There’s no shortage of options when it comes to opening a pizza franchise. Considering all the options out there, you’ll want find a pizza concept that’s unique to the local market. Enter MOD Pizza, offering a unique pizza dining experience with a customizable selection of personal-size pizzas with 40+ topping options and made-to-order salads.

How much does it cost to open MOD Pizza? The average investment for a MOD Pizza location is $714,000 to $1,092,000 with a franchise fee of $30,000. The unique pizza concept is available to franchise assuming you meet the financial requirements.

Interested in learning more? Read on for my investigation of MOD Pizza’s business model including, revenue numbers, royalty fees and challenges. Click here to take my 7-minute quiz to find out if MOD Pizza is the right franchise option for you. 

Financial Requirements and Fees

Here’s what the MOD Pizza Franchise Disclosure Document says about the investment range and franchise fee for the company.

Aside from these fees, MOD Pizza requires an ongoing fee of 5% of weekly revenues. There is also a marketing fee that’s 2.5% of weekly revenues which may increase to 3%. A 90 day notice will be given prior to the increase of percentage for this fee.

Do note that fees change from time to time so these may have changed by the time you are reading it. Be sure to get updated fees in writing with MOD Pizza before you sign any sort of agreement. You can double check this data by requesting a copy of their updated FDD.

Average Sales / Revenue per Year

MOD Pizza reported sales of $461 million in 2020. Though these numbers are huge, MOD Pizza actually suffered a 5% decline from their sales in 2019 which was at $483 million.

The pandemic of course played a role in their business numbers. Some pizza concepts more focused on delivery actually benefitted from national lockdowns. MOD Pizza, however, has had a larger piece of its business generated from dine-in sales. MOD Pizza has shown a lot of promise transitioning to an environment of online orders with digital sales now representing 40% of the companies system-wide revenue.

MOD Pizza Franchise Facts

MOD Pizza started in 2008 by Scott and Ally Svenson in Seattle. The concept for the pizza place is to give value to pizza as a favorite American food and allow customers greater choice on the pizza and toppings they would order. MOD Pizza has always focused on speed.

MOD Pizza is an acronym for Made on Demand. Customers can choose what type of crust to use, what toppings to put on their pizzas, or choose from a variety of fixed pizza recipes on the menu if they don’t want to come up with their own pizza. Crust comes in three types, a Mini at 6 inches, a Mod at 11 inches, and a Mega which is an 11-inch thick crust.

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There are over 40 toppings at MOD Pizza. The pizza shop offers a wide range of meat toppings such as pepperoni, sausage, ground beef, anchovies, and chicken. Vegetables range from fresh arugula, basil, artichokes, red peppers, and more. Cheese options include mozzarella, asiago, ricotta, and gorgonzola. They also offer interesting finishing sauces like BBQ Swirl, Pesto Drizzle, Hot Buffalo Sauce, Sri-rancha, Balsamic Fig Glaze, and dollops of Red Sauce. These finishing sauces are another distinction you won’t find at the typical pizza shop.

But according to MOD Pizza, it’s not only pizza they want to be known for. Their goal is to also take care of their employees who they call the MOD Squad. The company believes taking care of employees leads to taking better care customers. This is the kind of work culture MOD Pizza is trying to build and has been creating for 13 years.

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At present, MOD Pizza is popular for both their food and the employment opportunities they give to Opportunity Youth (these are the youth classified to be between the ages of 16 to 24 and who are not employed or aren’t in school), people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD), those who are recovering from addiction and those who struggle from being homeless. These jobs can help at-risk youth acquire a practical skill that puts them on the right future track.

MOD Pizza’s effort landed them a spot on the Change the World list by Fortune in 2019 for their commitment to providing opportunities to individuals that struggle to find steady employment. Fortune has also awarded them as Best Workplace for Diversity, Best Workplace for Women, and Best Workplace for Millennials. This is an organization that values diversity.

MOD Pizza has over 500 locations all over the United States and Canada. One unique element is that the company is also privately-owned. Often privately-held companies don’t make franchise opportunities available. But as you know, MOD Pizza is available for franchising.

One of the challenges of working with a franchise opportunity of a publicly traded company is the need to satisfy investors. You satisfy investors through rapid growth, increasing sales and profitability. But sometimes management will take actions to help the business in the short-term, but hurts the business longterm just to bump up the share price or get an annual bonus.

With a private company, management has more flexibility to think longterm about the business since quarterly report outs to analysts and others aren’t as important.

Scott and Ally Svenson still run MOD Pizza to this day and their headquarters is located in Seattle, Washington.

How Much Does MOD Pizza Make in Profit?

According to their year-end report in 2020, MOD Pizza had net revenue of $388 million. They experienced a 1% decline in revenue for that year. However, digital revenue reached 275%. Digital transactions increased to 216% and was responsible for 40% of total sales.

Since MOD Pizza is a privately-owned company, it’s impossible to get the accurate numbers if one can get any profit franchising MOD Pizza. Still, I can use pizza industry averages pizza to make an educated guess about annual profitability per store.

For example, the average profit of a pizza shop is between 7% – 13%. To keep things simple, I’ll use a 10% profit margin for this estimate. Assuming there are 505 total stores divided by $388 million in system-wide sales you get $768,316 average store revenue. This means there would be $76,831 in average profit per store if these figures were accurate. Conduct your own research and calculations to create conservative and optimistic outlooks for store revenue and profit margin.

Advantages of an MOD Pizza Franchise

If your application ever gets chosen to become a franchise operator for MOD Pizza, here are some advantages you can expect in running this franchise.

Concept

MOD Pizza isn’t the only place that allows you to “build your own” pizza. But the concept appeals to many because it’s one of the few places that has over 40 toppings to choose from, different crust size options, and finishing sauces. The appeal of this concept allows everyone in the family to get exactly what they want.

So if you have a MOD Pizza in your area, it can become a hotspot for people bringing in their friends and families not just to dine but to also have fun too.

More than Just Food

MOD Pizza is more than just good pizza. As mentioned above, they’re all about being a “people place” wherein they stand by looking after their team and providing employment opportunities to many.

They’re also very supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, people with IDD, and help spread awareness for suicide prevention and mental health. Now that’s something to be proud of when you become part of the MOD Pizza family.

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This approach to serving under represented communities can help the bottom line too. As members of these different communities will support your business with their dollars.

Vegan and Other Healthy Options

MOD Pizza doesn’t just cater to the regular pizza lovers. They also have toppings for vegan customers including their new plant-based Italian sausages. As for those going low-carb, customers can avail of their cauliflower crusts rather than the regular one. They also have a gluten-free crust for those with dietary restrictions.

Everybody in your community can enjoy MOD Pizza, leaving no one behind. The ability to offer food that folks with all sorts of specialty diets can actually eat is an advantage.

Challenges of an MOD Pizza Franchise

Even the fastest growing pizza businesses face challenges. Here are some you can expect when you franchise with MOD Pizza.

Mixed Reviews

Despite MOD Pizza claiming to have goals about being a “people place” first and making sure their employees are happy working with them, there have been mixed reviews online about working for them. One review says that though the onboard process of working with them was “light and fast”, the management was not qualified to lead people. Another review says they have not been paid and that no response was given to their inquiry.

MOD Pizza sets high social goals for themselves. It can be difficult to execute on goals like this all the time. Of course that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

But there are also reviews that say it is a good environment for students who are working and that working with MOD Pizza is “fun and easy.” One even said that MOD Pizza was a “favorite place to work”.

We could presume that the mixed reviews come from different stores and that this all varies from one MOD Pizza store to another. Of course the management you put in place will also play a role in employee satisfaction.

Competition

MOD Pizza isn’t the only “make your own pizza” concept out there. There’s Blaze Pizza, The Pizza Press, and Pieology. Though this concept is fun for customers, it can be more challenging for business owners to operate. You can wow customers with more toppings and excellent customer service. But you have to constantly think of ways to get your customers to come back or entice new ones.

Also, while more toppings is always good for customers it creates challenges for you as a business owner. All restaurants have experience supply chain challenges this year. It can be hard to keep all these fresh ingredients in stock. Supply chain issues will likely be a challenge for all restaurants for at least another 12 months.

Is a MOD Pizza Franchise Right For You?

MOD Pizza can be an ideal business for you if you want to offer a fun pizza experience in your community. The biggest challenge here is to get the company to partner up with you since they are extremely selective with their onboarding process. But it’s worth it to try and submit your application if you have the drive, financial means, and passion for the mission behind this business.

What is an alternative MOD Pizza franchise?

One pizza place that has the same concept as MOD Pizza is Blaze Pizza. This restaurant is also known for its pizza making experience and serving it to customers hot and fast.

The estimated investment in opening a Blaze Pizza is $565,400 to $1,101,500 and the franchise fee is $30,000. Check out more of our full guide on how much to open a Blaze Pizza. Marco’s Pizza is another fast-growing franchise with more than 1,000 locations nationwide.

Are you ready to impress your community with MOD Pizza’s concept? I hope this guide evaluating the pros and cons of the concept was helpful on your journey.