Pizza Pizza franchise

February 27, 2007 at 2:38 PM EST

Continued from Page 1…

Financials and training in place, Mr. Despault could finally turn his attention to the actual store, 2,600 square feet of space located between Bancroft's residential and commercial areas. Pizza Pizza had taken care of all the details in terms of design, sourcing equipment and hiring contractors. They gave Mr. Despault the chance to okay the store layout, but otherwise, it was a done deal.

Next up was hiring staff, which, once again, Pizza Pizza assisted with. The company participates in a government hiring program called Job Connect that helps hook up employers with jobs to fill with Ontarians looking work. Mr. Despault got more than 65 applications through the program, and he interviewed every single candidate, hiring about 15 staff for the store opening in November.

Before opening his doors for business (a date that was pushed back three times because of construction delays), Mr. Despault had to train all the new hires. "We took five hours a day every day of the week to train staff," he says. "We went through all the motions of being a customer, everything from beginning to end. And we made a lot of pizzas."

On November 13, 2006, Mr. Despault opened the doors to his very own pizza shop. "We got crushed," he says. "We did double the sales we expected to do. Our lobby has a capacity for 35, but we had about 150 in there every day," he says. In addition to the staff and himself, Mr. Despault had four extra sets of helping hands from Pizza Pizza HQ.

An exterior shot of J-P Despault's Bancroft, Ont. Pizza Pizza franchise

His relationship with Pizza Pizza continues to go strong, with people from the corporate office stopping by a couple times a week. They're there to take a peek at everything from missing name tags to burnt out light bulbs to pizzas in the display case on the verge of expiry. But they're not just around to point out the slip ups. "Pizza Pizza is kind of like a parent in the whole thing," says Mr. Despault. "In the beginning they're there to guide us through the day to day operations and then they'll start looking at the bigger picture -- getting school orders, working on marketing and increasing sales." The company takes care of both local and national advertising for a fee of six per cent of revenues. They also develop new recipes -- but for that Pizza Pizza gets a hand from its franchisees. Any time a franchisee thinks they have the next winning combination of ingredients, they let Pizza Pizza's head chef know, who then tests the recipe. New menu items are rolled out in stores about once a quarter.

Aside from the guidance Mr. Despault gets from Pizza Pizza, he credits his store's success with the familiarity their brand offers. "J-P's pizza shop would never have survived," he says. "We get a lot of tourists in this town and they know the product name and what's behind it," he says. "They don't know the mom and pop's diner down the street, but they do know Pizza Pizza." (The chain, which has been around since 1967, now has 501 locations across Canada).

Mr. Despault's customers aren't the only ones who've got loyalty for the brand. "I truly think the Pizza Pizza product is a superior product by far," he says. And that hankering for pizza that dates back to Mr. Despault's university days lives on: "I still make my own pizza for lunch every day," he says.

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