brand also sells garlic knots, calzones and salads, but pizza is the primary source of sales.

"If you concentrate on one thing, and you do it the best, that helps keep your expenses down, streamlines your operations, makes it easier to find employees and easier to understand the volume based on the sales based on your profitability," Lupoli said. "You can track it much easier concentrating on one product than in some pizzerias across the country that might have 30 or 40 or 50 items on their menu."

Lupoli said it's the simplicity of the brand that sets it apart from the competition. He learned that from his father, and it helps Sal's Pizza stand out in the pizza-heavy Northeast. His father also told him to use the best ingredients on the market and never to deviate from that philosophy.

Sal's Pizza in Fenway Park. Photo: Sal's Pizza

Operations

Lupoli was an early adopter of commissaries. They weren't as common as they are now and using one helped the Sal's Pizza brand grow in its youth. Dough, sauce and cheese are processed at the commissary level and delivered to restaurants.

"I did that because I wanted to keep the expenses down and I wanted product consistency," Lupoli said. "So I was able to keep the kitchens really tight (and) kept my expenses down. We built a USDA, FTA factory up in New Hampshire and that became the hub for all the spokes of all these retail locations. We control all the logistics. We have about 25 trucks on the road every day that are just delivering product to all these retail applications that sells Sal's Pizza."

The commissary makes ingredients for a four-hour radius of Salem, New Hampshire.

"We understand profitability as well as anyone else that's an entrepreneur in this country," Lupoli said, "but I think the things that we do a little differently is we reinvest in our employees."

Some brand employees have been with the company since its inception 33 years ago. Lupoli said he doesn't cap the amount of money employees can earn. He said there are employees who make up to $120,000 a year, and he's loyal to them because they're loyal to the brand.

There are a lot of people knocking on the door to open a Sal's Pizza, Lupoli said, because operations are streamlined and accessible. Quality control is important to the brand, and Lupoli has a staff of 12 quality control associates who visit stores every day to aid in consistency and training. Bakers work alongside pizza chefs at the restaurant level in different shifts ensuring that the pizza is consistent, and employees are trained to make it correctly.

"We're constantly having our people in your stores working side by side training your new employees or just making sure the quality of the product is up to par," Lupoli explained. "If we take care of the quality, the business model will take care of itself, and we're really excited about that quality control program that we think is really an innovator in our business today."

Over the past 33 years, growth has been slow and controlled and put Lupoli's team in a position to heavily invest in its restaurants. The brand is one of only few to represent all five major sports in arenas and sporting outlets, including making all the pizzas for the New England Patriots, The Boston Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins and more.

Growth

Lupoli recently created an 'express' version of Sal's Pizza. With the rising cost of real estate, insurance, labor, rent, occupancy costs and utilities, he realized that freestanding units may not be the future of the pizza industry.

"I just felt what we needed to do as a company was pivot and innovate, and the innovation we came up with was the concept of co-branding in supermarkets, train stations, bus terminals, arenas, gas stations, convenience stores (and) school systems, and that's really been the way we've be able to grow the brand up to about 130 locations today," Lupoli said. The brand is still family owned, and Lupoli said he's just as passionate as ever about opening Sal's Pizza locations.

"We think there's a real path for us to get to 300 stores in the next five years," he said.

About Mandy Wolf Detwiler

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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. 

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