Speaker 1: Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. Don your togas and
Speaker 1: prepared to get crazy crazy, because this week we are
Speaker 1: talking about Little Caesar's. This family owned company really found
Speaker 1: their niche with a baked in focus on bang for
Speaker 1: your buck. But in the nineties and early two thousand's
Speaker 1: things weren't looking so hot and ready for them, and
Speaker 1: they had to carry out new tactics to gain back
Speaker 1: their piece of the pie. Find out how on Little
Speaker 1: Caesar's on Business on the Brink. Hey everybody, I'm Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and I'm Ariel Casting, and welcome to our Happy
Speaker 1: Pizza episode. I'm sure we'll have others. Yeah, I'm sad
Speaker 1: that we did not think ahead to actually get pizza
Speaker 1: because I am now craving pizza me too, and some
Speaker 1: crazy bread because I like myself some nice, cheap Little Caesar's.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So this this came to us from Tony.
Speaker 1: He asked it we cover Little Caesar's, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Little Caesar's has a very quaint origin story. Quaint indeed,
Speaker 1: because Little caesar started out as Little Caesar's Pizza treat.
Speaker 1: It's adorable and it was founded in Garden City, Michigan,
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen fifty nine. Yes, and the founders
Speaker 1: of this restaurant, we're putting a pretty big risk here.
Speaker 1: I mean that this was like a big all in
Speaker 1: at the time. And you had Mike or Michael Ilitch.
Speaker 1: And he had previously been a professional as a ball player,
Speaker 1: baseball baseball player. I know you're a geek and not
Speaker 1: much of a sports buff, but elementary school education alright,
Speaker 1: Sorry sorry, I was more of a t ball so. Yes,
Speaker 1: he actually played for the Detroit Tigers and he would
Speaker 1: later uh spoiler alert team, yes, as well as a
Speaker 1: hockey team. But he his baseball career ended early because
Speaker 1: he had a knee injury and it took him out
Speaker 1: that we see that a lot with professional sports players. Sure,
Speaker 1: and rather than just sit back and and and you know,
Speaker 1: grouse about things, he thought, you know what we should
Speaker 1: we should open up a restaurant. Miama, my honey, bunny
Speaker 1: of a wife. Yes, I actually love how. The official
Speaker 1: company history of Little Caesar on their website states how
Speaker 1: the how the store got started. Yeah, so they say,
Speaker 1: quote the global chain that Little Caesar's is today began
Speaker 1: with a blind date between Mike Ilitch and Mary and
Speaker 1: Bayoff that was arranged by Mike's father in n Within
Speaker 1: just a matter of months, the couple was married. That's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. It's adorable. Yeah. So they put in everything
Speaker 1: they had, which was around about at ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: into opening up this first restaurant, So if it had failed,
Speaker 1: it would have been pretty disastrous for the couple. So
Speaker 1: fortunately our story does not open an end right here. No,
Speaker 1: that would be a sad episode for you guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also you don't wonder how the heck did you
Speaker 1: even learn about this place to to cover it now? Instead, Uh,
Speaker 1: they opened up a restaurant which served pizza, but not
Speaker 1: just pizza. They served other stuff too, yes, like chicken,
Speaker 1: shrimp and fish. Yes, and pasta at some point, and
Speaker 1: they boasted fifteen minutes service. Yes. This was something that
Speaker 1: they built their brand on very early on. It was
Speaker 1: known as being fast and affordable. Yes, and there it
Speaker 1: was successful. The first week they sold two d and
Speaker 1: nine pizzas, So it was pretty successful pretty early on,
Speaker 1: and it didn't take very long, just a couple of
Speaker 1: years before they had an opportunity to open another location.
Speaker 1: And this meant that they had some decisions to make, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because when we when we're looking at companies that want
Speaker 1: to expand, they can either put in the capital to
Speaker 1: open a second store or multiple stores out of their
Speaker 1: own money, or they can franchise exactly. Yeah, there's usually
Speaker 1: like one of three options. You open up a brand
Speaker 1: new location, you choose to franchise a location, or you
Speaker 1: purchase someone else's store and you turn it into yours.
Speaker 1: So in this case, they went with the franchise, which
Speaker 1: made incredible business sense, right. And this particular franchise opened
Speaker 1: in Warren, Michigan, and they also saw success through their
Speaker 1: their their franchise owner was also being successful following the
Speaker 1: same philosophy as the flagship store. Yes, and by nine
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people got on board. They had
Speaker 1: fifty restaurants. Yeah, so this was a pretty quick growing trend.
Speaker 1: They even expanded into Canada. So they had some people
Speaker 1: throwing down their hard earned loonies for pizza. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would throw down some hard earned loonies for pizza if
Speaker 1: I earned loonies. Yes, we we were the buccaroos over
Speaker 1: here though. So then they decided that they wanted to
Speaker 1: have a better control over their supply chain and better
Speaker 1: control over the quality of the stuff that they were
Speaker 1: putting on their pizzas, which seems like a really good
Speaker 1: business decision, and it might have been for a while.
Speaker 1: We'll cover later how it has caused some issues going forward.
Speaker 1: But the way they did that was they bought a
Speaker 1: mushroom farm. Yes, so, uh, mushroom, mushroom, mushroom, mushroom pizza,
Speaker 1: pizza badgers, it's a snake exactly. Eventually that mushroom farm
Speaker 1: grew into Little Caesar's full service distribution company called Blue Line,
Speaker 1: called Blue Line, and it did help them manage costs
Speaker 1: for the campaign Little Caesar's was about to put in place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it also meant that over time Blue Line would end
Speaker 1: up carrying a much wider variety of of stuff than
Speaker 1: just mushrooms, but that that ends up being part of
Speaker 1: our story later on anything more than mushrooms. I mean,
Speaker 1: if someone likes, I don't know, pepperoni on their pizza,
Speaker 1: it has been known to happen. I suppose you're right. Well,
Speaker 1: this is also right around the time where they made
Speaker 1: a decision that would also be associated with Little Caesar's
Speaker 1: moving forward, which was that they were switching strictly to
Speaker 1: a carry out pizza model. So you come in, you
Speaker 1: pick up your pizza, and you go. There's no delivery,
Speaker 1: there's no dine in. This has a few big advantages
Speaker 1: from a business standpoint. You know, your your operating costs
Speaker 1: are much lower, and Little Caesar's were typically the opening
Speaker 1: up in areas that were known for having lower income households.
Speaker 1: So by keeping those costs low, they could keep the
Speaker 1: price of the pizza low and thus be able to
Speaker 1: serve their communities. Plus not offering a place for people
Speaker 1: to sit and eat that they could have smaller footprints,
Speaker 1: so smaller stores, no weight staff, they had to pay
Speaker 1: smaller kitchens exactly. So and again that for once, the
Speaker 1: whole passing those savings onto you was really legit because
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys are ever familiar with
Speaker 1: eating at Little Caesar's, but it did not set you
Speaker 1: back very far, about like five or seven dollars, Yeah,
Speaker 1: depending on what you wanted. Yeah. In nine this is
Speaker 1: very important, we got the pizza pizza catchphrase. Yes, so
Speaker 1: I was already a small child at that point, and
Speaker 1: that is why I will forever associate Little Caesars with
Speaker 1: pizza pizza. They get rid of that catch phrase later
Speaker 1: and then bring it back and we'll get into that now.
Speaker 1: This catch phrase put into place to promote their their
Speaker 1: new deal, I suppose, which was getting two pizzas for
Speaker 1: the price of one. Yes, and so you would you
Speaker 1: would get pizza pizza. You would pay the price for
Speaker 1: one pizza. You get twice as much pizza as you
Speaker 1: were expecting, which meant that you would get a pizza
Speaker 1: box so unwieldy that no one could fit it in
Speaker 1: their car. And everyone hated it. I mean, they didn't
Speaker 1: hate the two pizzas, that just hated the box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that actually is true. The boxes that they had
Speaker 1: to hold these pizzas were quickly a reviled item and
Speaker 1: eventually phased out. But the campaign was successful. It brought
Speaker 1: in tons of sales, and by the end of the
Speaker 1: seventies they had over two restaurants. Yes, and it was
Speaker 1: sort of the iconic ad campaign. You think of certain
Speaker 1: restaurant chains and certain ad campaigns just jumped to mind,
Speaker 1: like with for me, Wendy's is always going to be
Speaker 1: where's the beef? Like that just became one of those
Speaker 1: things in the eighties that you heard all the time
Speaker 1: and with the Kings your away. Yeah. Uh, Little Caesar's
Speaker 1: is pizza pizza, and McDonald's is Ronald will come for
Speaker 1: you in the night. I need my mommy, Okay. So
Speaker 1: by four Little Caesar's had expanded to four hundred locations,
Speaker 1: and just two years later that number had doubled up
Speaker 1: to eight hundred locations, callie, and they were hitting three
Speaker 1: hundred and forty million dollars in sales. Yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: by seven they had infected virus like all fifty states.
Speaker 1: We're looking at you too, Hawaii, more like penicillin like,
Speaker 1: well that also means Alaska. Yeah, yeah, they got all
Speaker 1: the way up. Well, they had already started going through Canada.
Speaker 1: It's it's getting through the Pacific that impresses me so
Speaker 1: darn much. Fair enough, And they started to also make
Speaker 1: a partnership with Kmart so that Little Caesar's could have
Speaker 1: an actual location within Kmart stores, similar to how you'd
Speaker 1: see a Subway or a McDonald's in Walmart, or like
Speaker 1: or often you'll see like Starbucks in a lot of
Speaker 1: different stores as well, and such. In the illages bought
Speaker 1: the Fox Theater in Detroit, not to be confused with
Speaker 1: the Fox Theater in Atlanta, No, but but equally opulent.
Speaker 1: The Detroit one is pretty impressive, it is. And they
Speaker 1: also bought office space right nearby and they renovated it
Speaker 1: into the Little Caesar's World headquarters. Yes, they also continued
Speaker 1: to maintain their original operating location back in in uh In, Michigan,
Speaker 1: so that would remain open for quite some time. But well, well,
Speaker 1: well when we get there will In the meantime, back
Speaker 1: in they added square pan pizzas to the menu, Pan
Speaker 1: pan Pan Pan pizza pizza. They would say, pan pan
Speaker 1: and the commercials I remember when they came out, yeah,
Speaker 1: and again the two for a price of one deal,
Speaker 1: thus the pan pan. And they also started advertising on
Speaker 1: the television, Yes, on the television the way the humans say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wrote it as Telly, right, so then you said
Speaker 1: the television, but I am not British. So they were
Speaker 1: also spending about five of their revenue on marketing at
Speaker 1: this point, and things were going great, right, so like
Speaker 1: there was nowhere else to go but up. They had,
Speaker 1: you know, just started to hit their stratospheric climb and
Speaker 1: then there was nothing. Nothing was gonna stop them now, right,
Speaker 1: Well stop them, no delay them. Yes, well, we'll figure
Speaker 1: out more about what Aerials alluding to in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break, all right. So
Speaker 1: in they reached two billion dollars in sales and they
Speaker 1: had four thousand locations or so, but they started experiencing
Speaker 1: losses that their sales dropped right after they hit their
Speaker 1: high in and continued to do so for the next
Speaker 1: eight years. And uh. Part of the research the aerial
Speaker 1: did when she was looking into this included a video
Speaker 1: created by Company Man and Company Man ends up suggesting
Speaker 1: three possible causes for this decline. Yes, one is competition,
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of different pizza places that
Speaker 1: were popping up all over the place, plus frozen pizza,
Speaker 1: plus other take home food options like cross the market.
Speaker 1: To a decrease in marketing because as sales dropped, Little
Speaker 1: Caesar's flowed their marketing down, and we'll get a little
Speaker 1: bit more into that. And then three franchise or dissatisfaction.
Speaker 1: And after reading about all this, I mean that it
Speaker 1: seems pretty cut and clear that that is what caused
Speaker 1: their decline. Yeah, so when we're talking about competitors, I
Speaker 1: mean there are a lot of different names that pop up, right,
Speaker 1: There's there's Dominoes, Papa John's, Pizza Hut, California Pizza, Pizza Kitchen,
Speaker 1: California Pizza Kitchen, and which you had both the physical
Speaker 1: locations and the frozen dinner versions. Uh, do jour know
Speaker 1: another one where you could go and then buy it
Speaker 1: at the store. So there were a lot of different
Speaker 1: options for pizza at a variety of different prices and
Speaker 1: availabilities that made things difficult. Then you had other like
Speaker 1: counter service type restaurants where all the foods already prepared
Speaker 1: you just go in and grab whichever ones you want,
Speaker 1: like Boston Market you had mentioned. So that was a
Speaker 1: big issue. I think that the the marketing thing is
Speaker 1: a really big one. To a lot of the the
Speaker 1: criticisms I read around this time said that a big
Speaker 1: issue was that the marketing firm, almost in a in
Speaker 1: a need to justify its own existence, kept playing with
Speaker 1: the marketing message for Little Caesar's, whereas Little Caesars, you know,
Speaker 1: it had such an identifiable marketing message this pizza pizza,
Speaker 1: low cost, super fast pizza. Uh, that some of the
Speaker 1: franchise franchise e owners were saying, why are you messing
Speaker 1: with this, you're confusing our brand identity. Well, I think
Speaker 1: part of it was when Little Caesar saw that their
Speaker 1: sales are declining, and they tried a bunch of things
Speaker 1: prior to really adjusting their marketing, uh like adding spaghetti
Speaker 1: to the menu, or giant giant long pizzas, uh, Pizza
Speaker 1: by the foot, Pizza by the foot. But at a
Speaker 1: certain point Little Caesar said, well, maybe it's our marketing
Speaker 1: because they had always had this, as you said, very
Speaker 1: identifiable but very tongue in cheek sort of campaign model.
Speaker 1: And so they decided to do an agency review. And
Speaker 1: originally their agency, Cliff Freeman and Partners, was going to
Speaker 1: play along, and then they said, you know it, no, no,
Speaker 1: if you want a new agency, we're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: So they got a new agency in and they're the
Speaker 1: ones who tried to focus on the value unless on
Speaker 1: the humor, and so Cliff Freeman might have been playing
Speaker 1: with the marketing message, and certainly with things like the
Speaker 1: the hot and Ready pizzas where you don't order and
Speaker 1: you don't wait for him, you just go in and
Speaker 1: pick up a pizza and spaghetti and things like that
Speaker 1: were hit and miss, But then they completely changed gears
Speaker 1: with a brand new ad company. Yeah, and that was
Speaker 1: where you started seeing franchise owners saying, uh, we're not
Speaker 1: seeing any benefit from this. This is we're we're having
Speaker 1: to spend money to pay into a marketing pool. Essentially,
Speaker 1: there was a percentage that franchise owners had to pay
Speaker 1: to go into this marketing pool, but they weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: getting any value back from the marketing, or at least
Speaker 1: that was their perception. Yeah. I think they had to
Speaker 1: pay four cent of their sales, which is advertising. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're paying four of your revenue, but
Speaker 1: it turns out like what you're getting back, it doesn't
Speaker 1: you don't feel like you're seeing any benefit from that.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're saying, well, that might work in that market
Speaker 1: over there, but it's not working in my market. You
Speaker 1: start to get increasingly frustrated and angry because it feels
Speaker 1: like you're having to pay out money for something that
Speaker 1: is not benefiting. But that wasn't the only problem they had. They,
Speaker 1: like we said, Little Caesars was trying to adopt all
Speaker 1: these different things that were new and to bring people in,
Speaker 1: but they're also trying to take things away to save money.
Speaker 1: So at one point they had franchisers get rid of
Speaker 1: their soda fountains, which to me is crazy because if
Speaker 1: you look at any like any breakdown of how much
Speaker 1: soda costs to the customer versus how much it costs
Speaker 1: to supply, it's like one of the highest profit margin
Speaker 1: things out there. I mean, but if you've got someone
Speaker 1: who's not eating in store, yeah they may not. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't that was necessarily a bad idea, But they
Speaker 1: kept instituting all these changes, and at the franchise ER's expense.
Speaker 1: So they'd have to take out the fountain, they'd have
Speaker 1: to put the fountain back in. They'd have to start
Speaker 1: stalking spaghetti. They'd have to stop stalking spaghetti. They'd have
Speaker 1: to all of these things that they were having to
Speaker 1: do to try to meet Little Caesar's demands to make
Speaker 1: up for what they were losing because their profit margins
Speaker 1: were already pretty slim. Yeah, and you guy have five
Speaker 1: dollar pizza. And this is this is where we see
Speaker 1: the flip side of that franchise model, right, because on
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you're an independent store owner, but
Speaker 1: you're also beholden to the overall company. Uh, you know, approach,
Speaker 1: so you only have limited freedom as as a franchise owner,
Speaker 1: and if you don't have control over those decisions, then
Speaker 1: you are ultimately spending all this money without having a
Speaker 1: say in how that, you know, plays out, and it's
Speaker 1: your business. So it's super frustrating. They didn't even have
Speaker 1: a say in which distributors they used for ingredients, and
Speaker 1: so they couldn't even make up their costs by finding
Speaker 1: some super cheap ingredients. And they didn't even want you.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was affordable, cheap pizza. It was budget pizza,
Speaker 1: but it was also decent quality, right. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: it was you know, you take a bite and you
Speaker 1: get food poisoning type pizza. You didn't want to sell
Speaker 1: dollar cafeteria elementary school cafeteria pizza, right, which I do.
Speaker 1: Like I was about to say, I could really go
Speaker 1: for some cafeteria pizza right now. In it was getting
Speaker 1: so bad that the company essentially had to close four
Speaker 1: hundred stores. So remember when we were talking about how
Speaker 1: it doubled over that that like two year period they
Speaker 1: lost those four hundred, you know, in which if they
Speaker 1: had around four thousand is not the end of the world,
Speaker 1: but it is still really big chunk. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean that still affects a large number of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: six to nine thousand people in fact. So then, uh,
Speaker 1: the family, the Illage family, the founders of Little Caesar's,
Speaker 1: created Illage Holdings, Incorporated in order to better manage the
Speaker 1: family's assets, and Christopher, the son of Mike and Marian,
Speaker 1: became the CEO and Marian was the vice chairwoman. At
Speaker 1: that point, it wasn't enough, though, because by two thousand,
Speaker 1: franchises were so unhappy that two d and fifty of
Speaker 1: them filed a lawsuit against Little Caesar's. And this is
Speaker 1: where they specifically were saying that, uh, that four of
Speaker 1: the sales revenue going into the ad campaigns was objectionable,
Speaker 1: and they also said that they were they felt like
Speaker 1: they were being forced to use uh, low quality or
Speaker 1: subpar ingredients. Yeah. It's hard when you are business partners
Speaker 1: with a company and you don't feel like you can collaborate. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the law suit lasted eighteen months and then Little caesar
Speaker 1: settled for a reported three d and fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: over ten years. And this also resulted in the franchise
Speaker 1: owners having the opportunity to choose a different uh provider
Speaker 1: than Blue Line, the distributor company that we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, the one that essentially was handling all the
Speaker 1: ingredient distribution for these franchise owners, and it also gave
Speaker 1: them a say in the advertising campaigns. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: was the restructuring of the relationship. Which is a very
Speaker 1: polite way of saying, whoop, see daisy, we've done We've
Speaker 1: done messed up. I don't know, I like whipsy daisy,
Speaker 1: we've done messed up A little bit better, I do too,
Speaker 1: But that's not the right corporate legal way of saying that. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the settlement did also include sharing some of Blue Line
Speaker 1: Blue Lines profits with franchisees and for giving some franchise
Speaker 1: e debt. Obviously, they got some of that debt from
Speaker 1: making all the changes that they were forced to make, right,
Speaker 1: So yes, essentially saying, we realized that we've put you
Speaker 1: through hardship with these rapid changes, and so here we're
Speaker 1: going to assume some of that that debt that you've
Speaker 1: accumulated as a result of of trying to agree to
Speaker 1: all those changes. By two thousand and one, they were
Speaker 1: only spending three million dollars on marketing, which you know
Speaker 1: for for that company, was a significant drop. In two
Speaker 1: thousand two, Kmart filed for bankruptcy and so a lot
Speaker 1: of them closed, which meant a lot of Little Caesars closed.
Speaker 1: And then beyond that, Kmart started replacing Little Caesars with
Speaker 1: their own little k cafes. Yeah, so this was another
Speaker 1: big blow to Little Caesar's overall. But while this marked
Speaker 1: kind of a low point, according to you, Ariel, this
Speaker 1: is where Little Caesar's was about to get better better, sorry,
Speaker 1: better better. Okay, we'll talk more about that after the break. Okay, So, Ariel,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that Little Caesar's was poised to get better better.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Well, first, they got rid of
Speaker 1: their new ad agency now the one that was messing
Speaker 1: things up, and getting rid of all the humor. And
Speaker 1: again I don't think focusing on value was a bad idea, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the method of messaging the actual like the fact
Speaker 1: that it lost a law of the personality that had
Speaker 1: set Little Caesar's aside, is probably what a lot of
Speaker 1: people point towards. Yeah, you never you don't have that
Speaker 1: brand recognition anymore. And by two thousand eleven they had
Speaker 1: increased their marketing budget back up to a little over
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars. Now, before we get to two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of stuff we've got to talk
Speaker 1: about in the early two thousand's. Yes, So in two
Speaker 1: thousand two, for example, they introduced a deep dish pizza
Speaker 1: for eight dollars. Deep deep, so deep that the eckos
Speaker 1: so keep they deeped it twice. That's that's okay, I
Speaker 1: take it back, keep it in, keep it in. So
Speaker 1: then we get the hot and Ready pizzas where you
Speaker 1: could get a one topping hot and ready in stuff,
Speaker 1: just a cheese pizza. Um, where again as five dollar
Speaker 1: type thing. And this this is one of those things
Speaker 1: I like. At this point, I was no longer eating
Speaker 1: Little Caesar's had moved on in my life, so I
Speaker 1: never really had the hot and ready type experience where
Speaker 1: you just walk in and I guess they had specific
Speaker 1: ones like these are the pepperoni pizzas, these are the
Speaker 1: cheese pizzas, and you descrab one. Yeah, I mean you can.
Speaker 1: Before you could order your pizza and you can pick
Speaker 1: it up. You could still do that, but now you
Speaker 1: have the option to just I just want a pepperoni
Speaker 1: pizza walk in, it's guaranteed to be there. And you know,
Speaker 1: I say, I've been saying all along five dollar pizzas.
Speaker 1: Their pizzas very in price, but these specific one top
Speaker 1: being Hot and Ready pizzas were five bucks and it
Speaker 1: actually has caused a little bit of consternation more recently,
Speaker 1: but we'll get into that, okay. But now they're back
Speaker 1: to what Little Caesars is known for, affordable value pizza, right,
Speaker 1: And they also decided to simplify. They moved to a
Speaker 1: one size for their classic pizzas, a one size for
Speaker 1: their deep dish pizza, so they didn't offer them in
Speaker 1: different sizes. Now, it was this is why it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you come in, this is the size that that that
Speaker 1: you're going to be dealing with. You're gonna get an
Speaker 1: extra large, whether you like it or not. At one point,
Speaker 1: they actually did increase their pizza size to be four
Speaker 1: inches larger than the standard pizza size, so small would
Speaker 1: be four inches larger than a regular small, their medium
Speaker 1: is four inches larger than a regular medium, so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. All of these positive steps back in
Speaker 1: the right direction meant that between two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: and two thousand and fifteen, they were the fastest growing
Speaker 1: pizza chain in the US based on net number of
Speaker 1: stores added per year, and Detroit gave Mike and Marian
Speaker 1: the key to the city. They did because Mike and
Speaker 1: Marian we have really been focused on helping better Detroit
Speaker 1: where they're based out. There's actually if you ever really
Speaker 1: do a search on the Illage family, there are an
Speaker 1: incredible number of amazing stories of their support of Detroit.
Speaker 1: Uh and a lot of it was stuff that Mike
Speaker 1: Ilitch when he was still alive, that he was very
Speaker 1: quietly doing. He never sought any publicity for it. I'll
Speaker 1: include a little story about that at the end when
Speaker 1: we get our fun facts. But yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: at the point in two thousand nine they were back
Speaker 1: up to one point two billion dollars in sales. Things
Speaker 1: that really turned around and become, you know, again a
Speaker 1: positive direction for the company. Yes, we also got a
Speaker 1: new ad agency, parton f Graff, who brought back the
Speaker 1: pizza Pizza slogan. Yeah, so, thank goodness as a part
Speaker 1: of a national ad kimpaign order has been restored. I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how I could have
Speaker 1: survived if they didn't bring it back, or how little
Speaker 1: see could have. Yeah, So they also ended up creating
Speaker 1: easier ways to become a franchise owner so that it
Speaker 1: could encourage more people to open stores. You know, they
Speaker 1: had faced so many store closings over the recent past.
Speaker 1: Now they were looking at ways to be able to
Speaker 1: grow and to make that as smooth a a process
Speaker 1: as possible, kind of like a career path up to
Speaker 1: franchise e. In two thousand fourteen, they opened a new
Speaker 1: headquarters in Detroit, double the space with the hope of
Speaker 1: bringing six hundred jobs to the area, and in sixteen
Speaker 1: they once again regained their position of third largest pizza
Speaker 1: chain in the world. They had been third largest a
Speaker 1: couple of times in the past, but then had started
Speaker 1: to slip during those rough years. They regained that title
Speaker 1: and by seen they had more than five thousand locations
Speaker 1: in more than eighteen countries. They also opened up the
Speaker 1: Little Caesar's Arena, which I originally imagined as a sort
Speaker 1: of gladiatorial combat arena where pizzas fighted out for a
Speaker 1: supremacy they might. I mean, it is a multi purpose arena,
Speaker 1: so that that could be one of the many purposes.
Speaker 1: It could be seen also is tragically when Mike Ilitch
Speaker 1: passed away and Marian was became the sole owner of
Speaker 1: the company. Yeah, it's really sad. Into that it's something
Speaker 1: else sad. In two thousand eighteen, the original Little Caesar's
Speaker 1: location closed. Yeah. Yeah, uh, there was a whole news item.
Speaker 1: I watched the little news report about it, and the
Speaker 1: reporters were actually standing outside holding boxes and Little Caesar's
Speaker 1: and talking about it. There was another news item about
Speaker 1: Little Caesar's that year. Yeah, this one's this one's a
Speaker 1: little contentious. It is. So there was a franchiser in
Speaker 1: Kansas City. Yeah, guy from Utah who owned a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different shops in Kansas City, I think all
Speaker 1: of the Little Caesar's in Kansas City he owned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to pay He wanted people to pay
Speaker 1: five for their Hot and Ready pizzas. But Little Caesar's
Speaker 1: had launched this five dollar national campaign, national campaign that
Speaker 1: was supposed to be across all Little Caesar's locations, and
Speaker 1: so there was back and forth. They once asked him
Speaker 1: to bring it down to five dollars. He did, He
Speaker 1: went back up to he couldn't make a profit in
Speaker 1: Kansas City at five dollars. Yeah, he said essentially that
Speaker 1: if he was paying, if he was selling these for
Speaker 1: five dollars a pizza, that he was going to be
Speaker 1: operating either at a loss or just you know, flatline.
Speaker 1: And at one point he even started keeping his royalty
Speaker 1: checks that he owed them to make up that money.
Speaker 1: So a whole bunch of battle, his little Caesar's closed
Speaker 1: down all of them, every single little Caesar's in Kansas City,
Speaker 1: which was twenty one locations at that point. So Kansas
Speaker 1: City from that point went without. They were Caesar less.
Speaker 1: I know that's only funny to me. But in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, we got reserve in ready pizzas, Yes, where
Speaker 1: you can actually use an app, right, and you select
Speaker 1: the on a pizza you want, You put it in
Speaker 1: your app, and it's ready to go at the little
Speaker 1: Caesar's location you're heading to, and you get a code.
Speaker 1: You do so they put it in like a little
Speaker 1: like Amazon locker type. Yeah, it's like party part heating heating,
Speaker 1: oven parts safe and you put in your code and
Speaker 1: you get your pizza. I think that this means that
Speaker 1: you can get something more than just a pepperoni pizza
Speaker 1: like you can wear something specific and that since they
Speaker 1: know which box you're going to be going towards, they
Speaker 1: can just load that into their What tells me is
Speaker 1: that if you're very determined and very fast, and you
Speaker 1: can get through a thousand different number of combinations very quickly,
Speaker 1: you can snag someone's pizza. You're it's a five dollar pizza.
Speaker 1: Come on, just get your own. Well, if you're getting
Speaker 1: more than one topping, it's more than five dollars. I'm
Speaker 1: always looking for the perfect heist here. Ariel, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I don't know what to say to that. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can technically get Little Caesar's delivered, not through Little
Speaker 1: Caesar's but some third party services like door Dash whatnot. Sure,
Speaker 1: we'll deliver it to you. It's not something Little Caesar
Speaker 1: seeks out or sets up, but it is available in
Speaker 1: some places. Little Caesar's recently did something I think is
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. What's that They made a bet on the
Speaker 1: n C double A. There was like a number one
Speaker 1: seat in a number fifteen seat, and they bet on
Speaker 1: the underdog. And they said that anyone who had been
Speaker 1: on that team, if that underdog one would get a
Speaker 1: free pizza, and then that they did one. Yes, everybody
Speaker 1: got a whole everybody, a whole bunch of people got
Speaker 1: free lunch. Nice. Nice. Yeah, not a not a bad
Speaker 1: way to drum up some marketing, you know. And and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that while the the free pizzas well the
Speaker 1: free to the the people who made the bets not
Speaker 1: freedom little caesars. They might have taken a little bit
Speaker 1: out of the bottom line, but I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: a marketing cost. And they were spending a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six million dollars in marketing that there's no way
Speaker 1: it was a hundred seventy six million dollars with the pizza. Now.
Speaker 1: So then the ad agency that they had been using
Speaker 1: closed down, Yes, Spartan graph close its doors after ten years.
Speaker 1: And I didn't hear which ad agency got the position
Speaker 1: after them. I don't know if they've selected one. They
Speaker 1: might still be in that selection process. And they have
Speaker 1: recently started to experiment using the impossible meat product, which
Speaker 1: we've seen you know in a lot of other places
Speaker 1: like like Burger King. Yes, but they're they're experimenting with
Speaker 1: a first in impossible foods, impossible meat, which is with
Speaker 1: Impossible sausage. Yeah. And this is because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: sausage is a more popular pizza topping for Little Caesar's
Speaker 1: than say, hamburger, which is what Impossible Foods was originally
Speaker 1: going to give to them, is just I guess, ground
Speaker 1: up impossible burger. Yeah, but now they've made Impossible sausage,
Speaker 1: well at least fifty prototypes that they're testing. Yes, so
Speaker 1: this is not something that you can just go out
Speaker 1: and order at your local Little Caesar's. Mayor it may
Speaker 1: or may not end up in a few test markets.
Speaker 1: Although to be honest, to see how enthusiastically the products
Speaker 1: have been received in other places, I would not be
Speaker 1: surprised to see this kind of take off as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, they really want to. Most of their audience
Speaker 1: is carnivore. Most of Little Caesar's audience consumer bass is carnivorous,
Speaker 1: and so they still want who appealed to those people
Speaker 1: as well. So here's we're in the fun facts section,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to tell you my fun fact because
Speaker 1: it's not in this list from what I can see,
Speaker 1: and it really I think is phenomenal. So, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun facts we can't go through all
Speaker 1: of them, I might post some one Facebook. All right,
Speaker 1: So my gillich um heard that Rosa Parks, the famous
Speaker 1: and civil rights she had been robbed and attacked in
Speaker 1: her Detroit home. And so uh there were local community
Speaker 1: leaders who are looking to try and and help her
Speaker 1: because I mean, she was in her eighties at that point,
Speaker 1: and Mike Ilitch quietly, with no publicity whatsoever, paid her
Speaker 1: rent for the rest of her life. That is amazing. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: then my favorite fun fact, which can't live up to
Speaker 1: that one, but it's still pretty cool, is the fact
Speaker 1: that Little Caesar's has a homeless outreach called Little Caesar's
Speaker 1: Love Kitchen. It's basically a giant pizza truck that gives
Speaker 1: pizza the homeless and also people who are victims of disaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the company has been the recipient of
Speaker 1: many presidential awards for this this particular work. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, before I read your notes on this,
Speaker 1: before I did some research of my own, before I
Speaker 1: looked into all this, I always just associate Little Caesar's
Speaker 1: with cheap pizza. It was just in the same cheat
Speaker 1: pizza and a cute marketing campaign that I remember from
Speaker 1: my childhood, and I don't remember it, like, I never
Speaker 1: ever thought of it as being bad pizza. It never
Speaker 1: occurred thought that never really was how I associated it.
Speaker 1: But I didn't think of it as cheap pizza. I
Speaker 1: never knew about the outreach the company had for its
Speaker 1: community and uh And I think that's a real shame
Speaker 1: because to me, like, that's an incredible story that a
Speaker 1: company that has built itself on uh, marketing value pizza,
Speaker 1: particularly to people who otherwise would find it difficult to
Speaker 1: you know, purchase something like that, and then turning around
Speaker 1: and using some of that money to help those very
Speaker 1: same people. It's a that's a great story. It is.
Speaker 1: It is a bit of a shame that it's not
Speaker 1: more well known. But I also kind of like the
Speaker 1: fact that the i is haven't tutored their own horn
Speaker 1: about it, right They're not. They're clearly not doing it
Speaker 1: to seek publicity. Yeah, they're not doing it as a
Speaker 1: business move to get more business, right So, and in
Speaker 1: that respect, I agree, it's it's you know, a noble undertaking.
Speaker 1: It's just one that like, if I had known about it,
Speaker 1: I probably would have been like, dude, you know, let's
Speaker 1: get little Caesars. I mean, if you want to spend
Speaker 1: a week on a treadmill, you could still get a
Speaker 1: cheese pizza. It's like a month a month on a treadmill.
Speaker 1: Just get a treadmill desk. Well, we we need to
Speaker 1: go and get pizza. So in order for us to
Speaker 1: do that, we have and I'll just eat it in
Speaker 1: front of Jonathan. Yep, I'll just I'll smell it and
Speaker 1: cry so Ariel. If people want to reach out and
Speaker 1: suggest a company that we should cover on Business on
Speaker 1: the Brink, how do they do it? Well, they do
Speaker 1: it by emailing us. And that email is feedback at
Speaker 1: the Brink Podcast dot Show. Yep. And you can visit
Speaker 1: our website that's the Brink Podcast dot Show. You'll find
Speaker 1: an archive ball or our past episodes. You'll find more
Speaker 1: info about your beloved hosts and until next time. I
Speaker 1: have been Jonathan's Strickland and I have been aerial casting.
Speaker 1: Business on the Brink is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.