Incredible Pizza plans six stores in '06

The family-friendly entertainment center, operating under the label America’s Incredible Pizza, has plans to open six stores this year. There are five stores in operation.

While the company’s headquarters have officially moved to Tulsa, Incredible Pizza owner and founder Rick Barsness still lives in southwest Missouri and recently opened a new private Springfield office.

A company office also is in Springfield, at 2772 S. Campbell Ave., about a block north of the original Incredible Pizza.

Barsness said four of the six new stores – in St. Louis, Memphis, Tenn., and Champions and Euless, Texas – are owned by franchisees, while stores under construction in San Antonio and Victoria, Texas are company-owned.

The company will have 62 franchise and company-owned stores stretching from Florida to Arizona, once all the currently proposed locations materialize. Scott Axon, Incredible Pizza’s director of franchise development, said the company plans to continue at its current pace of opening six to 10 stores a year.

Thirty of those new stores will open through a franchise agreement with Houston, Texas-based French Interests Inc. The deal, worth an estimated $130 million, includes plans to open the new stores by 2018. French Interests has opened two stores to date and two more are planned to open this year.

The average Incredible Pizza Co. location costs about $6 million to open. Franchisees cover the startup costs, a $50,000 franchise fee and 5.5 percent of sales in royalties once the store is open, according to Axon.

The stores do require quite a bit of space – up to 90,000 square feet – but the company says there are many empty grocery stores and big box retailer buildings that work well for conversion. The Springfield location, for example, is a converted Hastings Books Music & Video store, while Tulsa’s location used to be a K-Mart.

Revenues for the Springfield location in 2004 were $4.5 million, down from $5.3 million in 2003, the first full year in operation. Company officials declined to disclose 2005 revenues in Springfield, but Barsness said the company-owned store in Tulsa hit $7.5 million in 2005.

The store in Warr Acres, Okla., just outside of Oklahoma City, was only opened in May, but Barsness said that sales for that store, projected over an entire year, would total $9 million.

Axon said that the company’s current geographic footprint – mostly in the south and southeast – is not planned; groups are lined up to purchase franchises as far north as Indiana and Iowa.

Axon said the feasibility of a franchise location is determined using a set of 27 demographic criteria.

“We use that information and pull it into a proprietary system that we developed,” Axon said. “We’re able to look at our existing sites and compare the benchmarks of those to a prospective territory.”

The next step, Axon added, is a visit by Barsness and other members of America’s Incredible Pizza staff.

Barsness visits each site because of his experience – more than 20 years in the restaurant industry.

Part of that experience came as a franchisee for Mr. Gatti’s Pizza, based in Kerrville, Texas, a company with which Barsness settled a lawsuit in 2003. The $1 million settlement, which claims Barsness used proprietary information gained as a Mr. Gatti’s franchisee to start Incredible Pizza, requires Barsness to make annual payments of 1 percent of net sales through 2013.

Incredible Pizza Co. locations

Springfield

Tulsa, Okla.

Warr Acres, Okla.

Conroe, Texas

Sugar Land, Texas

* St. Louis

* San Antonio

* Memphis, Tenn.

* Champions, Texas

* Euless, Texas

* Victoria, Texas

* Scheduled to open in 2006[[In-content Ad]]