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Home > Blogs > Taste: Dayton food and restaurants > Archives > 2012 > February > 03 > Entry
Several new pizza restaurants coming to Dayton area as pizza war heats up
Here’s a draft version of a story scheduled to run in Saturday’s Dayton Daily News:
Several brash upstarts are trying to capture a prime Miami Valley slice of the $35.2 billion-a-year national pizza market.
These market infiltrators are poised to open multiple new restaurants in the coming months in every corner of a southwest Ohio market already saturated by well-established Dayton-based chains such as Cassano’s Pizza King and Marion’s Piazza; by the unusually large proportion (11 of 13) of the nation’s biggest national pizza chains that have locations in the Dayton area; and by dozens of independently owned pizza shops that somehow hold their own against an onslaught of competition from national, regional and local chains.
Ohio ranks in the top 10 in pizza restaurants per capita, with about 3,300 stores statewide, according to PMQ Pizza Magazine — and the Miami Valley is certainly doing its part to maintain that ranking. The region is attractive to pizza chains for many reasons: its density of housing, a demographic mix that mirrors the country’s, proximity to major interstates, and a robust proportion of hungry college students. But pizza company officials say they know they have to bring their A-game to the Dayton area because of the fierce level of competition that grows even more intense this Super Bowl weekend, when nearly 6 out of 10 people who order from restaurants for the big game choose pizza, according to the National Restaurant Association.
“Dayton is a very competitive market, but it’s a good market,” said Chuck Winters, franchise owner of two Godfather’s Pizza restaurants that are among the challengers to the Miami Valley’s existing pizza hierarchy. “The competition is so high that you have to excel in every area to succeed. Everything you do has to be outstanding.”
Here’s just a small taste of the latest efforts to capture the palates, allegiances and dollars of the Miami Valley’s pizza enthusiasts:
— Romeo’s Pizza, a Cleveland-based chain, is poised to open its second Dayton-area location later this month, in Kettering, a year after opening its Beavercreek location. A third Romeo’s will likely open in the Englewood area in late 2012, and franchise owners will then look to open two more, in Troy and Piqua, according to Stan Combs, operations manager for Romeo’s Dayton-area stores. The Dayton area, Combs said, “is a tough market — and it’s going to get tougher,” but he sees a bright future for Romeo’s in the region.
— Jet’s Pizza, a Michigan-based chain and the nation’s 13th-largest, is a month or two away from opening its second Dayton-area location, this one in Beavercreek. The new store will boost Jet’s local presence beyond the existing store on Far Hills Avenue in Washington Twp., which opened in 2009. Jet’s officials are already looking for a third location, probably in the Springboro area, to open in 2013, according to Drew Jenkins, Jet’s general manager. “The idea is to expand throughout the entire Dayton area,” Jenkins said.
— Cousin Vinny’s Pizza — a Dayton-based chain that has grown to 11 locations throughout the Miami Valley, with much of that growth in the last three years — plans to open two more locations before the end of this year, one in the Mason area on or near Tylersville Road, and one that would serve the Tipp City-Troy area, according to Rick Allen, co-owner of Cousin Vinny’s. “We know there’s a market here for good pizza,” said Allen, whose stores stay open until 3 a.m. or later to capture the late-night (or early-morning) crowd.
— Godfather’s Pizza, the nation’s 10th largest chain and based in Omaha, Nebraska, operates restaurants in Huber Heights and Centerville. “We’ve been well-received here, so we’re looking the whole area over,” franchise owner Winters said about his expansion plans.
— Dewey’s Pizza, based in Cincinnati, is planning a new restaurant in downtown Centerville to add to its existing Dayton-area location near the University of Dayton, while another Cincinnati-based chain, LaRosa’s, now has five locations in the Dayton area and a dozen total in Dayton and northern Cincinnati.
— Established Dayton-based chains are fighting back against this attempted poaching of the local pizza market: Marion’s Piazza later this month will open its first new location in more than two decades — a 500-seat restaurant in Troy — and will follow later this year with another new location, its ninth overall, in Mason, according to Roger Glass, Marion’s CEO. Meanwhile, Cassano’s Pizza King opened a new Centerville store in November that plans to renovate several of its other 32 stores, using the new Centerville store as a prototype.
— And it’s not just pizza shops that are competing for a slice of the market: Dorothy Lane Market, a three-store grocery chain, built a special oven in the middle of its Washington Twp. store in 2011 for the sole purpose of producing Neopolitan-style pizzas that can cook in as little as 90 seconds. And of course pizzas are available from many other establishments, including several local Italian restaurants, from bars and taverns, and from grocery store and convenience store deli cases.
All are riding a national trend. Pizza sales in the U.S. have been on the rise, increasing 2.2 percent in 2010 to $35.2 billion, the most recent year that sales figures are available, according to PMQ Pizza magazine’s 2011 Pizza Power Report released in September 2011. And that gain came despite 1 percent drop in the total number of pizza restaurants nationwide, to 65,283.
The economic downturn has helped drive up pizza restaurants’ sales, as consumers gravitated toward foods they found familiar, comforting and relatively inexpensive, said Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based food service research and consulting firm. And pizza restaurants have expanded their menu offerings to include chicken wings, sandwiches, salads and desserts, also boosting sales.
Young families pressed for time are cooking less at home than their predecessors did, but they still want to eat their dinners at home, Tristano said. They can’t afford to eat out frequently, making a carryout pizza dinner eaten at home an appealing option, he said.
But what is it about the Miami Valley and southwest Ohio that makes it such an attractive market for pizza restaurants? Tristano said Dayton’s demographics are representative of the country as a whole, making the region a tempting test market of sorts for companies evaluating new products — and for pizza chains gauging the interest in their style of pizza. And it doesn’t hurt that Dayton is a college town, with a core group of consumers in just the right age range for prime pizza appreciation.
Officials at some of the chains that are relatively new to the region also pointed out that the Miami Valley has dozens of neighborhoods with single-family houses packed fairly close together — a plus for pizza chains that focus on delivery. Such housing patterns put more potential customers within a short drive of new pizza restaurants, helping ensure delivery of a pizza that is hot and fresh, and making pizza pickups more convenient.
Tristan Koehler, franchisee for 19 of Domino’s Pizza’s Dayton-area locations, said the Midwest has an unusually high concentration of pizza restaurants, perhaps because many of the chains originated here, including Domino’s, which started in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1960. Koehler said his franchise stores, including one adjacent to the University of Dayton that is open 24 hours, had a strong year in 2011, despite higher costs of dough, cheese and other food products as well as other supplies.
Cassano’s Pizza King — founded in 1953 and a pioneer along with Marion’s in the thin-crust, square-cut pies that have become a signature of sorts for Dayton-bred pizza — isn’t about to change its style to emulate the national chains’ offerings, said Chris Cassano, the company’s president.
“We have nearly 60 years of history and a ton of local customers,” Cassano said. “It’s a Dayton thing. That’s something that we can offer that others can’t: your childhood.” The walls of Cassano’s restaurants celebrate that history with nostalgic photos of decades past. And the chain recently resurrected some of the menu offerings of a separate restaurant concept that his grandfather, Vic Cassano, launched in the 1970s, and started offering London Bobby Fish & Chips at its Kettering store, along with its Trenton store.
Roger Glass, the son of Marion’s Piazza founder Marion Glass, said his restaurants are weathering the spike in competition well: the chain founded in 1965 had record sales in 2011, he said. But his restaurants, with their large dining rooms, cater more to the eat-in crowd and to large parties, and does not have delivery, which is the segment that most of the new pizza chains are seeking.
Despite the intense competition from national, local and regional chains, locally owned independent pizza restaurants are finding ways to survive, and even thrive.
“We’re holding steady,” said John Shearer, owner of Joe’s Pizzeria at Smithville Road and Airway Road, which has been around for a half-century and which now shares the intersection with a Domino’s Pizza shop right across the street. “We have a strong customer base that grew up in this neighborhood, and whenever they’re in the area, they have to stop at Joe’s. And we’re still pulling in new customers all the time.
“As long as you put out the quality, people will come.”
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