Case Study: Hunt Brothers Pizza
Challenge: Hunt Brothers Pizza has been in business for 19 years, founded by four brothers who have been in the pizza business for 47 years. They put in distributors who deliver pizzas off their own trucks, primarily in the Southeast region to convenience stores in mostly rural locations. Their business has grown to over 6000 locations in 28 states. Their pizza is well-liked and a productive product for “c” stores. The last three years they have earned the Convenience Store Decisions Reader’s Choice Branded Fast Food award.
There are now 30 family members working in the ten companies which comprise the Hunt Brothers Pizza business. It is composed of four master distributorships owned by the original brothers and seven additional distributorships. It was clear that it had become time to pass the reins of daily management to the next generation, but it was less clear how to do that and, when it was done, how the various companies would work together on common goals. That had always been managed by the brothers in family meetings. However, as this company has grown, the communication and alignment issues had become more complex.
Results: Reynolds Consulting divided the project into three phases: diagnose the challenges and strengths, recommend the decision-making structure and process, and complete a strategic plan to provide guidance to the new leaders. As a result of completing this process, the following has occurred:
- An advisory board has been put in place, comprised of outside advisors to provide broader viewpoints on how to grow the company and improve processes.
- A leadership team that has purview on enterprise wide decisions has been put in place along with guidelines on their scope.
- Clarity of roles on the leadership team was established through new role definition and descriptions.
- The strategic plan was created and approved by the leadership team and deemed by the original founders “as what we always wanted but just never wrote down”.
- The plan includes a number of measurement tools to help the leadership team track progress and a communication plan to ensure family and enterprise wide commitment.
“There is no doubt we are at the beginning of a new phase of Hunt Brothers Pizza. Reynolds Consulting, LLC was able to help clear out the challenges inherent in a family business and focus us on what we want to be—a performance-oriented growth company that will leave a long-term legacy for our family. They showed us the importance of having operations aligned across the entire company so that we are all pulling in the same direction. With this plan in place, we are confident we are going to see significant growth in the next five years as we have a focus and a plan we all believe in.” — Hunt Brothers Pizza