Great Pizza, the Assembly-Line Way
A pizza chain based in the U.S., founded by a former Starbucks executive in 2008, has more than doubled in size over the past year. In 2015, Technomic, an analytics consulting firm, named MOD Pizza the fastest-growing chain in the restaurant business, with its sales increasing by a whopping 220 percent during the year.
MOD prepares and bakes personal pizzas on an assembly line, where customers can pick from dozens of toppings.
Innovation in pizza delivery is in no short supply. These days, customers can order a pizza by talking to an Amazon Echo, texting a pizza emoji, or poking whatever this thing is. But in 2007, restaurant entrepreneur Scott Svenson saw “a shocking lack of innovation” in pizza consumed outside the home. He and his wife, Ally, saw a business opportunity.
At the time, Svenson was working as president of Starbucks’ European division. He and Ally previously started a Seattle coffee company that was acquired by the coffee giant in 1998. Svenson decided to take a risk and leave Starbucks to pursue his entrepreneurial itch.
The couple founded MOD Pizza a year later. Today, the fast-casual chain has 227 locations across the US and the UK and expects to grow by another 60 stores this year. The chain draws inspiration from the fast-casual king Chipotle with its assembly line. Customers can choose from a selection of toppings in front of them.
The menu also features nine “classics,” or signature pizzas, from a classic cheese to the Dillon James, which features mozzarella, asiago, chopped basil, garlic, and sliced tomatoes. Employees, called “the MOD squad,” slice and prep ingredients daily to ensure freshness. The dough, a proprietary recipe, gets pressed in a machine so it’s as thin as a tortilla.
An employee takes an order, sauces and “cheeses” the pie, and sends it down the line. Customers can order all the toppings they want on an 11-inch pizza. Customers with bigger appetites can order a “Mega” pizza, which stacks any two pizza crusts on top of each other; it costs extra.
Then the pizza goes into a gas-fire oven for about 90 seconds. The cook spins the pie with a palette to ensure it cooks evenly and removes it when the crust starts to burn.
A pizza order to-go is transferred to a mini delivery box with a removable lid. It improves the experience of eating out of the box because no cardboard flap is hanging off the customer’s lap.
The Mad Dog is a meat lover’s dream pie topped with mozzarella, pepperoni, mild sausage, and ground beef. The mushrooms taste fresh from the market, while the sausage packs heat.
The Tristan, which features mozzarella, asiago, roasted red peppers, mushrooms, and pesto, is understated and delicious. The crust is rather tough at the center because of its thinness. It resembles matzah more closely than pizza dough. But the cheese is cooked to perfection. Stringy, gooey mozzarella hangs from the sides.
The Crosby, a seasonal pizza topped with mild sausage, roasted asparagus, and a balsamic fig glaze, is a big favorite. It’s sophisticated.
The Caspian is for barbecue-pizza lovers. It has a savory mix of mozzarella, gorgonzola, barbecue chicken, barbecue sauce, and sliced red onions.
Customers keep coming back to MOD – if not for the affordable, crave-worthy pizza, then to support the company’s people-first mission. “Our people are at the core of everything we do,” Svenson said. The company hires people from all walks of life, regardless of their criminal history, experience, or disability.
Svenson sees MOD “as a bridge into” where employees “want to be in life.” It also happens to be a good place to grab a pizza.