Getting Personal About Pizza With Erik Frederick, CEO of UNO Restaurants
Erik Frederick is the Chief Executive Officer of UNO Restaurants, LLC. He took over as CEO in April 2020 and is cultivating company growth through an exciting new concept that has seen impressive early results. Erik is a transformational multi-site and e-commerce executive with significant experience in private equity and global public retailers and restaurants. He has a track record of aligning strategy with execution, leading change, and achieving structural savings.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Erik Frederick discusses how he helped UNO Pizzeria start being profitable again after taking over as CEO during the height of the pandemic
The strategy Erik implemented to capitalize on UNO’s strengths during the pandemic
What UNO might have done differently if it had to go through the pandemic again
The current challenges UNO is facing with the growth plan Erik has put into place
The opportunities that pizzerias have during downturns in the economy
How UNO is introducing itself to customers who don’t know the brand
The unique way UNO personalizes its brand for the consumer
Erik shares his excitement for UNO’s virtual restaurant, Detroit Pizza Works
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Every restaurateur will tell you that the pandemic was the most challenging time of their career. Owners and managers had to adapt and strategize to not only how their restaurants could survive but to learn how to thrive and emerge better from the experience. If you’d like to find out how it worked out for one large restaurant company, this episode of From Persona to Personal is for you.
Many things go into running a thriving business, but branding is an essential part of every restaurant’s success, and personalization is an integral part of branding. According to Erik Frederick, CEO of UNO Restaurants, LLC, its culture is how UNO locations make the dining experience memorable for each customer. Erik says the culture at UNO starts with how management treats its frontline servers. His strategy is, “We make her feel like a million bucks, or him feel like a million bucks and love working at UNO…and they're going to take care of that guest.”
In this episode of From Persona to Personal, Roger Hurni welcomes Erik Frederick, CEO of UNO Restaurants, LLC, for a captivating conversation about what UNO Restaurants did to become stronger during the pandemic. Erik explains how UNO personalizes the dining experience for its customers, and how UNO (whose pizzeria has been around since 1943) continues to evolve with new concepts. Erik shares some great examples of how he caters to its customers. Don’t miss this interesting episode!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Episode Transcript
Roger Hurni 0:42
Hello, everyone. I'm Roger Hurni, the host of this show where I get to speak with top leaders in the food and beverage industry. Today's episode is brought to you by off Madison Ave, where we create meaningful moments of brand, trust and influence how people interact and engage with brands. There's a science behind tapping into your audiences desires and motivation. After all, if you're not changing your audience's behaviors, you can't truly unlock a brand's potential, the power, the power. The proven models have the proven models and methods that behavior design is a strategic foundation for your brand success. Today, I'm here with Erik Frederick. Erik is the CEO of Pizzeria Uno, Erik took over as CEO and April of 2020, the ultimate battlefield promotion, I would say Erik is returning the company to growth through an exciting new concept that has seen incredible early results. Erik, thank you so much for being with me today. I really appreciate you being on the show.
Erik Frederick 2:52
Sure, Roger. Thanks for having me. Wow, great, great.
Roger Hurni 2:54
Everything's good where you are?
Erik Frederick 2:57
Oh, it's fantastic. Beautiful day in New England.
Roger Hurni 3:00
I will make this a great conversation for you. Um, here's my first one, you took over a CEO of Pizzeria Uno and 2020. In April, this was a pandemic was hitting. What were you thinking?
Erik Frederick 3:19
Yeah, yeah. No pressure, right. And so, you know, but I'll tell you what, you know, when you look at, you know, what was working, or what I had going for us is, you know, it's sort of like the old saying, of, we're surrounded, it makes it easy to find the enemy. And so, you know, here we were running out of cash, and casual dining has been a tough industry for a long time, as it were, and all that kind of thing. And so, I got the leadership team together and I said, Look, you know, if you're looking for me to have all the answers on day one as to what we're doing or not, and the good news is, I inherited a couple things that I could really use. One, I had an amazing culture, I am a big believer that culture eats strategy for lunch. And I had a culture of people who are just incredibly passionate for the brand, and frankly, had this whatever it takes mentality, the others, we sell pizza, and everyone loves pizza. And in a world of takeout and delivery, we were a natural place to go in the pandemic. And so we really exploited that early on. No doubt, we made some very, very difficult decisions to make sure we'd see it through the storm and everything that goes with that. But we did and we got to the other side. And, you know, by the way, we're losing money going into COVID and we turn the corner to where we're now making money and but you know, Uno’s is a brand that's that's going a long way in So we knew we had to come up with a growth strategy if we're ever going to sort of just kind of decline rather than just kind of hoping things turn around.
Roger Hurni 5:08
So when you say growth strategy, is there, is there anything specific that you did to help you navigate that pandemic condition?
Erik Frederick 5:17
Yeah, sure. So, kind of a step back, if I look at the portfolio of business, you know, technically, our name is Uno Restaurant Holding Company. And that's because we have three going on four distinct business units. So everybody knows we operate restaurants. So we operate 31 restaurants. But we also franchise another 50 restaurants in the United States, as well as some in the Middle East. And although it sounds the same, it's a very different business operation. And then thirdly, we've got a pretty sizable frozen pizza and calzone manufacturing plant. And so so then we sort of took a look at our cards and said, Well, where are we going to grow, and the company restaurants had been declining over the years, expensive to build a new one. And really building one isn't material. So we knew we had to grow in the other areas, while our restaurants threw off cash. And so that really led us to say, how do we grow? Uno foods, you know, our CPG? Company, as well as how do we grow? Our franchise concept and what we're calling almost a fourth leg of the stool.
Roger Hurni 6:28
Yeah, excellent. Excellent. You know, you'd mentioned that you have a military background, and in our conversation prior to the recording of the podcast, from my friends that they’re in the military, there was always well, you have a plan. And then you need to adapt that plan as conditions change on the ground like, moment to moment. You're on the other side of this now. And is there, is there a lesson learned? Or what would you do differently, if you did have to go through all that again?
Erik Frederick 6:59
If you're asking what mistakes I've made, you don't have that much time on your show. So this is, aside from making decisions. It's also my first time being a CEO. So went through all those pain points as well. What I wouldn't do differently, is change my leadership team, I had a great leadership team, and they were incredibly supportive and got me through all of this. And together, you know, we did it, I think, coming out of the gates, we would have, you know, we were very, very focused on we didn't know how long this was going to last we had our Triple P money. But no one knew, no one had any idea, you know, how long this would be and everything like that. And so one of the big things that we probably stayed a little bit in hunkered down mode, when you know, the restaurant started to reopen a little harder in New England, I think people are more cautious than Texas or Florida, going back out to restaurants. But that's where the concentration of our company restaurants were, and probably could have been a little quicker focused on growth and a little less hoarding, and I think we might have been better off for it coming through. But that's what the benefit of 2020 hindsight, knowing that our situation in July lasted all the way till November. You know, that was before the next wave came through, and we had to navigate that storm.
Roger Hurni 8:26
So now that you are on the other side, I'm going to I'm going to flip the coin around on you, and what are the current challenges you're facing in this growth plan that you have?
Erik Frederick 8:38
Sure, so when I look at it, our business and it's not that we're out of COVID, I don't think we're ever going to be out of COVID, but if you thought about Omicron, as sort of being the last wave or whatever, and, and you know, and then always hurts the restaurants in two ways; Number one, people stop going out to eat. And number two, our employees get sick, and we don't run restaurants with sick people or people haven't been out for the requisite number of days. So we're shutting down restaurants and closing early and all that. So it was almost like at the end of February, beginning of March, it just felt like secure from drum. Right. And that's right about the time a little bit, you know, after it that's when inflation really started to come home. Right. That's when Russia invaded Ukraine. It's right about when the Fed started raising interest rates, so automatically, anything that gets transported by oil, those prices go up. Cost of money. Another way of saying interest rates, everything went up and it went up a lot and it went up fast. And if you think about a restaurant customer a lot of our pricing are up 30% the guys who are really relying on chicken, they're up even more than that, which can't raise your menu prices that much and so you get a bit of a squeeze and the double edged sword is not only are we good are we tight on the on the cost, but also you've got the consumer saying, I'm not sure if I can afford to go back out to eat. So what I think a lot of us had hoped would be a lot of pent up demand, which for sure is still out there. But you do definitely see some people tightening belts and all that kind of thing. So it's really one storm into the next for a lot of us.
Roger Hurni 10:24
Yeah. I mean, I, in my experience, I've seen this as an opportunity there in times of recession, there are certain categories, or businesses within categories where there are affordable luxuries, pizza is an affordable luxury, right. So even if there's a recession, there's that opportunity to really leverage that being like, hey, we know you can't go out to this kind of a restaurant, you can't do these other sorts of things. But this is the treat that you can make for your family. And it becomes very, sort of fiscally responsible, and yet, it feels like this great experience, right?
Erik Frederick 11:06
Well, nail on the head. I mean, when we think about how we're going to navigate this storm, really, you know, every business unit has its own sort of, you know, way of approach. I mean, the good news with Uno foods is they're selling in club stores, and they're selling in grocery stores. And, you know, in a world of you go to the freezer, there's good, better best, and we're in the best category. And so if you want to stay in and eat frozen pizza, we've got that, obviously, we've got takeout and delivery, where we do have restaurants, you know, for that, but but one of the things that you've said is people try and talk about a value, you want to go out to eat, but you don't want to spend a lot of money. Pizza is the ultimate inherent value play. I mean, it's I grew up with two brothers, and that's how my dad, you know, we'd sort of take us out to you, Hey, I got a big pizza. And, you know, we were out to eat and everything like that the check was small, because we all eat the pizza and all that. And so really going after that, and frankly, we call a little bit of the trade down, right, where you might go to one of our casual dining competitors, and you can really save a lot of money by you can feed entire family by going to pizza, a pizza place. So we're one of the few sit down pizza places, right? And so, you know, your average check is going to be substantially lower than if you go to, you know, an Applebee's or a Fridays or, you know, an Olive Garden or something like that. And, you know, and then our new concept in terms of franchising, because franchise growth is critical, is we're really targeting hotels that are going through an upgrade or a conversion and converting them to Uno.
Roger Hurni 12:38
I'm reading between the lines here. So please correct me if my assumption is wrong with what you're saying. There's been a massive change in consumer behavior, dining behavior, specifically with how people are integrating with restaurants. And that's not just a dining or takeout experience, but it's, it's accessing the quality of that restaurant and other means. And you mentioned grocery, you know, you mentioned the hotel thing. How, how have those changes affected your business? Is that all pre planned so that you could be wherever the consumer wants to be? Or how have you, how have you navigated that behavior change in customer dining?
Erik Frederick 13:20
Yeah, so I'm a big believer that you play the cards you have, right. And one of the cards that I happen to have is I spent most of my career before coming to UNO in retail, and specifically a lot of years at Staples. And so when I think about technology retails for about 10, in some cases, 15 years ahead of the restaurant industry. So we're talking omni channel of, you know, in store, we're doing pickup in store curbside pickup 2011. Right. And, you know, we had our first app out in 2010. And so really, at the end of the day, people want their pizza, whether they want to pick it up on the way home, have it delivered, which we see a lot of it late night. Come in, you know. So we see all of those. And so really treating the omni channel customer has been a big win for us. And, you know, one thing that has never dropped as we saw, even though we're already doing takeout and delivery, those volumes shot up, and they stayed up, right. And so when I look at like sort of our sales growth, it wanes, you know, drops every time there's a you know, sort of a spike in COVID. But by and large, that's what's coming back. So you know, slowly but surely, and all that kind of thing. But I think takeout and delivery is here to stay. And and the good news for us as a company is because we sell a great frozen pizza we got in a lot of grocery and club stores early on in the pandemic. And you know that maybe we weren't going to be in, you know, would have been harder to get in in the first place.
Roger Hurni 15:06
You just seem so far ahead of a lot of CEOs that I speak with who haven't figured out how to put all those irons in different different sort of categories or entry points. You’re doing that, so my question is, how are you introducing, because you're growing now, are you introducing Uno to new customers that might not have experienced the brand before?
Erik Frederick 15:36
Sure. Well, oddly enough, a lot of people know the brand. I mean, even though we're are operating in restaurants are primarily in New England, we also have original Chicago restaurants in downtown Chicago, as well as some clustered around Disney, and then franchisees up and down the eastern seaboard. We, it's a national brand that a lot of people just know. And so when we get in on the frozen food side, the buyers all know who we are. And oh, by the way, if they don't, we send them one of our frozen pizzas, and they're blown away. And so and then by the way, the presence of our pizza in the grocery store reinforces the brand. And because we don't do a lot of advertising, we just don't have the density, you know, to do it. But it's also a big deal as we do our growth strategy on the franchise side through hotels, because it's a premium brand, that their customers know, and they go there, and then it'll help reinforce the brand throughout the country.
Roger Hurni 16:39
And that's, that's a, that's a great lesson, because a lot of people think that the default advertising, but introducing it can happen operationally, you know, by being in these different outlets and trying these different things. That's a way of introducing that brand. Are you able to personalize that experience at all? I mean, personalization is a really big deal these days. How do you personalize that dining experience? Are you able to do that at all?
Erik Frederick 17:04
Well, so I totally get personalization on technology. And, you know, once you've ordered from us a few times, we have recommendations for you that will pretty much be you know, what you want and all that kind of thing, or what you've ordered in the past. And, and that's just beginning, because we've launched that a year ago so we're still learning behavior and all that but the best way to do personalization in the restaurants is with that frontline server, we make her feel like a million bucks or him feel like a million bucks and love working at UNO, they're going to have that passion I spoke about earlier. And they're going to take care of that guest. And I've got some really interesting personalization stories that have really, you know, just taken off from a complete branding perspective. And so it's been really good.
Roger Hurni 17:56
Can we explore that for a second, because I love branding at the table. I think it's one of the great ways to and I won't mention this other restaurant that I worked in, not in your spaces pizza, but like that was their whole thing is their whole shtick was we're in a brand at the table, like getting you to try new foods and get you try different things. So that that can spur a lot of frequency. I would love to hear one of those what something you're getting feedback from your customers on what are you hearing from your customers about what you're doing? As far as either offering them different ways of accessing your food? Or the experience and how it's changed? Is there something you can share?
Erik Frederick 18:38
Sure, I think, um, that is much about the transaction, right? But I'll give you I'll give you an example of personalization. So we have this, this this girl who is has some learning developments, and she would come into our restaurant and our favorite thing of all things was this amazing chocolate cake that we had, well, sure enough, in all the supply chain interruptions, our supplier calls that we're not going to be able to make that cake for a couple of months. So one of my servers, save some in the freezer just for her. So and then she came then she returned and it and we had a piece of that cake for in fact, we had the new cake too, and she could tell the difference. I couldn't you know, and, and so, but it worked out and we would never do it for this reason. He had no way of knowing that, you know, her mother was a very highly followed blogger. And so, I mean, you know, those are how you just if you do the right thing, sooner or later you tip on you, you bump into a situation that works out really, really well for you. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Ari Emanuel. He's Rahm Emanuel, who used to be the mayor of Chicago’s brother. Entourage was in part based on him. So he recently got married in San Tropez. Well they’re Chicago guys. And legend has it that their parents actually ate at Uno and wrote their initials on our wall back in the day when we did it. And so, so anyways, you know, I'd love to say they wanted deep dish for their wedding, but they didn't what they wanted was what was deep dish for the after party, if you will. So I sent a bunch of people over there and and they made, they made Chicago style deep dish pizza for the rich and famous. And it's just, it's things like that, that it's not about great, here's the brand, but they supercharge our frontline people that you're in a special place. You're in a place that Yeah, and that translates to here's, here's Bill Jones and his wife, Mary, sitting in our table, you know, and treating them you know, like, like their friends like yeah, you know, one of my things is is and I think this probably drives my ops boss nod says, Forget about all those manuals and procedures and step by step people come in. I just want you to assume your friends and family are coming for dinner tonight. How would you want them treated? Start with that. Everything else is going to flow.
Roger Hurni 21:31
I want to recap this, because there's there's something I don't want the listeners to not get out of this. Because what you said is, is genius and people just don't realize that when you talk about an influencer, it's great that you got to make pizza for the rich and famous people lean that way they lean to influencers with a million followers and micro influencers are definitely a thing. Because how many times is that, that girl's mom, or that girl or her friends going to recount that story about what was done. And doing those little things like that, for CEOs out there. They can lead to big, big changes in a positive way. And I think that's genius that you and your team are doing that.
Erik Frederick 22:16
And so but the thing is, you can't do it because of that, if you know it from, you know, from, you know, if you do it from the heart, that's when it's authentic. And that's when it comes out. And it just becomes a virtuous circle.
Roger Hurni 22:29
Yeah, well, as you said earlier, it's it's a cultural thing, right? You either had that culture where those moments happen, because of the culture, not because you tried to manufacture it, right. I have a couple more questions for you. And then I'll let you go. You've been generous with your time. The first thing is, what's on the horizon? Like, it's just not stalking, like, the big announcements you can share that you're not allowed to share anywhere else?
Erik Frederick 22:57
Well, it's a little bit out there. But everybody knows us as Chicago pizza. And we announced the virtual brand called Detroit Pizza Works. It is a square pizza, and a bit of a focaccia crust, but the real magic is that cheese carmelizes is along the edges. And so everybody wants the square piece, adults fight over the square piece more than children fight over the square piece of birthday cake. And so and so we're a little bit worried about selling it in our restaurants, because then we get the Chicago brand and people will you know, and all this, but it's awesome. I mean, we get four eights and five O's on our social media scores. So bring into our restaurants and we're gonna let the chips fall where they made because at the end of the day, I want people to walk out and said, I had awesome pizza. And that means we cannibalize but they had a great pizza, then they'll come back.
Roger Hurni 23:53
I know I, that sounds amazing and I, pizzas like my number one food, sometimes type of chocolate gelato, but I've got to learn not to have these interviews over my lunchtime. So I've got some problems I really need to solve that. Let me ask the last one. This is something I end all the podcast with which I, Where do you get your inspiration?
Erik Frederick 24:19
Sure. So I'll try and keep it brief, right? Number one from my dad, who brought me up with this notion of give more than you take when he used to get really mad at me and my brothers. He'd shake his finger and say you're a bunch of takers. That's how much it was. And so that was a big, big part of it in terms of of a, you know, as a CEO. There's really two CEOs who I really admire one Herb Kelleher who ran Southwest for years and had a blast doing it. There's no reason not to have fun too, especially when you sell pizza. I mean, how seriously can you take yourself selling pizza and then you know, the other is Howard Schultz at Starbucks and his book Onward. When he came back the second time to run Starbucks was a real inspiration for me when I first took over the job. I mean, I read that in the first like two weeks, with everything else going on and one of the interesting things he did is he closed his cafes, and all they did was make coffee, and just get back to basics. And when we started, I had felt like we had drifted from pizza, we definitely sell a lot of other things besides pizza, but at our core, every pizza we sold had to be awesome. And so me and the team and my OBspa sponsored something called The Perfect Pizza program. And it was everything from we need this equipment to make it better, we should change the recipe for this, here's our checklist to make sure it's perfect to G boss. If I had two extra minutes, you know, to get more than standards to get that pizza, we'd have better state we'd have better pizza. And we did those things. And it was really came from those inspirations.
Roger Hurni 26:00
Oh, that's that is that's just fantastic. And that's good learnings, good learnings. Well, we've been talking with Erik Frederick, the CEO of Pizzeria Uno. Eric, where can people learn more about you or Uno?
Erik Frederick 26:16
Well, I mean, we're online so Unos.com is probably the best place to learn and all that. And I'm on LinkedIn and if anybody wants to connect with me, I'm happy to connect.
Roger Hurni 26:32
My personal plug is stop in and get a damn pizza already because they're fantastic.
Erik Frederick 26:40
You know what? Oh, man, I blew it. That would have been the best. Yes, come in and get a pizza.
Roger Hurni 26:46
And so, Erik, well, thank you again for your time today. We really appreciate it.
Erik Frederick 26:51
Oh, thank you, Roger. It's been a pleasure.
