Creating “The Ultimate Pizza Experience”

An Interview With Restauranteur Jeff Ambrose

With seven locations in the Golden State, Jeff Ambrose and his wife Laura have led this fun, student-oriented eatery to become the #2 Independent Pizzeria in the Nation in terms of sales, dedicating over 30 years to the company and its employees. In the past year alone, Jeff has managed Woodstock Pizza to its highest sales for the company, launched new company-wide sustainable Green Initiatives, raised over $200,000 in donations to community organizations, and earned the award of “Most Admired Small Business CEO of 2018” from the San Diego Business Journal!

Thank you so much for doing this with us! What inspired you to become a restauranteur?

As a recent college graduate in 1980, I took a job delivering pizzas with a relatively new pizza parlor in Corvallis, Oregon to make some money. I caught the attention of owner Chuck Woodstock and partner Mike Chew, quickly moving up in the company and encouraged by the pair to open a new restaurant. Shortly after, Chuck and Chew were tragically killed in a private plane crash. The heirs of the founders chose to promote me to President of the company, meaning that throughout my career, I have worked in every job available at Woodstock’s.

What has your journey been like since first stepping foot in a restaurant?

In 2001, my wife Laura and I purchased the five California stores from the Woodstock and Chew families. Since that time, we have opened three more restaurants in California, with our home base in San Diego. We continue to carry on Chuck’s legacy of starting with fresh dough made in-store daily, using his grandmother’s secret red sauce, loading on the toppings, folding sauce into the outside edge of crust, and fostering a fun-loving environment.

Every year that passes, I place my focus on both helping my employees to learn and grow and giving back to the community. We have made the decision to hold large fundraisers for the California Fires and Mudslides, the Burn Institute, Traveling Stories, Rady’s Children’s Hospital, ACT, and the Kroc Center, and many more. In 2017 alone, our efforts ensured that Woodstock’s raised over $205,000 for various philanthropy efforts, and we’ve already gotten off to a strong start in 2018. This year, we’ve launched our company-wide Green Initiatives including a complete overhaul of each location to become more overall sustainable, earning us an “ocean-friendly” status with the Surfrider Foundation. I was recently awarded “Most Admired CEO of Small Business 2018” by the San Diego Business Journal, which shows me we’re doing something right here at Woodstock’s!

Do you have a specialty? If so, what drew you to that type of food?

A staple of the West Coast, California-style pizza is a thinner-crust pizza style characterized by non-traditional toppings. Deviating from the standard mozzarella and pepperoni, the true California-style distinction lies in the pizza toppings: very creative and out of the ordinary, the toppings often incorporate a variety of the freshest local produce and California-esque accents, including avocado, artichoke hearts, and grilled chicken. Originating in the 1980s with Chef Ed LaDou at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse restaurant and widely popularized with the spread of the California Pizza Kitchen chain, California-style pizza has come to define the West Coast’s exciting answer to the New York and Chicago styles, thanks to California-grown independent pizzerias like Woodstock’s Pizza!

The variations by city are also characterized by the toppings, with ingredients reflecting the unique food cultures of each city. Headquartered in San Diego, Woodstock’s Pizza embraces a Southern California style, incorporating Mexican culinary ingredients such as slow-braised carnitas in the Kickin’ Carnitas pizza, healthy and locally-sourced ingredients such as artichoke hearts, broccoli, and pesto sauce in the Pesto Primavera pizza, and even an Asian cultural fusion with the Bahn Mizza, made with sesame ginger sauce, grilled chicken, julienned carrots, and Sriracha, all to reflect the diversity of the wonderful state of California!

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you became a restauranteur?

We make the bold claim that if you want something special on your pizza, bring it in and we will add it at no extra cost. We’ve had lots of customers bring us fun ingredients over the years. One woman really stands out — she loved her furry four-legged friend so much that she brought us dog food to cook on a pizza for her beloved pup! We were surprised, but delighted, and cooked her a Fido-friendly pie.

What is your definition of success?

I believe in the philosophy of Servant Leadership, so my job is really to support our amazing team members and stores. My definition of success is when we not only run a profitable business, but can pay our employees a fair wage, provide them a positive environment to learn, and therefore they serve our customers with excellent and memorable customer service. Our company runs on “FUELS” … Fun, Unique, Excellent, and Loyal Service. We operate best and most successfully when we follow that mission.

What failures have you had along the way? How have they led you to success?

Being in college markets we have a continually changing workforce. We also recognize that we have a new marketing challenge every fall, messaging a new group of young collegians about the merits of choosing Woodstock’s over the name brand competitors. We are invested heavily now in social media and technology to ensure that we’re connecting in relevant ways.

The recession of 2007 was a wake-up call. We decided that we would never change the quality of the product we sold, despite rising costs. We saw many competitors fail during this period, but we continued to maintain high sales by focusing on the guest experience. Since we remain​ dedicated to a healthy philosophy for pizza, we pay more for whole-milk mozzarella, farm-fresh veggies, low-fat, ​gluten-free and vegan ​options, and nitrate-free meats​.

We get asked continuously to move outside our core college markets, but we have decided that this is a big key to our success. We have also been approached repeatedly about franchising, but we’re okay with being called control freaks — we want to control where we’re located, what we sell, and who we hire. Although we’ve grown slowly over the years, we strive to be known in each of our communities as their local hometown favorite, meaning that we don’t publicize our other locations, and instead just grin when we hear our loyal Woodstock’s fans finding out that we have locations in other college towns!

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now?

Our plans for the future are focused on mentoring our rising stars. We are actively looking for new locations in college towns and plan to open another restaurant within the next year. There are exciting opportunities out there — we just need to find the right location in one of these communities. We are also starting a phase of remodels in our stores, starting with doubling the space of our San Luis Obispo store. It will include ​​two separate craft beer bars and a new “Backyard”, complete with a fire pit, deck seating and giant board games to keep the soul and ingrained culture of Woodstock’s intact.

Finally, we are going to continue our focus on giving back to the communities that we love so much. In partnership with various organizations, Woodstock’s will continue to be a hub for fundraisers so that we can give back to the communities that bet on us. We will work on improving and implementing further practices for our Green Initiative, making sure that Woodstock’s continues to be a certified “ocean-friendly” company in all of our practices.

What advice do you have for aspiring restaurateurs?

Invest in your employees — they are the future of your company and deserve every opportunity to grow and reach their full potential. I provide a lot of company-wide leadership training, including John Maxwell courses and Tony Baron guest appearances, to mentor our rising stars. We employ nearly 400 college students in our college towns, and I want to give them every opportunity to grow and shine within the company. In addition to our Employee of the Month programs and our strong “promote from within first” policy, I have instituted a Management Track for aspiring managers. We want our stars to develop their leadership abilities, and we pair each with a district manager throughout the year starting at our annual company retreat in Lake Tahoe. I believe we are stronger as a company when we develop leadership skills in our team!

I am also enrolled in constant leadership training classes myself. I try to lead by example, striving to give my employees the same opportunities that I received in my many years with the company.

It is said that food is a common ground that brings people together. As someone who makes food for a living, what does this saying mean to you?

Our mission statement indicates that we want to create “the ultimate pizza experience.” There is a genuineness at Woodstock’s — a sense of permanence and timelessness. We aren’t trendy, and we don’t rush table turns. Instead, we encourage our guests to stay and hang out together. That is what the saying means to me! Food provides an excuse to gather around the table and share an experience together, share time together, and make memories.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Chef” and why?

1. Even as the CEO, you still have to make small decisions each and every day. We just opened another restaurant. I was making decisions about carpet and paint colors, where to place signage and what it should say. Even though I have great people around me, I’m still intimately involved in the details day to day. That never goes away. However, don’t make the mistake of believing that no one else can do the job as well as you can — this is a sure prescription for burnout. You simply can’t do it all, which means that it is imperative to set up systems where you can turn your back, walk away and trust that your business will be run well.

2. Managing people is harder than it sounds. People have different lives and personalities outside of the office, which is hard to remember sometimes, and they bring all of that with them to the office day in and day out. It’s never easy to get a team on the same page and moving in the same direction, because we are all so beautifully different. We make a yearly pilgrimage to Lake Tahoe as a team. We take a group of 30 of our team leaders and work together to decide the direction of the company for the next year. This helps us all know what we are working on and building for the next year, and it creates camaraderie to know each other as real people and respect our differences working together.

3. Stick to your values, and always know who you are as a business. We know who we are and what we stand for and making the “right” decision again and again has helped us stay leaders in our industry. When I make a decision based on our corporate values and my personal values, it always is the right decision. Our company has a personality. And we have several people that are representatives for our business in the public. Whether it be our cashiers or our marketing department, we try to all speak in the same voice. It creates a cohesiveness for our brand and that makes it easier to grow and for everyone to know what we stand for.

4. Don’t make the mistake of believing “if we build it, they will come”. Opening a restaurant takes cash for a lease, equipment, supplies, computer systems, insurance, utilities, hiring and training employees — all before you even open the doors. You’re not going to make money the first several months, so make sure your budget includes a cushion as well as an allowance for a lot of advance advertising, social media, banners, promotional flyers and public relations! Nothing every runs smoothly when opening, so try to roll with it — it gets better.

5. Give back. We are fortunate to be doing what we do. I mean, we sell pizza and beer! So we make it a point to step back and see how we can impact and help other people. Our organization gave back over $200,000 in cash and countless pizzas last year. So, if you are profitable, if you are able…give back!

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

We believe that people are what makes us a great company. We hire a lot of entry level people, first jobs out of college or even high school. We cultivate, educate, and train them on how to work in the restaurant industry. We promote within whenever we can. We have people that have worked for us for over 30 years. I myself, started as a delivery driver for Woodstock’s. Therefore, I think the movement would be to see your employees as humans, empathize and care about them, and treat them with the utmost respect, because they will inspire others in turn.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to cook for and why?

I would love to serve my mentor, John Maxwell, in one of my restaurants. John has helped me find my leadership style and be a better CEO for our team. I would love the honor of serving him the best pizza he will ever eat, and hearing his experience of our customer service because it stems from the top. We honor servant leadership so our in-store employees can have the tools and resources they need to be happy and successful.