40 Stores in 40 Years

An interview with Gabriel Pizza’s George Hanna

Aiming towards his hefty goal of 40 stores in 40 years, George Hanna has worked hard to spark such rapid growth for Ottawa’s very own Gabriel Pizza. We sat down to discuss the ups and downs, lessons learned, and what’s next for this thriving local business.

Background

Amber: Let’s start from the beginning. For those who don’t know how Gabriel Pizza started out, can you share a bit of history with us?

George: In 1977, my dad purchased Gabriel Pizza on St. Joseph Boulevard in Orleans, and it was actually called Gabriel Pizza at the time. He started off at that location himself, his five brothers, and his mom and dad. They had all just immigrated from Lebanon only a couple of years before that. They wanted to get a family business going and when they looked in the newspaper they saw the place for sale, so they bought it. That’s how Gabriel Pizza started! Gabriel’s recipes are our own, though. When they bought the store it was called Gabriel but none of those recipes were used.

Amber: How is the company celebrating its 40th anniversary?

George: There’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s happening. We’re actually going to be launching a few new products soon and opening a couple more stores. We’ve got a new brand that we started a little while ago called Crust & Crate and we’re opening up store number two. My goal was always to be at 40 stores by 40 years and, with the launching of the new Crust & Crate, we’ve accomplished that. We also secured a sponsorship with Ottawa 2017 where we’re their exclusive pizza supplier. We also have a few more celebrations that will be coming up, like giveaways and deals. We’re also looking at some customer appreciation days and maybe doing a big party. So really, a whole bunch of stuff that will be happening throughout the year!

Amber: We know you are very involved in the community and have been recognized for giving back, so tell us a bit about that. How important is this to you, and to the brand?

George: It’s very important to us. My dad’s philosophy was great service, great product, and always give back to the community that has made you so successful. This is what we try to do every day. We continue with that philosophy and vision. We try to give back whenever and wherever we can; we’re so grateful. We just launched a Gabriel in Kingston and we’re doing the same thing there — helping out the community and giving back as much as we can.

Amber: What has been your most satisfying moment in business to date?

George: I would say the launching of head office and the call centre. If online ordering had been launched by now then I would have probably said that because it’s something I’ve been after for about five years now. The success of the brand really came together thought about eight or nine years ago when we launched our call centre, our head office and got everything under one roof where we were really able to grow and to support our franchisees.

Lessons Learned

Amber: If you could time travel back to day one of becoming President of Gabriel Pizza, what “lessons learned” would you share with your former self?

George: If I could go back and do this all over again, I would implement the systems that are in place today fifteen or twenty years earlier, before the huge spurt of Gabriels. If I knew what I knew today, that’s what I would go back and do. I would also tell myself to stay patient, stay calm, and just work through things. Don’t get too flustered! If you look at the past five or six years, my patience is at a totally different level.

Current Challenges

Amber: What keeps you up at night?

George: One of the biggest challenges we face today is staying on trend. You want to stay top of mind; you want to keep up your brand awareness. For me, the biggest thing is the corporate stores and how they’re run and managed. I’ll be honest, I don’t usually have too many sleepless nights anymore. I used to have a lot of those, but things have really come together for Gabriel’s over the last five or six years. The real sleepless nights were when we opened the call centre. How is it going to run? How are customers going to perceive it? What’s going to happen? When we launch our new POS system and online system, I think I’m going to be a bit nervous again. I might have a couple more sleepless nights because I want it to be great. But I have to admit, lately it’s been pretty good.

Amber: How did you deal with Gabriel’s rapid growth? Do you have any tips for companies experiencing this right now?

George: You’ve got to make sure you’re choosing your franchisees very carefully. You have to make sure the people that are buying into your brand believe in, respect, and love it as much as you do. When they care for the brand and they uphold it to the highest regard, it breeds success. We’ve been pretty lucky in that a lot of our franchisees have been ex-employees and have worked at stores, so they enjoy working there and love the brand so much they wanted to invest in it.

Looking Ahead

Amber: Where do you see your industry going and how you preparing your business to get there?

George: Our team here is always researching, looking for what’s going to be trending. Even with our other brand, Crust, we had our corporate chef come in and we talked about some of the menu items we had about six months ago. Now those are starting to trend in other restaurants!

From the technology side of things, I’m big on that. We’re a bit behind, but I’m hoping as soon as we launch online ordering I’d like to be ahead of the curve. I was reading an article about Domino’s that was testing robots to deliver pizzas. It kind of makes sense! I actually told the guys here, let’s look into it. Let’s be one of the first ones here in Ottawa to do it.

Amber: Last, but not least, what’s your favourite pizza?

George: The Gabriel Deluxe, hands down.