If you’ve ever wondered about franchising a restaurant, Giordano’s might be a good option for you. Read on to learn why.

Customer Characteristics

Giordano’s customers are economically upper- and upper-middle-class. That equates to disposable income to purchase pizza and a great potential for a strong business.

Our average table check is $30-$44 per visit.

Half our customers (50 percent) live within five miles of a Giordano’s.

Of our average customers, 61 percent order food from a restaurant once a week or more. That’s a great opportunity right there to be one of the most profitable franchises.

Our target demographics are a wide range of age and economic groups — families, couples and singles of all ages.

Why Customers Choose Giordano’s

From among our competitors, both in the set and among other pizza franchises, why do customers choose Giordano’s?

• 57 percent choose us because they are craving pizza.
• 36 percent choose us because they want an indulgent treat.

Sure, there are many pizza places. But, 80 percent of our customers believe that Giordano’s offers a different experience than other pizza places do.

The words commonly used to describe our brand are “style” (deep dish), “authenticity,” “fresh,” “best,” “amazing,” “delicious,” and “unique.”

Our brand is synonymous with authentic Chicago deep dish pizza.

A Favorite in Home Markets = Formula for Success in New Markets

We’re a favorite in our home markets of Chicago and the suburbs of Chicagoland. We’ve won Chicago magazine’s Reader’s Choice for Best Pizza.

National media outlets like NBC’s “Today Show” have called us the “best pizza in America” and the “Christian Science Monitor” has said we make the best pizza in the Chicago area. The “New York Times” has called our pizza an exemplar of Chicago-style pizza.

For you as a potential franchisee, this translates into a formula for success in your own market. If we’re this popular where we were born and raised, we see our new markets as places just waiting to fill their hungry mouths with good Chicago deep dish stuffed pizza.

We have every evidence that we’re right about that, too. Take our recent openings in the Midwestern cities of Indianapolis and Minneapolis. Super-fans in the former created a Facebook “Bring Giordano’s to Indianapolis” campaign that garnered 1,200 followers. We saw huge spikes in web traffic and social media during the initial weeks of opening.

Media coverage on all fronts, including social media, newspapers and television, was high in both cities.

Our Indianapolis opening generated more than 64.9 million media impressions, including from the “Indianapolis Star,” the “Indiana Business Journal,” “Indianapolis Monthly,” and Indianapolis’s CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox television stations. We received 21,772 Twitter impressions on Opening Day.

Our Minneapolis opening generated more than 59.7 million media impressions, including from the “Minneapolis Sun Times,” the “MSP Business Journal/Pioneer Press,” MSN, Twin Cities Live and the CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox Television stations. Opening Day brought 10,833 impressions to Twitter, and the Facebook opening post reached 19,174 people, with 1,051 likes just on that day alone.

It wasn’t just in media. Lines of standing people started forming around 8 am on Opening Day in both cities and continued for weeks. Customers placed orders days in advance to eat our pizza.

Both locations continue to be among Giordano’s top performers in volume.

In addition to the media outlets above, we’ve been featured on ESPN, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the “Ellen DeGeneres Show,” the NFL Network, and numerous local, radio and print outlets.

We see this excitement and volume as transferrable to our target markets. That’s a great opportunity for you!

The Economic Picture in Selected Markets

When you’re looking to franchise a business, you should always be aware of the region’s economic picture. Restaurant franchises in particular rely on strong disposable income to fuel their business.

Giordano’s target markets are in areas that are economically strong, with job creation and income growth usually above the average. That spells great economic opportunity for franchise owners. An expanding economy translates into many people working and solid incomes — robust disposable income to spend on Giordano’s pizza when it becomes available!

More people working in a family, or able to work longer hours, also translates into a higher probability of stopping to pick up dinner on the way home rather than cooking a meal. In addition, in markets where income is above average, people tend to eat out more frequently.

Here’s a snapshot of economic growth expectations in selected markets.

Los Angeles

Of the 336,000 new jobs added in California during 2014, an impressive 78,700 were added in Los Angeles County. The Los Angeles area’s total economic activity equals $584 billion — larger than the individual countries of Sweden, Norway, Poland, and Belgium. The Los Angeles and Orange County area contributes 36 percent of the state’s total economic output, with 34 percent of its population.

Consumer growth is forecast to rise a strong 2.7 percent in 2016. Job growth in Los Angeles is projected to be robust going forward, at 2.1 percent for 2016. The county continues its steady drop in unemployment rate each year, from the 8.9 percent high registered in 2013 to 6.3 percent estimated for 2016.

The economic growth of Los Angeles is also buttressed by its position on the Pacific Rim. China, whose economic growth outpaces that of most nations across the world, is Los Angeles’s largest trading partner.

Los Angeles is Giordano’s largest target market in terms of population, with 3.9 million people in Los Angeles and 13 million in the metropolitan region.

San Diego

San Diego continues to draw people, with a 1.1 percent rise in population during 2015 and a 1.3 percent increase expected in 2016. People coming are greeted with a robust economic picture for most job sectors. Payroll employment rose 2.7 percent in 2015 and is expected to climb 2.5 percent more in 2016.

Like Los Angeles, San Diego has seen a steady decrease each year in its unemployment rate, from a high of 6.8 percent in 2013 to a low of 4.8 percent projected for 2016.

Currently 1.3 million people reside in San Diego, with 3 million overall in the metropolitan region.

San Francisco

The San Francisco Bay area is a vibrant economic engine. With just 17 percent of the state’s population, it produces 25 percent of the state’s total economic output. San Francisco generates jobs at a breakneck pace as well — at a job growth rate of 3.3 percent, it is second only to San Jose’s Silicon Valley, which comes in at 3.6 percent. Both are beneficiaries of the strength of the technology sector and Silicon Valley.

The job creation is reflected in San Francisco’s low 3.8 percent unemployment rate — considerably below the U.S. average of 5 percent.

Not only is the employment rate high at 96.2 percent, but people in the San Francisco metropolitan area (consisting of nine counties in northern California) make exceptionally high salaries on the average. The median household income in metropolitan San Francisco is $83,222 annually, versus the U.S. median household income of $53,657 — more than $30,000 higher.

Per capita, the annual income for workers in the San Francisco metropolitan area is $43,924, versus the U.S. per capita median of $28,889 — over $15,000 more in San Francisco than the national average.

San Francisco is a large metropolitan region, with 4.6 million people overall. 856,000 of these reside in the city itself.

Houston

Houston is the fastest-growing city in the nation. Last year alone, it gained 159,000 new residents, the most of any urban region. Houston’s population is 2 million, with nearly 5 million in the urban area and 6.3 million in the metropolitan region. (Houston is the fifth-largest city in the nation, after New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.)

Its large population has helped make Houston a healthy economic engine, no longer primarily dependent on the health of the oil industry. Its unemployment rate, at 4.7 percent, is below the national average.

Despite a downturn in the oil sector, Houston still showed a slight gain in overall jobs, up 0.5 percent. Service-providing sector jobs rose 1.9 percent.

San Antonio

Fast-growing San Antonio has a population of 1.4 million, with 2.3 million total in the metropolitan area. Its employment picture is bolstered by the high number of financial service centers and data centers that are located in San Antonio, and by its high bilingual (English and Spanish) population, which can easily do business with Mexico and Latin America.

Jobs throughout Texas grew at an approximate rate of 2.6 percent.

Fort Lauderdale

The Fort Lauderdale metropolitan region has a total population of 5.7 million. Its gross domestic state product is expected to track along with that of the state of Florida as a whole at 2.9 percent.

Payroll job creation in the Fort Lauderdale metropolitan region is expected to outpace the 1.9 percent rate expected in the state overall, at 2.7 percent forecast for 2016 and 1.6 percent for 2017.

Residents of the Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area will see their wage growth rise smartly, with a 3.5 percent annual forecast for the next several years. Their personal income is forecast to grow at a robust 4.9 percent rate.

The per capita income level is well above the U.S. average of $28,889 per year, at $48,400.

Atlanta

The 28 counties including and surrounding Atlanta constitute the third-fastest growing metropolitan region in the U.S. Greater metropolitan Atlanta’s population is 5.5 million, with 4.9 million in the urban area and 447,000 in the city itself.

The Atlanta area is expected to see strong job growth in 2016 at 2.7 percent, outpacing both the state overall at an increase of 2.3 percent and the U.S. as a whole, at 1.4 percent.

The Atlanta economic is robust, with the third-largest concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters in the country. Coca-Cola, United Parcel Service and Home Depot all make their home in Atlanta.

The unemployment rate, at 5.2 percent, is on par with the U.S. overall unemployment rate of 5.0 percent.

Washington, D.C./Arlington, Virginia

The 2016 job growth rate to date in Washington, D.C. and its metro area (which includes nine counties in Virginia) is above the national average, at 2.3 percent.

Its unemployment rate is enviable, at 4.1 percent versus the national average of 5 percent.

The metro area’s median income, at $91,193 per year, is 70 percent above the national median of $53,657. Its per-capita income, at $43,371, is nearly double the national average per-capita income of $28,889.

Approximately 2 million people live in the Washington D.C./Arlington, Virginia metropolitan area — 4.9 million in the urban area and 497,000 in the city itself.

Want to learn more?