Fast Casual Top 100 Movers & Shakers Awards Ceremony

Winner, winner, PIZZA dinner: 5 pizza brands land in Top 100 list

Five astute and innovative pizza brands took home top honors in this year's Fast Casual Top 100 Movers & Shakers awards. Their accomplishments over the last year prove the pizza world proffers a plenitude of novel ideas about how to run a successful restaurant company today.

Five pizza brands took home honors at this year's FastCasual Top 100 Movers & Shakers awards. (Photo: iStock)

May 27, 2020 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

Five pizza restaurant companies took home honors at the Top 100 Movers & Shakers awards held recently and virtually this year by sister site, FastCasual. In fact, the brand that came in second this year for the overall Top 100 was, in fact, a pizza company in the form of Washington, D.C.-based &pizza, whose CEO Michael Lastoria also was recognized as one of the Top 100 leaders this year. 

"Congrats to all the winners, to the SG (Top 100 winner, Sweetgreen) family for taking home the crown, and to everyone responding to the world's challenges with humanity," said Lastoria in an email to Pizza Marketplace. "Thank you to the &pizza Tribe for being you."

And though &pizza and the other winners of this year's Top 100 were actually judged on their information about their efforts last year, in 2020 &pizza has certainly made its "tribe" the subject of plenty of innovation and effort, as recently detailed in this Pizza Marketplace story. 

Last year, the 39-unit brand distinguished itself with its debut of business-driving initiatives like its mobile kitchen, as well its proprietary digital ecosystem, &OS, which includes a mobile application, mobile web browsing and ordering, as well as kitchen display systems with demand prediction and controls — all built into &pizza's text messaging platform, which is central to worker training and communication. 

The other four pizza brands in this year's top 75 brands, are included below with some of their achievements: 

• No. 12: Blaze Pizza 

The 350-plus-unit Blaze Pizza distinguished itself last year with a number of innovations focused on the plant-based craze, including its introduction of both a plant-based spicy chorizo topping, as well as it so-called Keto Crust, aimed squarely at all those ketogenic diet adherents. 

But toward the last part of last year, Blaze also constructed a complete delivery and carryout system that not only required the introduction of a larger 14-inch pie, but managed to emerge into operational efficiency just in time for the onset of the pandemic's increasing delivery and carryout demands early this year. 

• No. 35: Artichoke Basille

This 12-year-old New York-style pizza brand made some substantial growth moves last year, edging it up to nearly 20 locations currently by adding three franchised stores, signing for the construction of a store in Time's Square and completing a deal to add stores in Arizona. 

• No. 63. Rapid Fired Pizza 

This brand, headquartered outside of Dayton, Ohio, also had a bit of a growth spurt last year, opening 11 of its current 35 stores in 2019. Not only did the brand manage some rapid growth to go along with its name, but also introduced what has become a very popular menu item in its so-called No Doh pizza that replaces the calorie-laden traditional wheat-based pizza crust with grated Parmesan or leaves of spinach, saving 350 calories and up to 98% of the regular pie's carb load. 

• No. 67: Azzip Pizza

In the great tradition of backwards-speak, Azzip Pizza — a.k.a. 'pizza' spelled backward — did anything but backslide in growth in recent years, managing same-store sales growth of 13.3% last year. This Indiana-based brand is also highly centered on its workforce and their needs, based on the idea that a brand's customer service is likely only to be as good as its employees are happy. 

Staff at the nine-unit chain are helped along in that pursuit of happiness with things like welcome kits for new hires including swag and coupons, as well as monthly "home office takeovers," that gives front line staff a day off while Azzip's corporate executives run the store. The net result of these efforts? An employee turnover rate that is nearly 20 percentage points lowr than the industry average of 73% last year. 

Next year's Top 100

Nominations for next year's Top 100 Movers & Shakers — including 75 top brands and 25 top leaders — will begin being taken in January, based on innovative moves brands and leaders make over this very unusual year of 2020, so begin taking notes now on the things your brand is doing now to potentially get recognized for in May 2021 when the next Top 100 awards take place. Nominations are typically taken from Jan. 1 through Feb. 1 of the award year. 

About S.A. Whitehead

---

Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.