Shopping Centers Today

MAR 2015

Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)

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By Steve Bergsman Some fast-food sectors have grown faster than others in the five-year recov- ery from the recession. The fastest has been the hamburger sector, through such rapidly expanding chains as Five Guys, Shake Shack and Smashburger. Not far behind are burritos (think Chi- potle) and sandwiches (Potbelly). Now pizza will get its turn. The pizza category has lagged thus far, but that is about to change by vir- tue of Blaze: a fast-casual pizza concept created by entrepreneur Rick Wetzel, who also introduced the Wetzel's Pret- zels chain. The first two Blaze restau- rants opened in 2012 in the California cities of Pasadena and Irvine. "Those first two stores were off-the-charts suc- cessful," said Wetzel. "In our franchise documents, we published our sales at $35,308 a week for those two stores, and that translates into $1.8 million annual sales. You compare that to the average Panda Express or Five Guys, which does annual sales of $1.1 million, and those numbers showed us the po- tential for these shops was very high." Apparently, other companies see the potential as well. The competition now includes Pizzeria Locale, backed by Chipotle, and PizzaRev, which ingested investment dollars from Buffalo Wild Wings. Those do look good, but none- theless it is Wetzel's Blaze that is blazing the trail. As of last July the company had already opened 25 shops and was look- ing at opening an additional 35 by the end of 2014. "We are opening stores at the rate of one every six days," said Wetzel. And Blaze is not sticking merely to its Cali- fornia home base, but has also opened eateries throughout the Midwest. Shops are being rolled out on New York's Long Island and also in Florida. "We are gearing up to do 75 store openings in 2015 and then will keep openings at 75 to 100 stores a year," Wetzel said. Such speed in openings usually in- dicates that the business is franchise- r e t a i l i n g t o d a y Blaze pizza grows the better-burger way 28 S C t / M a r c h 2 0 1 5

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