Has Fast Casual Been Perfected?

Pie Five: Fast Casual Piefection

     "You have got to try Pie Five" said Kelina, "What is that?" I said with a grumpy attitude after a long day of work. With an enthusiastic attitude she said "It's this new pizza place over by Panera that you can get a customized personal pizza in five minutes!", I fired back with "you would love that place". Cue a death stare from Kelina. The next day she dragged me to Pie Five to try out this new "phenomenon", I was admittedly quite skeptic. I had no idea what I was getting myself into...

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     Yes that is some pizza from Pie Five, and yes it was done in 5 minutes, it is quite shocking how fast you can get pizza here, good pizza at that! But before we go any further you can get that pizza for $6.99, yes, for under $8 tax included you can get gourmet pizza. But wait...with literally any number of toppings you want (we'll get into how they make money later). To back track a bit here is what they offer: 4 types of crust including gluten free for an extra charge, 4 cheeses, 7 sauces, 8 meats including meat balls and giant pepperoni slices, and 16 different types of veggies roma tomatoes, 3 different olives, red & green peppers, mushrooms, red onions, marinated artichoke hearts, and sun dried tomatoes to name a few. Besides the 10 different types of house pizzas you can order a personal pizza about a million different ways, which if you got different ingredients every day would last you about 2700 years without repeating a choice...talk about variety! Long story short their pizza is amazing.
     Got it, the product is amazing, what about the rest of the place? Well, I am so glad you asked. If you could perfect a store format for fast casual I think Pie Five has found it. An easy line to navigate with menus you can take with you down the line to order ingredients. A few feet away after a quick check out is a "freestyle" coke machine with over 100 choices. Next you have enough comfortable

seating to have a chat over your pizza, some even have outdoor seating to enjoy your pie under the sky. But don't stress there are outlets near most of the seating so you can charge your phone while you eat. But What if you forgot your wall charger? Well they have USB outlets too, yeah USB outlets. Did you try too many coke flavors or get greasy hands from the pizza? Oh no worries, there is a state of the art bathroom. In reality the toilet is just a toilet, but the sink, my god! Auto water, auto soap, and auto super duper jet dryer that blows the excess water off your hands and down into the sink. The restaurant is an attempt to target a younger crowd; attempts at consciously sourcing food, witty decorations recyclable pizza boxes, no paper towels in the bathroom, USB outlets, freestyle coke

machines, oh, well, and delicious pizza. To top it all off they have a rewards program that gives you a free pizza every 20 points with 10 points to start and 2 points per every regular priced pizza or salad that you buy.
     Immediately upon ending my meal with Kelina I enthusiastically said "Damn that was good" followed up by a calm and serious "I need to find out if they are public". Long story short Pie Five is not a public company, they are however wholly owned by RAVE Restaurant Group that also operates the Pizza Inn brand which is a chain that franchises over 300 stores worldwide. Rave also franchises 55 Pie Fives in the U.S. in 15 states and Washington D.C. the first one opening in 2011 in Fort Worth, Texas. Now would it be a good investment? No, at least not right now. First they are extremely small, with a market cap of about $120 million they are a micro cap. They also don't seem to be growing that much since the inception of Pie Five. Revenue is down $1 million and Net Income is down $2.93 million (215%) since the Pie Five debut. Their assets, specifically property/plant/equipment, are growing but with a franchise business I can't give you an  honest assessment of why that is. Lastly I have serious reservations about how their franchisees' make money, with premium ingredients and only a price of $6.99 their business model can't be anything other than getting as many people through the line as possible. After all their main selling point is a good pizza in less than five minutes. While RAVE has been public since 1994 their flagship product "Pie Five" is quite young and small as they only have 55 stores since 2011. I would seriously keep an eye on this company and their Pie Five product. This restaurant has the potential to have Chipotle like success. Oh yeah and they have dessert pizzas! But don't take my word for it, do your own research and get a pizza!