News

Year-to Year-comparison proves Blaze Pizza ablaze with sales

November 1, 2016

Blaze Fast-Fire'd Pizza today announced year-to-date highlights that include nearly doubling the brand's system-wide sales and restaurant locations when compared with this time last year, according to a news release. Some of the financial highlights of the first nine months of this year, compared to last include:

• 86 percent increase in system-wide sales versus a year ago.  Through September, year-to-date sales are at $130 million, up from $70 million last year. Full year system-wide sales are projected at $186 million, and are forecast to be above $300 million in 2017.
• 83 percent increase in restaurant unit count versus year ago. The brand now has 159 locations, up from 87 at this time last year.  93 additional locations are in development to be open within the next 12 months.  
• All-time high in Yelp scores.  In September, Blaze's overall restaurant average was 4.4 stars on Yelp – up from 4.3 stars last year and 4.2 stars the year before. 
• Three high-profile sites opened. These include locations at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Universal CityWalk in Hollywood and Staples Center in Los Angeles.  
• Two viral videos equal 12 million views and 50 million additional shares.One of the two videos ran on BuzzFeed and one featured LeBron James.
• All in for clean food. The chain's menu now contains no  artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives and fillers, as well as nitrite-free pepperoni, ham, salami and bacon. Farm-to-table tracking and next generation food safety technology measures also instituted.
• Mobile app with online ordering, loyalty, mobile payment and nutrition information added. These new technologies augment app digital strategies with email, push notifications and back-end customer analytics and outreach. 
• September mention in Morningstar investment firm’s report.  The report entitled, Lessons from the Next Generation of Moats in the Fast Casual Restaurant Industrygives the brand credit for building significant competitive advantages that are helping to create "economic moats" versus other fast casual chains.  

"Consistent with Morningstar's findings, we are focused on building a brand with significant and meaningful competitive advantages,"  said Blaze Pizza President and COO Jim Mizes. "It really started five years ago, when we invested heavily in talented team members and experienced franchise partners, developed scalable operations, and installed systems that would allow us to leverage technology far into the future. And, with that under the hood, we spend our days focused on delivering a 'tattoo-worthy' experience to every one of our guests every time they visit Blaze Pizza."