Thompson Hospitality Group operates Wiseguy Pizza with finesse, tight operations

Wiseguy Pizza has eight units and counting. The brand, owned by Thompson Hospitality Group, is located mostly in the Washington D.C./Virginia area with a couple in South Florida. One is under construction in Virginia Beach to open in 2025.

“We have several LOIs out to continue our footprint in at least the DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) area,” Alex Berentzen, COO of Thompson Hospitality Group, said in a video interview.

Thompson Hospitality Group was attracted to the brand’s success and the great word-of-mouth Wiseguy had acquired since it launched in 2016. The brand’s reputation spoke for itself, Beretzen said. Thompson Hospitality Group visits stores to see them in action, and Wiseguy had an incredible pizza with lines out the door.

Wiseguy is doing about $1,600 a square foot, Berentzen said, “and that’s just industry leading revenues for what are very small stores. Our stores are 900 to 1,200 square feet. That’s it.”

“At Thompson Hospitality, we look at growth as concept creation or mergers and acquisitions, and then organic growth. We actually started a strategic partnership with the founder of Wiseguy, his name is Nuri Erol. He’s a Turkish native and he traveled the world — literally — in search of the perfect pizza.”

Erol visited hundreds of places in New York, New Jersey and Europe, and he was on a mission to find the perfect pizza crust and the perfect pizza. His mission became finding a “damn good slice,” Berentzen said. “That’s where the tagline ‘Damn Good Pizza’ came from.”

The goal was simple — to have a quality pizza with the best sauce, flour and other ingredients regardless of cost and sourcing.

Erol had four units when Thompson Hospitality Group became the brand’s strategic partner in March 2022. A year later, Thompson Hospitality Group took over the whole company. Erol stayed closely involved.

Photo: Wiseguy Pizza

On the menu

“People ask ‘what’s the secret?'” Berentzen said. “Our secret is we didn’t mess with anything. We left everything exactly the way we found it.”

Beretzen said what some companies do when they start a strategic partnership or acquire a brand is start fiddling with the quality and ingredients and start looking for shortcuts. Thompson didn’t do that. The brand uses an all-natural cheese from Wisconsin, a specific tomato sauce from California, extra-virgin olive oil from Italy.

All of the sauces and dressings are made from scratch at a commissary kitchen in the DMV area to ensure consistency. At the S. Florida locations, the brand makes them in-house.

Pizza accounts for 90% of sales. Five percent is non-alcoholic beverages, and the other five percent is miscellaneous items like cheesecake or fresh-baked cookies.

The brand recently introduced three Italian subs and three salads to expand the menu in some of its newer stores. Wiseguy Pizza is in heavily trafficked areas, and it wanted to make sure folks felt comfortable dining more than once a week.

“We listened to our customers and we were watching the behavior, seeing them come to us frequently and then at time pass our door and go somewhere else, so we wanted to be able to give them that option as well,” Berentzen said.

Cheese pizza is the top seller, followed by pepperoni. A Korean Chicken pizza with cabbage and Korean barbecue sauce is also popular as is a Chicken Paneer pizza with Indian spice flavors. Gluten friendly crust is also available, as are vegetarian options like the Paneer Tikka and the Mushroom Truffle.

“The specialty pies that you normally wouldn’t see in other stores are some of our top sellers,” Berentzen said. “They are so good. They’re crazy good. My kids beg me for it every day.”

The crust is a medium dough that is foldable, but guests delight in a crunchy sound. Pizzas are baked in a Baker’s Pride stone deck ovens at 550 degrees. The brand doesn’t use screens, but instead bakes directly on the stone to make the dough crispier. Wiseguy also uses a special water filtration system so the water doesn’t impart any additional flavors.

“You have different municipalities, you get different qualities of water,” he said, and it actually affects the dough.”

While some folks opt to leave the crust while eating their slices, Beretzen said Wiseguy’s customers enjoy the whole slice.

Dough is made in-house in multiple batches every day.

Photo: Wiseguy Pizza

Operations

Berentzen said when Thompson took over the brand, the only thing it did was help Wiseguy scale and help with training and technology. Erol is still involved with his brand and visits the units regularly.

Wiseguy Pizza maintains consistency by being a disciplined brand that plans as much as it can.

“We do not skimp when it comes down to training,” Berentzen said. For example, the brand just opened its Dupont location in Washington D.C., about four weeks ago, but the hourly staff were training in the other stores for three to four weeks. The staff moves in, product is delivered and put away and a store can open quickly in just two to three days.

Some of the brand’s managers have been in place since day one, and Berentzen cites employee Marvin Ramos as Wiseguy’s backbone, as he has helped with every opening. Ramos worked with Erol from day one and is still with the brand today.

Berentzen said the employees receive a competitive starting wage and make good money by sharing tips. Employees make well over $20 an hour.

“The key to continuity for us is training, it’s definitely culture. We have a very strong culture,” Berentzen said. “We’re obsessed with details and with pizza.”

Since taking over Wiseguy Pizza, Thompson Hospitality Group has begun layering in technological advances designed to make the brand work more efficiently.

“You can order any way you want,” Berentzen said, including in person, by kiosk, online or for delivery. Though the brand doesn’t have an app, it does have a mobile friendly website for online ordering.

Thompson Hospitality will launch an umbrella loyalty program for the brands under its belt this summer with one online ordering platform that allows users to order from any brand and collect points.

“It’s very user friendly,” Berentzen said. “It knows where you are. It finds the closest location. Last year, we weren’t there, but this year we are.”