Restaurant Owners Uncorked - By Schedulefly

Wil hosts Tyler Kotch, founder of PIE.ZAA (Asheville & Charlotte), for a candid chat about spotting late-night demand, building a hyper-focused high-margin pizza concept (five-item menu, 28" pies or 12" slices), surviving COVID, navigating a painful partner split, and scaling methodically toward franchising. Tyler shares lessons on location strategy, simplifying operations to reduce waste, ditching phones in favor of in-person/email and AI ordering, fixing third-party delivery headaches via Takeout Central, and the bigger mission: build a people-centric company, communicate face-to-face, and leave a legacy—possibly across 30–100 locations—using a mountains/city/beach testbed with the FDD in motion.10 takeaways:Simple wins: Five-item menu; whole 28" pies or 12" slices—less waste, faster training.Late-night niche: PIE.ZAA launched to serve post-10pm demand; pizza delivers the margins.Go big on product & packaging: 28" pies + distinctive black boxes = walking billboards.Location is leverage: Foot traffic