April 2017 | Business View Magazine

124 125 Good Stuff Eatery (andWe the Pizza) ny-owned stores. It’s good to have some com- pany-owned stores nearby for training purposes and food trials.” In addition to its hamburger restaurants, the Mendelsohns have recently expanded into the “quick casual” pizza universe with their “We the Pizza” concept. “When we took this restaurant here inWashington, the property next door be- came available and we decided the next best thing to burgers was pizza,” says Harvey.“So we opened up a pizza restaurant next door and it’s doing even better.We never expected these types of numbers; things are going extremely well.” So now, the company is in the process of franchis- ing both Good Stuff Eateries as well as We the Piz- za units.“We’re looking at a lot of places of five or six thousand square feet and we’re putting in one and one–a lot of them are becoming available.Or, if you go into a shopping center and there are too many burger places,we open a We the Pizza.And the converse is true–if there are too many pizza places, you open a burger place. But both of them have a great bottom line and a very good return on the investment.That’s the key.” “If you’ve been to NewYork, you’ve seen a lot of those ‘pizza by the slice’ places,” says Catherine. “They’re usually little holes in the wall.We took it to a different level.We have fourteen pizzas by the slice and all our produce is local.We have a forest mushroom and truffle pizza; we have an artichoke and spinach with béchamel pizza. And fifty percent of what we sell is pepperoni. So, we have that array of pizzas. And we do a terrific business in delivery,” she adds. If you’ve been to New York, you’ve seen a lot of those ‘piz- za by the slice’ places. They’re usually little holes in the wall. We took it to a different level. Catherine Mendelsohn CO-FOunder