by Alek Kilajian 6 years ago
859
Blaze Pizza
by Alek Kilajian 6 years ago
859
More like this
If all of this was not enough, Blaze Pizza aims to be a environmentally conscious company as well. It does this by using packaging that is recyclable, compostable and/or made from post-consumer reclaimed materials. Their straws, lids and cups are all made from plants. Not petroleum.
What makes Blaze Pizza so great is that along with their emphasis on Time to Market, they match the speed with high quality ingredients. They changed the notion that good things take time with good things can be done in a quicker and more efficient way.
Time to Market is the epitome of Blaze Pizza and this is what differentiates them from the competition. When you can offer a good/service at a 5x quicker rate, you really have a competitive advantage over the competition.
With 9 different types of sauces, 18 different types of cheese, 17 vegetable types, and 7 meats. The possibilities are endless.
Since Mass Customization is defined as a marketing and manufacturing technique which combines the flexibility and personalization of custom-made products with the low unit costs associated with mass production, Blaze Pizza fits this criteria perfectly.
Just in time is super important for Blaze Pizza.
Promising fresh and just out the oven food, just in time is of outmost importance. Other pizza restaurants are only able to make a couple of pizzas at a time (one employee per pizza) then with a limited space in the oven... You're looking at minimum 15 minutes per pizza at a max output of 3 or 4 pizzas at a time.
Blaze completely trumps this by avoiding bottle necks, setting assembly lines and blazing hot oven to cook the pizzas in 180 seconds.
Using only fresh ingredients and applying lean tactics to avoid waste, Blaze Pizza is able to achieve quality at the source better than any of its competitors.
With 300 locations currently world wide, standardization is important for Blaze Pizza to continue expanding and growing without losing its integrity and value of consumers perception of the brand. Blaze Pizza does well in this topic by having all staff be friendly and welcoming while being passionate about the brand and leaving all else the same in terms of operations.
The 5's are all the main lean tools Blaze Pizza runs its business by put in one. Starting with Sorting, Setting in Order, Shining, Standardizing, and Sustaining.
Founded in 2011 by Elise and Rick Wetzel in Pasadena, California. Modelled after the Chipotle made-to-order concept.
Taken from the attached article, "Blaze’s team opted for the fresh dough. They also sprang for unprocessed ingredients, upscale beverage offerings, and unique store-design elements that rejected trade dress—all Chipotle hallmarks. They even installed a second make line in every kitchen because Chipotle had done so. It wasn’t obvious at the time what the restaurants would do with them, as delivery was not originally a part of the concept, but the third-party delivery boom of the last few years made the decision seem prescient."
Blaze pizza manages it's inventory management by getting deliveries of it's freshest ingredients on a daily basis to avoid waste and by making the dough fresh in the mornings.
As this information is not public, this is what I would assume the supply chain management to be like at Blaze Pizza:
Operating Time: 11am-11pm
Preparation Time: 10am-11am
Prior Operations:
Daily Operations:
Seeing as how Blaze Pizza's whole strategy on its business plan is to avoid bottlenecks it's safe to say that Blaze has no bottlenecks other than placing and paying for an order during peak lunch hours. To minimize this small bottleneck, Blaze pizza is looking into adding delivery and online ordering options to mitigate the bottleneck.
The Wow Factor of Blaze Pizza is without a doubt the blazing fast speed at which the pizzas are made. Major competitors in the industry like Domino's, Pizza Hut, and Little Caesar's take on average 15 minutes to make their pizza's. This makes Blaze Pizza five times faster. Also worth mentioning as a Wow Factor is that the competition charges for each additional topping whereas Blaze Pizza charges a fixed rate for unlimited toppings.
When it comes to pain points there is not much to talk about.
Productivity: Productivity is at a high with Blaze Pizza. Their motto is blaze fire'd pizza for a reason. The assembly line ensures that there is no wasted time in between stations.
Process: The process of ordering and getting a pizza from Blaze is completely painless. You order at the register with the friendly clerk shift down to where you pick your dough, your sauce and your toppings. Then you wait 180 seconds and voila! Your pizza masterpiece is ready.
Blaze pizza has many touch-points. Almost like a Starbucks, Blaze Pizza offers an experience to its customers allowing customization as well as letting them feel welcome. Starting with that, the first touchpoint is as the customer enters the store he feels warm and wanted there. He then places his order where they ask for his name which feels personalized then walks down the assembly line and creates his pizza with encouragement of trying all and as much of the free ingredients that he may want.
TV ad campaign from 2016 showing exactly how the assembly line process works at Blaze Pizza.
Please use the google drive link to view the flowchart for Blaze Pizza.
Incase it doesn't work, here is the link again: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N6E1bz2QnxnXh25R_HVAzbPygs2YEJTh/view?usp=sharing
As you can see in this video of a father building his personalized pizza for himself and a traditional pepperoni pizza, you can see that Blaze uses the lean tool Muda by avoiding unnecessary waste. The customer decides exactly what toppings they want and exactly how much.
Blaze Pizza believes in serving the best quality possible. Asides from having the freshest ingredients, the best way to achieve this would be by making the products made-to-order. And this is exactly what Blaze Pizza does.
Blaze Fast Fire’d Pizza, the fast-casual artisanal pizza concept known for its chef-driven menu and Blaze Pizza is a modern day “pizza joint” serving up artisanal pizzas that are both fast and affordable. Since its first restaurant debuted in 2012, Blaze has quickly become one of the nation’s hottest restaurant concepts, with fans lining up each day for the custom-built pizzas, freshly made salads, blood orange lemonade and s’more pies. So delicious and fast!
This video shows a news station visiting a Blaze Pizza chain in Rhode Island displaying how the new pizza chain works and operates. Demonstrating its ability to accept and deliver customized pizza's all under 180 seconds.
Like MOD Pizza and Blaze Pizza, this also is custom built assembly line fast-casual restaurant. Younger than the other two (founded in 2011), Pielogy operates in over 140 locations across the United States and Mexico.
Founded by a former Starbucks executive, MOD Pizza like Blaze Pizza follow an assembly line made-to-order approach on serving their pizzas. MOD Pizza was founded in 2008 and now has over 400 locations in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
