Secrets to Their Success: Hunt Brothers Pizza at 30

NASHVILLE — With a focus on underserved rural areas, Hunt Brothers Pizza, founded by Hunt brothers Don, Charlie, Jim and Lonnie, has thrived, and this month celebrates 30 years in business. The company recently reached the milestone of opening its 8,000th location, which are in convenience stores in 30 states and in U.S. military bases in six other countries.

How did the nation’s largest made-to-order pizza brand in the convenience-store industry get to where it is?

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Nashville-based Hunt Brothers Pizza is successful because it keeps its operation simple, says Scott Hunt, CEO. “We’re just a little food wholesaler. No monster warehouses and trucks going all over the country,” said Hunt, adding that Hunt Brothers has about 120 SKUs all narrowly pizza related. “We certainly don’t carry everything that a pizza company would carry. It’s a very streamlined product line and we have a unique target, which is convenience stores. And we cut our teeth selling to rural convenience stores.”

COO Bryan Meng added that in the ’90s, Hunt Brothers found that companies like Dominos and others weren’t delivering in rural areas. “We found this niche out in these areas, with underserved markets, and we were just singularly focused,” he said.

Where a lot of organizations start at the top of the food chain, going after 7-Eleven and others, Hunt Brothers started on the other side: targeting mom-and-pops and independents, “Hunt said. “We frankly worked our way up. And what we realized is most chains that are 50 locations, they want to do their own foodservice programs, they want to have their own branded products, so we created a 100% branded pizza program from A to Z.”

Everything is manufactured to Hunt Brothers Pizza specs and flavor profiles, and everything has the company logo, Hunt said. “We teach them how to operate a pizza business and train their employees how to execute the program at a high level,” he said. Hunt Brothers sets up all the marketing material in the stores, and the program consists of two ways to buy pizza: Grab-and-go, which Hunt Brothers calls its Hunk A Pizza (one-quarter of a 12-inch pizza), and whole, with all toppings offered at no extra charge.

C-stores that carry Hunt Brothers tend to be busy, Hunt said, so Hunt Brothers focuses on a low-labor program. This goal plays well in the snacking arena by having pizza in the warmer ready for grab-and-go. “It’s an impulse sale, and we’re not doing things specifically other than coaching and training the store to have a really good pizza available when people come by,” Hunt said. “Whether or not they want to order a whole pizza to take home or grab a hunk, it’s there and it’s ready, so it’s a combination of those two.”

Meng added that the hold time for grab-and-go pizza is about an hour. “We want it fresh,” he said. “Because those hunks are a snack for a lot of people and are really a sample.” Meng said the Hunt Brothers founders discovered that when people bought a hunk in the afternoon, they would order a whole pizza or two in the evening with their family.

Hunt Brothers, which distributes directly, trains people at Hunt Brothers University in Nashville and also offers on-site training. It’s a family business that is actually 11 companies under one umbrella.

“We’re separate organizations but work closely together,” Hunt said. “We have a shared-service company that provides all the marketing, technology and supply-chain purchasing.”

In the beginning, the pizza was called Pizza House Pizza, then it was called Buffet Style Pizza. “The Hunt brothers were too humble to put their name on it,” Meng said. “We did a marketing study, and no one remembered the name, and they told the Hunt brothers they need to show that they’re a family-owned business, and they agreed, and that changed the whole trajectory of the company.”

After five years of research, Hunt Brothers rebranded in 2004. “We realized that for us to be successful long-term, we could not be a commodity like Cisco,” Hunt said. “We had to turn around and create a brand, and that’s when we branded everything across the organization, from personnel to equipment to products and packaging.” After the rebrand, he said, Hunt Brothers had three times the locations as its closest competitor.

Hunt said it’s important to Hunt Brothers Pizza to help their customers.

“It sounds corny, I know, but we’ve focused on helping these customers do what they do and be successful,” he said. “We figured out if we help enough stores, we’ll be taken care of by setting up and training them so the pizza does as good as possible, and that’ll lead to more sales. We’re in there each week helping them. Our guys are in the stores weekly or biweekly.”