Pizza Pro name on more than 500 locations: Cabot franchise company's slice of pizzeria pie keeps getting bigger.

JAMES MILLSAP PILES THE toppings on his pizzas so generously that Pizza Pro Inc.'s corporate offices suggested he cut back. Apparently other Pizza Pro franchisees complained.

But Millsap won't relent.

"I told them this place is mine," he said.

Milsap bought what is now called Antioch Country Store three and a half years ago, and with it came a Pizza Pro franchise. Which is to say, there were a couple of freezers in the back and two 4-foot stainless steel tables located behind the store's counter and to be used as a production line for the pies.

The pizza business hasn't exactly proved a cash cow for Millsap, who about breaks even with the Pizza Pro aspect of his country store, but he said it's a nice addition to his gas station/bait shop/convenience store, which even sells fireworks.

With the nearest town a good five miles down a scenic country road, the planked wood-sided Antioch Country Store might not seem like the ideal location for a pizza joint. But it's exactly the type of place Pizza Pro Inc. of Cabot often locates its franchises.

Non-traditional Pizzeria

Pizza Pro is the brainchild of Scott Stevens, who founded the company in 1985 with one Jacksonville location. Soon after, Stevens expanded his operations in central Arkansas and west central Texas, and in 1992 he began franchising Pizza Pros.

Stevens declined repeated requests for interviews.

The first Pizza Pros were generally located in sparsely populated areas, but as the company grew so too did the size of new locations. The original carryout and delivery operations were joined by full-fledged sit-down restaurants.

There are now more than 500 Pizza Pros--only nine are corporately owned--dotting 20 states. Most are what those in the pizza industry call "non-traditional locations": convenience stores, video stores, hospitals, hotels, bowling alleys, stadiums, office parks, malls and even country stores.

According to Steve Green, publisher of Pizza Marketing Quarterly magazine, the non-traditional location has become an increasingly popular choice for franchisers in the past five years.

"Co-branding has really taken off, and people are figuring out how to make a profit out of a small space," said Green, who slung Domino's pies with Stevens in Mississippi early in their careers. "New pizzerias are becoming smaller."

The coup for Pizza Pro and other companies adding non-traditional locations are the lower costs, as befits their lower sales.

"They're successful in terms of profitability but not like a full pizzeria," Green said. "It's a different economy volume."

For Millsap, the best way to make dough, both the green kind and the edible kind, is through efficiency and simplicity.

It takes just one minute for Millsap to have a pizza ready for the oven. He just grabs the prepared crust from the freezer, where he also keeps all of the ingredients. These are shipped from Springfield, Mo. by Vistar Corp., which is one of five distributors for all Pizza Pros.

Despite the product's frigid origins, Millsap compares the quality of Pizza Pro pies to those of Domino's or Pizza Hut. And the quick preparation proves especially helpful when only one or two workers are manning Millsap's store--selling gas, renting out videos and carding for cigarettes at the same time.

Recipe for Growth

While convenience store locations make up about 280 of the total Pizza Pro locations, Harry Einhorn, Pizza Pro's director of operations, reports steady growth in carry-out and buffet locations as well. Indeed, about 40 Pizza Pros have opened since last July.

Einhorn couldn't say how many were in non-traditional locations but said the growth of different types of stores "has really been pretty even."

Perhaps the biggest draw for potential franchisees are the startup fees: $5,000 to open a buffet, $3,000 for a carry-out location and $2,000 for a convenience store.

"It's much less than what other companies ask for," Einhorn said. Franchising costs for Little Caesar's, Pizza Hut or Domino's range from $50,000 to $150,000.

In the early 1980s, Stevens bought his first pizza franchise, a Domino's in Jonesboro, and he paid more than $50,000, most of which he had to borrow from the bank. It was that experience that gave him the idea for a low-cost franchise operation.

For the rock-bottom franchising fee, Pizza Pro provides its good name and training. Franchisees are required to pay a 5 percent royalty fee on the pizzas they sell.

But they don't have to chip in for advertising, a common continuing cost for franchisees. The company doesn't do very much advertising anyway.

Einhorn said the company tries to maintain a low profile.

"We have grown with the idea that basically the man that walks through the woods quieter gets farther," he said.

It's hard to describe a company with 130 retail outlets in Arkansas as a stealth operator. But the opening of a carry-out location in Carlisle last week only supports Einhorn's assertion that there's even more room for growth in Arkansas.

Green would agree. Pizza Marketing Quarterly reports that in 2003 the state had 1.93 pizza stores per 10,000 Arkansans. That's below than the national average of 2.31 per 10,000 but more saturated than other Southern states, which are typically not as pizza-crazed as the rest of the country, Green said.

"Arkansas is more in the Texas mix" than with the rest of the South, Green said. "I would say that there is more room for growth in Arkansas."

Hands Off

Over the years Pizza Pro has outgrown the likelihood of going public. In 1989 Stevens told Arkansas Business that one of his big goals for Pizza Pro was to have it publicly traded. "It would be surprising if we didn't," he said.

More recently, however, Einhorn said, "We wouldn't have that need." But that's certainly not because Pizza Pro dreads losing control of its operations. As it is, Pizza Pro already gives its franchisers quite a bit of freedom.

No one is going to stop Millsap from putting an obscene amount of toppings on his pizzas. In fact, he wouldn't even let someone from Pizza Pro's corporate offices inspect his operation.

That's because Millsap embraces the laissez faire relationship he has with his franchise's parent company.

"They're real good about not being overbearing," he said.

Just about the only thing Millsap shares with Pizza Pro corporate is a name and profits. Pizza Pro doesn't help its franchise owners advertise and some owners, like Millsap, don't participate in the promotions. He goes overboard with the toppings instead.

"We have a very simple, very good product and we try to keep it simple so that there is not a whole lot that goes wrong," Einhorn said.

Franchisees' pizza sales are monitored at the corporate office. If sales are sagging, Pizza Pro corporate goes in to see what they can do to improve operations. But micromanagement is just not part of Pizza Pro's business plan.

"It's plenty enough to handle the growth that we have that there's not a lot of time for that," Einhorn said.

After all, Pizza Pro Inc. is selling a system and its name. Millsap sells the pizzas.