DRIVEN TO SUCCEED
Budding real estate developer has come a long way since his pizza delivery days
John Eno could hardly believe it when his boss at Domino’s Pizza told him there was a way he could become part of the fast-growing restaurant franchise – as an owner.
He was barely 20 years old, and he’d been a delivery driver for the Domino’s on Main Street for just a few months.
“I was working night and day and they asked me if I wanted to manage the store,” recalls Eno. “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’” They sat me down and said, ‘If you run the store for a year and a half, two years, and you do really well, you’ll be able to get your own store somewhere.’”
The offer was genuine, but Eno had no idea how hard he’d end up working to cash in on it. Today, he owns not one, but three Domino’s Pizza restaurants, including one in Depot Square, on the ground floor of the Longley Building.
Now pizza is poised to deliver Eno past his usual comfort zone as the 54-year-old Domino’s franchisee morphs from restaurant operator to real estate developer.
“I was working night and day and they asked me if I wanted to manage the store. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ They sat me down and said, ‘If you run the store for a year and a half, two years, and you do really well, you’ll be able to get your own store somewhere.”
—John Eno, who has more than delivered on that promise to be a Domino’s Pizza franchisee
By the end of the year, he says, he’ll put the finishing touches on a new 4,300-square-foot building on Social Street that represents an investment of more than $1 million. The store will be big enough to replace the downtown Domino’s with a new, modern restaurant that’s nearly twice the size, and space
left over to lease about 1,500 square feet to another tenant.
“This is a first for me,” says Eno. “The debt’s a little scary, but I think this store’s going to do really well. This is a great town to sell pizza in.”
On a tour of the construction site with Mayor Lisa Baldeli-Hunt recently, the mayor was clearly pleased by Eno’s commitment to the city.
“He was looking for a location that was central for quite a while – he could have gone in another direction,” the mayor said. “I think it’s a testament to his confidence in the city and confidence in the direction the city is going that he would invest north of $1 million.”
While the venture may be a first for Eno, it won’t be his last. Next spring, he intends to break ground on a new pizza shop on Mendon Road in Cumberland to replace an existing Domino’s he’s operated there for some time. He also owns a third Domino’s on Chalkstone Avenue in Providence.
While Domino’s has helped him turn pizza into a career, Eno says his story isn’t all that unusual for the sprawling franchise, which was launched in Michigan in 1960. For many years, Domino’s was a privately held company, but Boston-based Bain Capital gained control of most if it, for $1 billion, in 1998. Now a publicly traded company that’s listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Domino’s represents more than 15,000
restaurants around the world.
A few years before he took possession of his first store, at age 23, Domino’s was opening new shops at a breakneck clip, sometimes at the rate of two or three per week in different parts of the country.
“There were kids who were 20 years old who had five or six stores,” says Eno. “Everyone I know now who owns stores used to be a driver.”
After accepting the job as a store manager, Eno says he worked 80-100 hours a week and learned every aspect of the franchise pizza business.
The first store he owned was one on Broad Street in Cumberland, which he later moved to Mendon Road, its current location. Eno says he bought the business from the prior owner, but he never paid a franchise fee to Domino’s – and never will, even if he opens a new store from scratch.
“Ill never have to pay a franchise fee, because, the way they did it back then, I’m grandfathered in,” said Eno. “They work you to death, then they give you a store. Then you run with it.”
“You worked a lot, but the payoff is great,” he adds.
Eno says there’s nothing he doesn’t know how to do in a Domino’s – and he learned it all back in the 1980s when he was in manager training. That’s part of the company’s business model.
“They don’t have to maintain it because you already know everything,” he says. “I know how to mop the floors. I know how to make pizzas and I know how to do the paper
work.”
Eno says Homeland Building of Fall River is the contractor in charge of erecting the new building on Social Street. The project is about halfway finished, with contractors nearly done enclosing the steel-frame exteriors.
When it’s done, Eno said, the restaurant will have enough room for about a dozen tables, giving the new Domino’s more of a sit-down feel than the Main Street restaurant. It will also have a drive-though window.
Eno says he still hasn’t de
cided what he will do with the landmark Longley Building after he relocates Domino’s – the only business in the ornate building. Built in 1900 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Longley was a robust beehive of professional offices for many years, but Eno says the building is now sorely in need of an upgrade.
Eno says he might do the work himself or sell the Longley to someone else who can do the job.