Shakey’s USA Inc. has enlisted a new ally in its revitalization efforts. Arby’s veteran Bert Hunter, owner-operator of the recently unveiled Shakey’s in Auburn, Ala., the chain’s first store to open east of California in four decades, has passed a crash course in operating the legendary 54-year-old pizza concept while making his own contribution—a fast-food operator’s practiced eye for saving time and motion and tweaking equipment and systems.
Cutting a step or saving a moment is key for a fast-casual concept that insists on labor-intensive but quality-minded scratch preparation. For example, Shakey’s exhibition kitchens continually mix and sheet fresh pizza dough, build pies to order, and deep-fry fresh bone-in chicken to order.
Among the ideas Hunter has brainstormed as a franchisee of Alhambra, Calif.-based Shakey’s USA are a tumbler breader for fried chicken, a new step-saving pizza peel and a wireless paging system that tells food runners which tables to bring orders to. The system has 50 stores, 35 of them franchised, with two new ones under construction.
People in Auburn and beyond have enthusiastically greeted the new Shakey’s unit, which debuted with record opening sales in late March. Many fondly recall its glory days in the 1960s and 1970s as a family-friendly pizza-and-entertainment magnet with more than 450 stores.
He spent about $1.35 million on the 6,400-square-foot, 250-seat building, which is Shakey’s first freestanding prototype.
“We stepped out on a big limb for a lot of money, but I believed in it that much,” Hunter said. He said his first-year revenues would be “$2 million plus.”
Truth is, Hunter had to lobby Shakey’s USA, which was focused on issues closer to home, to secure a franchise. What sealed the deal was his enthusiasm for the concept’s heritage—his store includes a virtual museum of Shakey’s memorabilia—and his track record of 30-plus years with Arby’s. He currently owns six franchised stores in eastern Alabama and western Georgia.
“You couldn’t ask for a better franchisee to represent the brand than Bert,” said Randy Hill, Shakey’s USA vice president of new concept development.
Hunter’s penchant for time-and-motion studies has gone as far as finding a new pizza peel that doubles as a cutting board. A pie can be cut upon it and slid directly onto a serving platter or into a box without moving to a cutting table. “When you’re doing a $1,500 or $2,000 hour on a Friday or Saturday night, you’ve got to cut one pizza after another,” Hunter said.
Other firsts by Hunter include the introduction of an efficient tumbler breader for fried chicken that coats chicken pieces evenly and continually sifts out clumps of breading, and a wireless table-locating system that tells food runners which table to bring hot food to. Of the latter, Hunter said, “The $7,500 or $8,000 I paid for this is the best money I ever spent.”
To master Shakey’s thin-crust pizza, Hunter sent his managers to several weeks of intensive training in California.
The process involves mixing and proofing the dough and rolling it through a dough sheeter 12 to 14 times. Bubbles that form in the crust as the pizza travels through the conveyor oven have to be tapped down with a metal implement.
“When you do this properly, the dough separates by layers and makes a very light and very crispy crust,” Hill said.
He noted that thin-crust pies account for about 60 percent of pizza sales in Southern California, the rest come from pan pizza.
Attention to fundamentals is paying off for Shakey’s, which is now in its third straight year of sales increases. As of March, sales were up systemwide more than 7 percent and corporate-store sales were up more than 11 percent.
New ideas, too, are the currency of the rebound. “If they have an idea, I want to hear it,” Hunter said. “If I’ve got one, they’re listening.”