When Oath Pizza opened in a tiny, 600-square foot shop in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 2015, its name derives from its founder’s oath to serve the community and provide “feel good pizza.” Since then, it has expanded in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions with 29 locations.
It’s growing mostly by franchising. Of its 29 outposts, 21 are franchised and 8 are company-owned. It has raised $16 million in venture capital funding for its expansion orchestrated by Boston-based VC firm Breakaway Ventures.
But its CEO Drew Kellogg says that expanding by franchising and adding company-owned stores serves as an “efficient business model. We can control the corporate environment and not have to fly all over the country.” Oath Pizza operates with a smaller footprint than most pizza chains in terms of store size, requiring fewer employees, making it nimbler.
Hence its business model depends on one to four employees, and keeps its ingredients streamlined, which also reduces its supply chain. It can hire more for “hospitality,” he says.
Oath Pizza, which is headquartered in Boston, was started by Doug Ferriman, who was known as a pizza connoisseur. “Pizza was his passion,” explains Oath Pizza CMO Stacie Colburn Hayes. But Ferriman sold its rights and moved on to other opportunities.
Oath Pizza is expanding with a marketing message that emphasizes fresh, tasty ingredients, and a business model that combines franchising with company-owned outlets.
Kellogg and Hayes, former executives at Chipotle who joined Oath Pizza in 2018, also underscore that Oath serves “better-for-you pizza.” It customizes its pizza, offers vegan and gluten-free options, but is it healthy?
Kellogg describes its competitive edge as “making it easy to eat better without giving up the foods you love.” He said its crust is “hand-stretched, grilled in avocado oil and topped with real, high-quality ingredients, and house-made sauces.” He describes the crust as “thin and isn’t based on quick-rising yeast. You don’t feel heavy when you eat it.”
Hayes notes that Oath Pizza avoids the “greasy, cheesy, comfort food pizza that you get in New York City or on college campuses.” Oath Pizza has “reimagined” the pizza to rely on “customized, fresh toppings,” she states.
She adds that it’s not claiming the pizza is “healthy. We’re providing toppings that aren’t processed and have high quality ingredients.”
For example, she says it uses “unbromated flour, a high-protein baking flour that doesn’t contain potassium bromate, which helps its elasticity, but is widely considered to be unhealthy.”
But Walter Willett, a professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who reviewed Oath Pizza’s ingredients but hasn’t tasted it, isn’t convinced. Willett noted that the unbromated flour “sounds like a marketing distraction as there is no evidence that unbromated refined starch is better than typical refined starch.”
Willett says a more nutritious pizza is doable. “A reasonably healthy pizza is possible if the crust is primarily whole grains, salt is low and the toppings are mainly vegetables,” he says. But Willett cited that “As this description is silent on these issues, I would assume this product is not good for anyone until shown otherwise.”
Ironically, when John Schnatter founded Papa John’s in 1984, now the country’s third largest pizza chain with over 5,500 outlets, he used the tag line, “Better ingredients. Better pizza,” not too dissimilar from the pitch at Oath Pizza.
Nonetheless, Oath Pizza’s franchising efforts have taken off. In 2018, Oath Pizza started its franchising efforts and quickly nabbed two powerhouses: Aramark, the Fortune 500 food services company, followed by Covellli Enterprises, the largest Panera franchisee.
Many of its shops are in the greater Boston environs, but it has stretched to New York City, Philadelphia, Northern Virginia, Ohio and onto college campuses including Arizona State, James Madison University and University of South Carolina.
Besides pizza, it sells salads, bread sticks, dessert and offers a children’s menu.
Once the pandemic hit, Oath Pizza tapped Goldbelly, the national online restaurant delivery service, to boost sales. Hayes says that Goldbelly “had been a terrific platform to extend the reach across the country.” It can ship overnight anywhere for an extra fee, or two days via UPS and the pizza must be heated in an oven.
Oath also offers the array of third-party deliverers, which Hayes says attracts new clients, in addition to their loyal ones.
Asked why they would urge a customer to choose Oath Pizza if a Papa John’s or Domino’s Pizza were all on the same corner, Kellogg replies that Papa John’s has been around for 40 years “and they’re tired. They do an excellent job of what they do. Domino’s Pizza has become a technology company. Try us: we’re new and different.”
Their experience at Chipotle taught them about “respect for high-quality food, food integrity, and exceptional customer service,” Kellogg asserts.
Two years from today, Oath Pizza intends to extend the pipeline of locations and also start selling its products via consumer packages goods in supermarkets.
Kellogg describes the three keys to its success as: 1) Maintaining the quality of its pizza because customers are asking for more control of what they’re choosing to eat, 2) Sustaining its rock-star team of employees, 3) Having survived the pandemic has made their will to succeed only stronger.