MOD Pizza, America's Fastest-Growing Restaurant, Supports People In Recovery Or Just Out Of Jail

“It’s not that we think the world needs more pizza places,” says Ally Svenson. “That wouldn’t have been enough to motivate us to get up in the morning and say, ‘Let’s devote ten years of our lives, and all of our resources, time, and money.’ There had to be something more, or, frankly, we weren’t going to bother doing it.” Svenson, ironically, presides over the MOD Pizza empire of more than 300 fast-service pizza and salad restaurants, the fastest-growing restaurant chain in America, alongside her husband Scott, who serves as CEO. (Co-founder Ally is officially “Protector of the Purpose.”)

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“This time around,” says Scott, “we decided the primary focus for our enterprise would be the people: paying them a true living wage, offering our people [the kind and quality of] benefits that we would want for our family, and developing them and trusting them to do the right thing,” as well as committing to taking on employees from challenging backgrounds and those with disabilities.

(At MOD, you have a good chance of encountering people like Jeffrey, a young man with Down Syndrome who puts together zillions of the mega-zillions of cardboard boxes MOD goes through every year [here’s a video of Jeffrey at work, coupled with commentary from his father], and you’ll meet other employees in various roles who don’t fit the glossy, stereotypical idea of a worker in a fast-paced high-volume restaurant setting, due to physical, mental, and intellectual disabilities or a background that includes prison time or substance abuse.) 

It’s understandable that the Svensons would need a motivation other than growth for the sake of growth at this point in their lives. Ally and Scott have snatched success from the jaws of success so many times and with such precision and regularity that it’s no doubt siphoned off much of the drama in the idea of repeating the feat once more. The Svensons’ joint entrepreneurial ventures begin in 1994; in their new hometown of London, Ally found herself without a way to satisfy her double-latte habit, prompting the couple to launch Seattle Coffee Company.

A success from the moment they opened their first location in Covent Garden, within three years the Svensons had grown Seattle Coffee to 75 retail locations, after which they sold the business to Starbucks, giving the coffee giant its entrée into the UK and Europe. Scott was then tapped to become President of Starbucks UK and, later, President of Starbucks Europe. Scott and Ally then went on to help grow Carluccio’s, a London-based Italian deli concept, which went public in London in 2005 and was the top listing of the year on the AIM sub-market of the London Stock Exchange.

Now, starting over, but not really needing to, back in their hometown of Bellevue, Washington, an affluent outpost in greater Seattle, Ally again noticed an untapped opportunity in the marketplace. This time, it was the idea of a new lunch option for her family, which now included four hungry boys, and individual quick-fire pizzas were a way to fill that bill. Starting with three MOD locations, Ally and Scott again grew their business with radical speed–so fast that of its 309 locations, a staggering 110 were opened in 2017 alone–but this time, there was a difference. Having made their fortunes at least three times over, on this go-round, they wanted their undertaking to stand for more.

A month ago, my family and I headed to a MOD location in a spiffy but sanitized commercial outcropping (I wouldn’t call it a strip mall; it’s more of a cul-de-sac mall) in the Seattle suburbs. Opening the door to the bright and cheery restaurant, we recoiled on impact from the sound level. Particularly affected was my 13-year-old son, giving the lie to the punk rock slogan, “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.”

But a wonderful and unexpected thing happened when I asked the employee at the counter if the music could be turned down: she said yes. And it wasn’t a sullen, if-it-weren’t-for-the-security-cameras-I’d-be-flipping-you-off kind of “yes,” but a “yes” that was accompanied by sincere accommodation in her manner and expression.

A few weeks after our MOD lunch (which, once the sound level was resolved, was tasty and enjoyable), I’m visiting with Ally at MOD’s Bellevue headquarters, and it becomes clear to me that this minor exchange was more profound than I realized. The woman who was so accommodating of our eardrums is, like many who work at MOD, what Ally calls a “second chance” employee, a felon or former drug user whom MOD has committed to employing. MOD does this in collaboration with local organizations that specialize in rehabilitation, in this case Pioneer Human Services, an enterprise that serves individuals in Washington State who have been released from prison or jail, as well as those in recovery.

And the compassion the employee showed toward my son and me, Ally tells me, is just par for the course; “having been through so much, these are the most compassionate employees we have ever encountered or could ever ask for.”

In fact, that minor kindness to the Solomon family’s eardrums was nothing on the scale of MOD mercy, says Ally. Earlier that month, a friend of Ally’s told her about a scene she had witnessed at another MOD location. She was having lunch with her daughter when a homeless man came into MOD and start going through the trash. An employee went over and said, in a kindly voice, “You must be hungry. Let me make you a pizza,” asked for his preferred toppings, and cooked a pizza for the gentleman, who left with it. Ally’s friend was “blown away,” and put $20 in the tip jar for the employee. But the employee turned around and took the $20, loaded it onto a gift card, and left the building, running down the street to give it to the homeless man for the next time he became hungry.

Ally: “What I love most about that story is”–

Micah:–Is everything.

Ally:      “Yes, actually that’s right. Everything. But beyond “everything,” the thing that I love the most is that this particular MOD Squadder [I never once heard the Svensons break script on using MOD lingo; employees are invariably referred to as MOD Squadders; community outreach is “spreading MODness,” and so forth] is a second-chance employee whose life prior to MOD was such that it would rarely have afforded her an opportunity to help someone like this. She now looks at the world through a lens that she didn’t have before. Her outlook today has been shaped by being given a job opportunity with people who have her back, with coworkers who make her feel that “We’ve got you. We’re taking care of you. We’re here to help.” We encourage people, to do what they can to help, whether it’s helping a fellow Mod Squadder or a customer. Using the business to do this is its true and proper purpose.”

***

I find myself wondering aloud if this way of doing business is viable. So many businesses have acted for so long to the contrary, as if their only job is to push wages as low as possible and returns as high as can be, regardless of the human cost. It even used to be, in the era of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, that to do otherwise was considered a betrayal of shareholders.

Scott tells me he not only views the point of differently, he feels that the rest of the world is, and needs to be, coming around as well. “We believe that our society is at a tipping point. Companies can no longer focus solely on enriching their shareholders; they need to consider the impact they make on their employees, their communities and society at large.  People increasingly expect this, and our society needs it. And even though pursuing the path we’ve taken, of putting people first, entails risks, it also brings with it enormous advantages–assuming we can pull it off–including higher employee loyalty, engagement and productivity, and a better customer experience.”

I still worry, though, how this plays out with MOD’s investors, and how it will play out if times were to get tough. If, say, another 2008 were to happen, would MOD be forced to shift gears to being more short-term and bottom-line oriented?

 Scott says I’m underestimating investors, or at least their investors. “We have been extremely fortunate to attract investors who understand our mission and are supportive of the multitude of tradeoffs we need to navigate in order to build a business that balances profit and purpose.  We were very clear and transparent at the outset about how we planned to build the business and we’ve encouraged people not to invest unless they understood these tradeoffs.”