Slices of Success: Ryan Donovan on Building Community through Ian’s Pizza Milwaukee | Restaurants & Franchises Series

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Kodespode and today’s guest is Ryan Donovan. Ryan serves as managing partner at Ian’s Pizza Milwaukee, a business specializing in local craft quality pizza made from fresh ingredients. Ian’s Pizza was founded in 2001 in Madison, Wisconsin and has grown by focusing on community driven values and creative flavors like their famous mac and cheese pizza. They now have multiple locations in Madison and Milwaukee each devoted to high quality pizza and neighborhood involvement.

They offer delivery, carry out, and curbside service making it easy for customers to enjoy their unique slices. Ian’s Pizza is recognized for its commitment to local collaboration and initiatives that support nonprofits through fundraisers and donations. Under Ryan’s leadership, the Milwaukee location continues to emphasize friendly service, operational excellence, and strong ties to nearby events. Ryan brings years of experience in restaurant management helping Ian’s Pizza maintain a welcoming atmosphere and consistent quality. He also engages with the community ensuring customers feel valued both inside and outside the store. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. All right, back to our guest today, the managing partner that Ian’s Pizza, Ryan Donovan. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today. Hey, thanks for having me, Anthony. So every story has a beginning, Ryan. What sparked your journey in the industry and what moments along the way made you realize this was your calling?

Ryan Donovan: Well, I left Finalak, Wisconsin to go to college at University of Wisconsin, Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2003, I began there as a student at Madison. Ian’s had a following pretty quickly. Everyone knew about Ian’s. It was pretty close to the dorm I lived in. Come my sophomore year, I lived a block away.

There was a hiring sign on the door and I decided it was toward the end of my sophomore year actually because I was going into summer and I was looking for a summer job to kind of coincide with the part-time gig I had, which was calling alumni and asking for donations. Kind of like telemarketing, but you’re not even selling anything. So sometimes you’d have great conversations, but for the most part, it was a lot of hangups and a lot of people like don’t bother me. So I was like, you know, this pizza thing, as soon as I started working there, at first I thought, you know, it would just be a summer job.

And within a few, I mean, within a month of that summer, I realized actually, like, you know what, when school starts back up, I’m not going to be doing this calling alumni, asking for donations thing. I’m going to be sticking with Ian’s pizza. I enjoyed the, it’s working with fellow employees, like meeting people that I probably went to Med at Madison, being such a huge campus. It’s really a tight knit staff at that time with the single location. And just the different challenges in any day. You’d have great customers, you’d have the challenging customers. And I really enjoyed that aspect and just like, every day was slightly different, very fast paced. So it never felt like sitting there watching the clock waiting for time to go by, because it was like, especially on a busy night, when you’re delivering, it was just like that excitement of like, Oh, another delivery, you want to make more money? Like, usually people are tipping. That’s, that’s how you made your money as a delivery driver. Ian’s provided a car at the time too, which helped because I didn’t have a car in college.

So it was like, we’re able to use their vehicle, go deliver their pizzas, make pretty good money and tips and had a pretty good time while doing it. And so as my colleges went, I was 2005. So the company was just celebrating their four year anniversary, a few months after I started. And yeah, I began the passion in the food industry. I even remember the first time, like in my interview, they kind of had that comment of like, Hey, you know, we’re trying to grow as a company, would you ever have that interest? And I was like, Yeah, I remember telling my parents after the interview, like, Yeah, you know, maybe I could end up being in the pizza business someday.

And I think they kind of laugh because at the time I had zero experience in this idea to be in a pizza business. Like, what, like, where did that come from? Right? But it was just like, it kind of got planted in that interview. And I think within the first year of working there, it really started to like settle in like, this, this could be something I could, I could continue to pursue.

So I mean, fast forward. Okay, I think that was oh, oh, five, like I said, I started, I graduated college in oh, eight. And by January 1st of 2010, I was opening the store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Anthony Codispoti: And so you’re an owner in the Milwaukee store?

Ryan Donovan: Yes. So I’m managing partner. So basically, I’m like the owner that makes all the decisions. A lot of the other owners are just investors. Some are actually my really good friends that are currently working with me here in Milwaukee as well. So again, obviously, they’re very much hands on in the decision making process. But even people that aren’t owners, like my, my managers at every store, I don’t tend to make any decision without consulting them, getting their opinions. It’s really like, put the minds together and then kind of go from there and path forward. So everyone that’s involved with the company does have some say, but when it comes to ownership, there’s a few owners that are more just silent partners in the background.

Anthony Codispoti: And so what was it like opening your first store?

Ryan Donovan: Open the first store was an experience. So when I started with Ian’s in Madison, we only had one location. I was part of the hired group like a month or so before we were opening our second location on State Street. So I kind of had that experience of being involved in a very startup of a store, you know, the struggles that a new store has, even when you have an established brand in an area, you still have to have people realize like, oh, we’re here now.

And, you know, establish those like trends of like, oh, let’s go to that one versus that one sort of situation. So I had a little bit of that, that experience of opening a store, but going to Milwaukee and being at a manager level was quite a bit more than just a general front of house employee. And yeah, it was, it was moving to Milwaukee. It toward the end of December of 2009, I think about five, six days of very much hands on in the store, trying to get everything together, getting all our final inspections and permits and things all in line so we could open those doors because our goal is always to open on like January 1st or like New Year’s Eve that night at like midnight when the ball is dropped, we’re going to open our doors to the customer. And, you know, even that, you know, leading up to that day, I think it was two, three, 18 hour days in a row, just trying to get everything in line that morning. I mean, we were signed off for the permits at like four PM that New Year’s Eve, I think for one of our final things that we need to get signed off on the wire to get it.

Yeah. At the City Hall licensing building, getting the piece of paper in hand that we needed from after that last sign off from the building inspector, court inspector, I think he was actually involved with like the health department even was like the final like sign off person.

Anthony Codispoti: So you guys have a total of six locations now, three each in Milwaukee and Madison?

Ryan Donovan: Yeah, brick and mortar wise, we have three locations in Milwaukee, three locations in Madison. Actually, both Milwaukee and Madison, we kind of opened our third locations within like a month apart in 2019. So, you know, it’s definitely those thoughts of number four even, but here in Milwaukee, we definitely made more of the approach of offsite events and things like giving into a professional baseball stadium here in town. I sometimes have to be kind of careful on what we say because we’re not partners technically, we but we are in there again this year. We’re also in other like the Panther Arena where people like the Milwaukee Wave, which is a professional indoor soccer team, the Admirals, which is a ACH.

So it’s like a step below the NHL. They’re actually a UW Milwaukee basketball plays, their concerts and things. And then Summer Fest, like that was a really big ad two years ago.

People that aren’t from this area might not know a Summer Fest, but it’s actually the world’s largest music festival. It used to take place over about 10 and 11 days straight. Now they’ve actually during COVID, they after it came out of COVID and reopened, they changed the format. Instead of being like 11 days straight, they break it up over three weekends. So it’s a last two weekends of June, first week in a July. And so it’s just a massive festival out on the leg front.

There’s five, six different free stages. So they have all sorts of bands, many famous bands. You know, the headliners usually on nights are bands yet are very famous that you’ve heard of. But then there’s always also the amphitheater stage, which is kind of like the upgraded stage. You know, you pay extra to get the amphitheater stage tickets. And that’s where they get the, you know, the current biggest headliners there is. I, you know, they’re currently announcing those. I think this next, the most recent one they announced was the killers one of the nights, Sting, Sting and somebody’s performing one of the nights. So it’s, it’s a, yeah, it’s a big draw.

Anthony Codispoti: I think that’s made over a million people. This is continuing to be a big part of your growth plans is to look for more of these sort of community events or community locations, the stadiums, the arenas to do more business in rather than maybe opening up new physical locations.

Ryan Donovan: Yeah. I mean, we had like catering offsite and we kind of made that push as we got into like doing more of those things. And as we even doing full service weddings, where we bring the, bring the people and do everything from busing tables to serving pizza with their ovens. And, and so that kind of grew into this and these opportunities, you know, it was like, you get into one place and some of these people that work there end up moving jobs and getting that. That’s kind of how we got into the professional baseball stadium here, you know, in the American family field was just due to a contact we had from working at another venue. And they saw what we can do and saw how, saw how well we run things and brought us in there and, and again, the work.

Anthony Codispoti: And so are you using the kitchens at your three locations or do you have another location that you use for the, all the catering setup?

Ryan Donovan: So when it comes to some of them, like the summer fest, we have a massive setup there. We’re, we’re full on production there on everything. We do everything there for making our dough and sauce and all of it just to really, it’d be hard for the volume we have to do there not to have that because the store just have a really hard time making all that dough on top of making what they need. But for event like an American family field, there we do not have the ability to produce the dough and the sauce and stuff.

So that requires the store that’s closest. I’m actually sitting at it right now. It’s in the Story Hill neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Actually, if you would look out the window here in the winter, you can actually see the baseball stadium. And so yeah, we make this the raw product here and, and have like the ovens and stuff there to actually cook it. So we get the raw product there in the coolers before the series of the home series and our concerts and such and do it from there.

So it kind of depends on the venue. Same with the pantherina, that one, we have very little space. We only have enough for our finishing ovens. So for that location, we actually have to make the pizza that depending on the event, it could be all three stores in Milwaukee helping contribute because of the volume of an amount that needs to get there at once. And so we get those pizzas there, we finish them just like we would at the store. So the quality you’re getting there is the exact same quality you’re getting at the store. It’s made by the same cooks with the same standards.

Anthony Codispoti: So same recipes, tell us about the food. What’s different about the pizza that you guys make, Brian?

Ryan Donovan: Well, when we first, like when I first became involved with Ian’s and Madison, the idea of like New York’s pizza by the slice was a pretty novell concept here in Wisconsin. Like you didn’t see much of it in a lot of cities you went to.

I mean, I think back to my like hometown wall, maybe subarrows was our subarrows, however you pronounce it was like, that was like where you saw that. And again, I don’t know that their quality was to our level. I think many people would probably agree with that. But for the most part, people didn’t understand that like, walk in, see pizza in the window, like what heated up.

And so we kind of like that now was kind of the niche that that got brought by Ian himself who started the company who was the founder Ian’s Pizza. He went to college out in the East Coast. He was he spent most of his life living in the Massachusetts area and went to UMass. And again, I think he got his go because he knew this guy that owned this pizza shop spoke Italian and he was taking Italian and college and just wanted to go in and practice speaking Italian with him.

So he’d go and have conversations with the guy and realize like, Hey, that’s pretty cool what you’re doing. Why don’t I come home work with you? I get to practice my Italian. He’s I’m super into food. So I get to learn about making pizza and for him, that’s what involved into going out and starting Ian’s Pizza in Madison, Wisconsin.

Anthony Codispoti: So he brought that New York style pizza by the slice idea to Midwest there.

Ryan Donovan: And yeah, he brought the New York style idea. He brought the, you know, a New York style dough recipe. You know, a lot of people we get coming in from New York, they’re always questioning on New York style pizza, like nothing’s ever as good as home. And then like every now and then you’ll have that person that’s like, tell them tell them the wife’s like going to the husband, tell them what you just told me. And he’s like, I actually think this is just as good or maybe even better than my home spot. He’s like, I it hurts me to admit it.

Like, they’re like, they’re like blown away. Like, how can a place in Wisconsin do New York style pizza? And I was like, well, you realize most of the cheese that those top places are used in come from Wisconsin, right? That’s always kind of how I lead into that with with those people that are like, how can Wisconsin do it as good as New York? Well, the cheese is a big part of it. And that comes from, from here in Wisconsin at a lot of the top places in New York. I hear water. Part of it too.

What do you guys do with those? It’s a huge part of it. And a lot of the dough is in the water. And a lot of people in the dough industry will try to say different things.

But like, it’s clearly there is a mineral content that really helps you produce like the best New York style pizza dough. So much so that they make equipment now where wherever you are in the world, you can get New York water or whatever, like they have different settings you can do if you want water from a different region. And you can set it so it puts that mineral content into your water.

And I mean, you can even set the temperature it’s going to come out into your bucket that you’re going to put in. Is that the setup that you guys use? You’re Milwaukee, we do not use that setup. Actually, we were lucky enough that have really good water in Milwaukee. I think some of the National Post put us in like some of the top five like locally sourced waters you can get in the country. And in Milwaukee, we luckily have, I but in the future as we look to expand those are definitely options we are looking into. When we built some of our stores built out, it really requires space and some of my places here in Milwaukee, I just don’t know that we would have had that space or maybe even the resources when we were originally opening our stores to get that equipment. Some of it didn’t even exist.

So I didn’t even know about it necessarily to more recently as well. So I think as the future goes, you know, looking at other areas, those are definitely the thoughts of like, how do we keep our product consistent? Well, if we get this system, we can mimic our water here in Milwaukee or mimic our water in Madison.

Anthony Codispoti: So Ryan, thinking about post COVID, I’m curious to hear maybe percentage breakdown of what your business looks like. Dine in, carry out and offsite. And maybe you think about it in different categories.

Ryan Donovan: Yeah, we kind of separate offsite, almost its own thing in some ways, because it just really depends on the time of year. Right now, we’re in the slow season when it comes to offsite things. There’s no all those like events I named that were big parts of, not a lot of those happen in outside of the panther arena and those hockey games, indoor soccer games, basketball games. There’s not the outdoor festivals and things where we go set up and invent, you know, we do quite a few of those in the summer as well, whether it be things like the pet walk, which is a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Humane Society, or even every year, we’re invited to brew fest, which is a big beer tasting festival that we get to set up and vent pizza out for all those that are there for their free beer samples.

And so those type of events, you know, the park beer gardens and things like that are all non-existent in the winter. So, you know, it’s kind of our slower time where we focus on stores. I think delivery and the, in this time of the year tends to be a little higher percentage than it would be in the summer, where the foot traffic like offsets that it’s not that there’s more delivery right now.

I mean, maybe a little bit some days, but for the most part, it’s pretty consistent year round. It’s just the matter of when the in-store foot traffic slows down, obviously that shifts the percentages a little bit. You know, when you hit the slower months, sales are lower. I mean, we just are getting through our slowest time of the year, December, January, and then coming up February, always the three slowest months for us.

March, it always starts to pick up. You had events like St. Patrick’s Day that get a lot of people out. And the way they do it here in Milwaukee, there tends to be like numerous weekends of celebration. There’s like the weekend of the parade.

This one outfit tends to organize a bar crawl. That’s like two weekends before St. Patrick’s Day. Then there’s St. Patrick’s Day itself that tends to draw a lot of people. So, March tends to be where we start wrapping up and seeing that like, all right, we’re picking up into like the busier season. Then April hits, weather’s getting warmer, things pick up.

Anthony Codispoti: You guys, stretch out those holidays there in Milwaukee, don’t you?

Ryan Donovan: Oh yeah. I would say like the bar district by a lot of our stores is definitely appreciated too.

Anthony Codispoti: So, why do people go nuts for your signature mac and cheese pizza? What’s the big deal here?

Ryan Donovan: You know, I think, I mean, I hate to say it. I think the mac and cheese, on my end, is somewhat overrated. I think we have a lot of slices that are actually better than the mac and cheese. But I think we were one of the originals. Like, I look back to when I first started, you’d see these executives from other companies coming through. And you knew there was because they were wearing their button up polos with the company’s logo on them.

And then all of a sudden a month later, what do you know? They have mac and cheese on their menu too. And you know, the people are trying it like, we like yours so much better. I try mac and cheese pizza here and mac and cheese pizza there.

And I like Ian’s the best. And then, you know, I think some of it’s just a mindset you come into. Like when you’re with your friends having a good time and you come in and eat something, it often will taste better than if you’re in a bad mood. You can eat that exact same product. But like the mood can change your experience of that food. And I think a lot of times people are coming to Ian’s in great spirits after a fun night out or a fun event they just did, whether it’s, you know, we tend to our Madison’s original source right by the Cole Center where a lot of events happen at UW Madison.

I store here in town, we’re right right up from where the bucks perform and, you know, a lot of foot traffic there. And, you know, people are in that positive spirit and they come and have that that food and it just kind of goes hand in hand. It’s like when you’re having a positive experience and you eat something that tends to even make that product, you eat a better experience. And I think that helps a lot too.

Anthony Codispoti: A lot of times it’s hard for vegans to find good pizza options. What can they find at Ian’s?

Ryan Donovan: Yeah, so that is one of the things here in Milwaukee, especially, I know our Madison stores do some of the vegan stuff as well. But Milwaukee, we were the big push behind that. And it started a few years after we opened, a couple of vegan people coming in asked us what we could do. And at that time, one of our locations was right across from the Whole Foods. They had some vegan cheese options we could get.

They had some vegan meat options we could get. So we would actually go over there and be like, yeah, well, you know what, we’ll try this out for you. We’ll go get the cheese. Like if you’re willing to or bring it to us, bring us the products, we’ll whip you up the pizza. And that slowly turned into us sourcing those ingredients. I would say when it comes to product and changes, the vegan scene the most changed from what we were serving on day one, doing vegan pizza to what we’re serving today is leaps and bounds different. But even the products available, like the vegan following the different meat options they have now, Fox Meats, as I would say, the different cheese options even they have, obviously vegan cheese, it’s not actually cheese. And it’s really helped us be able to try to get as close to our non-vegan product with vegan ingredients as we can. And vegans notice that like any, almost every vegan that comes in reviews we get from vegans are just like by far some of the best vegan pizza I’ve ever had. And I would say a lot of that’s due to our efforts of trying to improve that product because the original vegan product we have, most of us that weren’t vegans would take a bite and be like, I can’t even believe people want to eat this.

Like I mean, the meats and the things just were not, we didn’t get it. Like why wouldn’t you just put veggies on there? Why would you put these fake meats on there that aren’t even that tasty? But now it’s like some of these meats, it’s like we do a euro, it’s like hard to tell the difference between our vegan euro and our regular euro, except the texture still isn’t quite 100% the same with the vegan cheese and the to real cheese.

Anthony Codispoti: But for the most part, That’s saying something. Tell me about some of the other flavor innovations that you guys have done and where do the ideas come from?

Ryan Donovan: I mean, the ideas a lot of times come from employees. We have our own commissary kitchen based on the Madison area. So like they do a lot of the main raw prep for ingredients just so I keep everything consistent between stores.

When it comes to like different meats that need to be cooked and things like that, creating a sausage that is our own proprietary sausage ingredients and such. But I would say it’s like the never ending innovation of trying to produce better products, even some of the slices we’ve done for many years, we’ve tried to make changes and tweak to make them better, improve the quality. I think most recently some of it was even like our chicken, we used to do more of this kind of like chunk chicken. And and now we found like the slice version is just so much better.

It creates like a more moist and tender chicken finish than what we had before. Better covering up the pizza and just little things like that, just little tweaks over the years, trying to never just coast along with exactly what we were doing, but trying to improve. One thing that’s never changed really is our dough. We pretty much have a product that I don’t think that will ever change.

There’s no reason to change something that you know, it’s not broke, don’t fix it. We get so many compliments on our quality of our product when it comes to dough and our crust. And you know, those are kind of that’s kind of one of those that it won’t be touched probably ever. But some of the other things, you know, like I said, improving ingredients we’re using even over the years, we’ve experimented with different mozzarella’s. I mean, one time I believe we spent over a year just constantly when we were in company wide meetings in Madison once a month sampling, sampling, sampling. They finally got to the point where like, when they brought it in blind from the cheese we were using the cheese we were in, it was like, well, this one melts a little better. I can’t tell anything difference in taste. Like none of us could even tell which one was different other than sometimes by the melt and other pieces. So, you know, making little changes like that to try to even just improve.

Anthony Codispoti: 1% 1% 1% tweet. You turn the dials and you turn the dials.

Ryan Donovan: We have the leader of our commissary kitchen, her name is Alicia. She often helps come up with some of the new recipes with ideas for employees, even some employees will come up like, Hey, I had this idea for a creation and they might experiment at home, you know, bring some stuff in and we try some experiments in the store for, you know, it’s kind of dialed in a little bit and then we kind of send it off to her.

Hey, we have this idea for a slice. Like, in sense, there where they’ll be doing the main production of it, she might make some more tweaks to it and her team and then they bring it so like once, at least once a quarter, we have like our Wisconsin food meeting where we get everyone together from all the different stores all like all the managers at the food level and sample things that are either going to be like the next creations to come out or, or, you know, Hey, offer pointers on like how to tweak them a little bit before we release them. And so where we really get to have that experimentation is we have biweekly specials. So every, every single Tuesday, a new special starts that runs for two weeks.

So as one special ends, a new one begins and that will run for two weeks. And so that really allows us to kind of push the boundaries of what you think of pizza, you know, and you still get those people like, Oh, do you have any normal pizza? Like, Yeah, sure.

What do you want? We, we do the basics. We can do anything. We have all the ingredients for that. But we’re more known for those out there varieties.

You know, one of our big ones that we do all the time is Smokey the Bandits, a barbecue chicken cheddar bacon with our homemade ranch. And again, that’s, that’s just a head turner.

Anthony Codispoti: Well, and that’s got to be fun for the customers too. If they know that every couple of weeks, there’s going to be something new that’s on special. Hey, let’s go see what Ian’s has got on tap today and like what kind of fun things they come up with.

Ryan Donovan: For sure. And employees. I mean, you know, we eat this. I mean, I still eat pizza five days a week. And I never get sick of it. Because as soon as, as soon as you like, would think you’d might get tired of a slice, well, I’m not eating that one slice all the time. Today, I might feel like a pepperoni. Tomorrow, I might feel like a four cheese. A lot of times I’m trying the specials because they’re only around for such a little bit of time.

And a lot of times the special ones are like, I love this slice, I’ll be eating it for five days straight because it’s only going to be around for two weeks.

Anthony Codispoti: Ryan, you’re still a pretty young guy, but you’ve achieved a level of success that, you know, a lot of people would aspire to. What do you feel are some key decisions or actions that have helped you get to this point?

Ryan Donovan: You know, I think part of it is like even hearing that I don’t feel that way. I’ve always had that drive. I can attribute it to my parents, my father and mother were very good at installing a work ethic on me, especially my dad seeing his work ethic my whole life and just kind of always having that structure and, you know, I attribute a lot to that. At a young age, I was helping my dad.

I think a lot of young boys are there watching their dad do something like that. I think he was very helpful in helping, he was very part of my life and teaching me those things and encouraging me to pick up a wrench or whatever it was, helping around all the things. And even to this, you know, it’s made me more of a handyman in the industry that I’m in, in a small business like this.

I’m sure people, anyone watching this that runs their own small business, especially restaurants can attribute to, especially when you’re a small shop, it’s you got to learn to do a lot of things on your own because otherwise you’re going to have expenses that just get out of control sometimes. And so yeah, I would say that that work ethic and that drive, it just kind of pushed me. And I think in college, I really started to have that thought of what do I want to do with my like, what I want to do after this. And I think for a long time, I thought I’m going to be going to from here to law school, and I’m going to go on to become a lawyer. But as I started working at Ian’s Pizza, I kind of started to change that as like, you know what, I could always go back and go to law school if that’s something I want to do. But I love this idea of like trying to go create something, work for myself, you know, along with my friends and family at times.

Anthony Codispoti: So Ian, what do you think is the growth strategy that’s been most successful for your business?

Ryan Donovan: I think a big success of our growth has been like the growth from within, you know, and really getting people to realize that you go work edge, I think a lot of people go work at a restaurant and you think of like, we consider ourselves fast casual, so not quite fast food, but close to it. I think most people would get a job there, don’t expect to be like, oh, I’m going to get a job here and like, stick with this for us in my life, possibly. I think that’s one of the things as a company, we really try to like, hey, you, you come at ground level, we’re looking for you to do this and nothing more. But if you want more, like, we’re here to get, teach you more, we’re here to get you more in it. And if you want to someday own an Ian’s Pizza and operate an Ian’s Pizza in a different territory, hey, maybe it even might be in this territory as we expand. Like, we’d like to make that option available. But again, it takes time, it takes effort, and it takes, it takes an individual that’s willing to make some sacrifices.

Anthony Codispoti: Talk more about that option for employees to potentially become owners, partners.

Ryan Donovan: Well, yeah, I mean, I’m standing here right in front of you as a managing partner. I started as a general front of house employee slash delivery driver in Madison, Wisconsin. I did that for three plus years before I even stepped up to a supervisor level role. Now, I may have behaved like a supervisor prior to having the label.

But yeah, I was I was three, four years, just a general employee. And realize, hey, like, this could be like a step forward as I graduated college, I set more into a leadership role around the same time. It was kind of a transition graduating and leadership were kind of in the same, I would say, semester or year of college. And then I kind of had that year of trying to develop myself as much as I could to go on to Milwaukee to open a store as we were getting our location scouting, doing a build out. Luckily, was able to bring some people from Madison with me who had who were already going to be making the move to Milwaukee due to different dynamics, whether it be their significant others, our wife’s going to medical school here. There was a couple of guys that that came with me, or people that were just also looking to kind of take that step up for Madison into like a higher level role from what they were doing there and wanted to make the move and make the change.

Anthony Codispoti: And so is this something that you talk to employees about as they’re coming in for the first time like, hey, you know, here’s sort of a carrot out here. This might be a possibility down the road.

Ryan Donovan: Yeah, we, you know, we try to address that regularly with our employees, you know, again, try not to think of it as dangling a carrot, but in a way that you’re right. That is kind of how it is when you hear that.

Anthony Codispoti: Well, they just let them know that the possibility exists. So for sure. For sure. And I mean, it is what it, I mean, that is kind of what it is. And yes, we definitely are trying to get that, that, that vision out there to our employees. You know, we have our 20, 30 vision that is on our website that anyone can see.

You know, we had that posted for our employees on the breakrooms and for people to read and see and really kind of try to plant that seed of like, hey, if this is something you could see yourself doing long term and want to be more involved, want to make it something where you could really build a career off of it, you know, support a family off of it. Like we’re, we’re here to make that happen. But again, it’s not easy.

Like that’s the one caveat I always got to toss in, like it’s going to take time. It’s going to take work and it’s going to take effort by, by any individual. And obviously those that come in with more, more skills from outside, maybe, and maybe have some more experience in leadership and stuff are able to excel quicker than some of those that have none of that experience. Some people are just young and they don’t want to take on that, that, that extra responsibility right away. They’d rather get their feet wet at a, at the general level. But I feel like most employees that stick around tend to start having that like, hey, yeah, I’d like to step up more into a leadership role. I’d like to, you know, it usually starts with stepping into a shift lead or learning to cook, you know, from being a basic front of house employee.

And then it kind of just, it can go up from there. Ryan, what’s a one tool software or framework that has contributed to your success that would be interesting to talk about?

Ryan Donovan: I don’t know that necessarily there’s one single tool. I think when it comes to organization and stuff, Google, Google has a lot of tools that really help us in our business. We very much operate off of Google Hangouts, Google meets, Google document, like our server, you know, all that is Google based. So employees need to try to make a new template for something and link it up in a meeting, our meeting docs and our agendas for different levels, whether it be a manager meeting, a shift lead meeting or an all staff meeting, or even up to like the board level and meetings there.

It’s all intertwined and you can have links to these docs here and links to those docs there. I’m not too much of an aficionado when it comes to Excel, but luckily my wife is. She’s a CPA accountant and when I need something, I explain to her what I need a doc to do. She often is the one that helps me.

Does the ground work for creating what I need and I help her make the tweaks of my recommendations. How do I do this or how do I make it do this and really create those things that help control tracking and just follow up with employees and how things are going even to like the offsite things we do. You know, trying to predict how many pizzas we need to get there for an event that really helps having the data points or be able to plug in.

All right, they’re estimating 7,000 people tonight put in 7,000 and it kind of spits out. You’re ideally the pizzas you bring and the amounts of them you bring to help reduce waste. Because again, the last thing you want to do is have waste. Not only is this like a sustainability thing, I hate waste. I’d rather, you know, the companies that throw their extra products in the trash because they don’t want employees to possibly steal or make extra to take home.

Like that just like for our company, that’s just like why would you do that? Like try to do some good with it. If anything, try to get it to a food bank. But we’re always on the thing of I’d rather have that pizza go in a belly than the trash any day. And so we do a lot here in Milwaukee with taking those slice when we do offsite events, especially where we have, you know, it’s sometimes harder to judge what the volume is going to be and when we have extra, we’re stopping by the Milwaukee rescue mission that we’ve had a really good partnership with and dropping those pizzas off to them to help serve to the people that are staying there. And I know more recently it sounds like their attendance or the people that are residing there on any given night has increased dramatically. Again, I don’t know what all the reasons are for that.

Some of the landscapes and you know, more homeless population, maybe more seeking the help or finding help than in the past. This time of year, especially it’s cold. We’re in Wisconsin. We don’t have much snow this year, but we have had the bitter cold.

And I think that also helps really drive some of those, those homeless issues into the warming shelters into these places where they can have a safe warm night to sleep. Coming up here is Pizza Across America. So National Pizza Day is February 9th.

This year it falls on Super Bowl Sunday. So kind of the Pizza Across America group is like that next week we understand the actual day is probably not the best day with the volume that you already have. But it’s the goal of pizza companies across the country, signing the pledge to donate at least 10 pizzas to helping feed the hungry or helping feed for a good cause. And so every year they really make this push.

And you know, here at Eons, we’re really proud to say we’ve been part of that now for years. Milwaukee and Madison, every store, at least doing that 10 pizzas this year. Each store in Milwaukee is going to be doing 15. To the Milwaukee Rescue Mission to make sure we have enough to feed everybody that’s there that dinner that night.

And I think those type of initiatives that are like what really kind of set us apart from other companies. Any given month, we have a donation dock online through our website. People can put into, hey, I’m looking for a donation for this. And a lot of times it’s like fundraisers and that’s giving out gift cards to like add to a basket or we don’t give a gift card with a shirt and some different items. Just kind of have that Eons pizza basket to raise money for whatever different funds that they’re going for from childhood leukemia or cancer initiatives to help you get people off the streets. And some things are even beyond those when it comes to organizations and fundraising. It can be organizations like big brothers, big sisters and things like that. We love to get involved with community things.

Anthony Codispoti: I mean, that’s a lot. That’s a lot of different things that you’ve just rattled off there. And I think it’s great like that level of community involvement when it feels good to do, it’s the right thing to do. But people in the community, they notice those things, right? They notice it takes time. It goes a long ways towards building your brand.

Ryan Donovan: It does. And you know, it creates that like people appreciation, especially with these organizations and they get the word out on that. Even you’re round right now. We sell churro and puppy chow. And to me, a lot of people don’t know what that is like puppy chow is like the peanut butter chocolate checks mix covered in powdered sugar.

And I think some places people call it mud buddies and some people are like, I’ve never even heard of this. It is not for dogs, obviously. It has chocolate in it. But that is non vegan product. And like you mentioned earlier, we have quite a vegan following. So at one point we’re like, Hey, we need we have this puppy chow is like our dessert option.

We need like a vegan version or something. And an employee at the time and his brother were like, they took it upon themselves to make create churro chow, which like a churro, you know, a cinnamon sugar coated. It’s like the puppy chow with the checks, but a vegan version because, you know, we don’t use any animal products or any butter or things like that.

That would prevent the vegan from eating it. So we have the puppy chow and the churro chow options. And actually, we donate 10% of all those sales to a local animal initiative. You know, it we kind of go quarterly. So it’s like one quarter we might be doing the Wisconsin Humane Society. We’re donating 10% of all proceeds from the chow churro and puppy chow is the that another one we did was called rescue gang here in Milwaukee. Again, another organization that, you know, it gets pets off the streets or like helps people, you know, get pets in the families and homes.

And so, you know, it’s different, different ones around here, Madoc and other ones. We’re, we’re, you know, constantly looking and we tell people, Hey, if you have one of these initiatives, let us know because you could be on our next quarter of that donation.

Anthony Codispoti: What is donation nights?

Ryan Donovan: So donation nights happen a little more few and far between. We’ve had some success and some negatives, but it’s kind of this idea of like a company, a business organization, or usually it’s nonprofits looking to raise funds for X, Y and Z initiatives that are usually all, you know, supporting initiatives that are for a better mental community.

And yeah, they drive people into a store on a given night when it’s going to be there like donation night, maybe it’s a certain timeframe, anybody that comes in for, and whether it be with this fire or mentions that they’re here because of this donation night, certain percentage of those proceeds are of that sale will go directly to that organization.

Anthony Codispoti: Brian, growth often comes from some of our biggest challenges in life. What’s a serious challenge that you have worked through, whether it’s personal or professional, what was it like getting through that? And what did you learn coming through the other side?

Ryan Donovan: I apologize, Anthony. One moment, I just got to plug in. I just realized my battery’s draining the rapid. Sorry about that. Well, obviously running a small business, there’s many challenges. You got to wear a lot of, I mean, for me, especially, I mentioned, you know, I had some, I learned a lot as a young kid that problem solving ability, I think is one of the most important characteristics of a strong leader in our industry, especially being able to either try to tackle a problem, you know, today YouTube’s a huge help when it comes to basic fixing things that you might not be sure of, or at least looking to see, Hey, is this something I’m capable of? But when it comes to like, like really those challenges, like some of those pressing things, you know, opening a new store really takes a lot out of you.

It takes, you know, if you’re really concerned about your work life balance, it’s probably not for you, at least in the start, you know, I’m in a position now where it’s like that work life balance is really based on my leadership and setting it up for that success. But there’s times where it’s just, it’s not feasible or you lose, you lose people that you’re not expecting and it’s, it becomes a grind. Open a new story, you’re always pulling some really strong leaders from another.

When some of those leaders leave to go open a new story in a whole another territory, you’ll lose them completely. And it’s like starting from scratch, trying to get people to that level as quickly as possible that can really create some difficult times. You know, for one, for a while, we really just have in trouble with just the getting people in the door. I mean, we’d go weeks and weeks and weeks with these huge hiring campaigns and get a couple of candidates only.

Some of them might not even have quite been the level we needed. And so that really starts to put a drag on you. I mean, attitude mentality of like, man, this, you know, working 12 hour days, 80 plus hour work weeks, one after another, not really knowing, Hey, when, when is this going to end?

You start realizing it affects everything from your attitude to how you are treating others at times. You know, and I think one of my biggest issues at times have been trying to coach people or train people, but maybe didn’t approach it in the right way. You know, I just, the wrong, the wrong words or set it in a wrong tone and just created a, a rift that took time to repair.

And, you know, it was a struggle. I’ve lost employees in the past due to maybe not handling the best handling certain situations, the best as a leader. And then, you know, it, it, like, it goes from your work to your personal because it’s, it affects your mentality and your attitude outside and your mental health is, you know, it starts to struggle. And the next thing you know, it’s just like this snowball effect of things seem like they’re going worse and worse and worse and worse. And you really got to get out of that funk. Um, you know, some, some huge struggles I’ve had is like letting go. Cause again, when someone makes a mistake or you start relying more on others, it, you know, it’s, it’s letting go of some of that responsibility yourself and putting it on others. But if the ball’s dropped, it’s like, can be catastrophic, depending on the situations, you could lose a really big client that.

Orders, you know, they’re trying to feed 250 to 500 people once a month. And, and you also need, you know, a mistake there and you lose that, that account or you lose that product. And it’s like, that’s significant when you add it up over a year. And so, you know, it’s, it’s really just trying to balance that. And as I’ve grown as a leader and, you know, read books, have other, you know, have other mentors and talk with other business leaders and, and developing, you know, it helps you really like try to create that psych and, and, and that leadership style that, that works for the industry. You know, read some of these leadership books and it’s like, it, it doesn’t necessarily coincide as well with the pizza industry as like, you know, the tech job industry. And if you, if you read some of that, wrote a book about working in leadership at Apple, it might not have all the same benefits as somebody that might have wrote a leadership book on some restaurants or, or starting restaurants. And, and I think those, for me, is the, the balance of trying to grow my leadership while also trying to keep my new stores and things going at the same time and has been a struggle at times. As we continue to grow and get strong people, I find myself having more of that time to develop myself, which also allows me to develop my leaders and stronger leaders versus just trying to catch everything you can and, and fly by day by day, just getting through it and making sure we’re doing the best we can. And it’s like really helps you plan for the future and plan for that growth as you continue to expand.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. Thanks for opening up about all that, Ryan. A few things I want to unpack there. You know, one of the first things that you mentioned was, you know, you had these big hiring campaigns before that, you know, for days and weeks didn’t bring anybody in the door. I’m curious what things that you have tried and have found have worked to get people in the door. Yeah.

Ryan Donovan: You know, at that time, we really, I feel like it was just kind of that, you know, it was really the time when it was coming out of COVID. I think a lot of people were kind of still fearful to be in the industry. We’re in, you know, you’re around a lot of people constantly. I even during it, you know, the idea that everyone, oh, my life’s changed a lot. Well, in our business, it didn’t change too much for a lot of us. Sure, we cut down the level of staff we had at times. We had to adapt to different rules and regulations at times.

But for the most part, like Ian’s pizza, the business kept going in much the same way it had been operating prior to COVID, whereas a lot of other businesses changed drastically. People were working remotely. I think it created a lot of people looking for more of those jobs that were didn’t require them to have to be on a site. You know, it’s like you could just open your computer from home and do the things where as ours, you know, it’s you have to be here. There isn’t too much offsite work to be done. I mean, yes, at a leadership level and administratively, there are some things, but not enough to where we’re hiring for those.

I mean, we had our leaders in those positions to do those things. So yeah, I think as things changed, you know, and people got more comfortable, it opened up more, but just trying to cast nets everywhere you can, whether it be signage in the store, we have big, big signs with QR codes that will take you directly to an application. We have table tents, you know, think of that when you’re at those restaurants, those little placements, actually, I got one sitting in front of me right here. I can hold up, you know, think of things like these to advertise to customers as they come in, potential people that could work for us, you know. And, you know, at every level, we’re just looking for full time people.

You could be a part time person that’s looking to work one day a week just to stay busy. I think recently, you know, we found some success in some retirees. We’re looking to like, hey, I’ve been retired and realized and I’m just kind of bored at home looking for something to do.

One gentleman came back to be a delivery driver, you know, part time, few days a week. And he’s like, I love this. This is great. And then, you know, compared to the industry he was in, he’s like, this is so much more relaxed than like people around are just so chill. And I was like, yeah, it’s definitely different. I had a few experiences working in factories. And that’s where he came from. He was a Harley engineer for 30 some years. So, you know, here in his stories and his work work experience, it just like gives you these different perspectives too. Like I said, I had a couple of summers working in factories. So I have a little bit of that experience as well.

Anthony Codispoti: You mentioned that sometimes in the past, you maybe approached an employee issue in the wrong way. Maybe use the wrong tone of voice. Learning from some of those experiences. Can you encapsulate maybe the single biggest change that you’ve made in the way that you approach employee management?

Ryan Donovan: One of the biggest things I try to make is on certain, like pick your battles. There are certain things like now might not be the time and I have to really like realize like certain things to address and there’s certain time to address them.

And I really try to pick my battles and things that in a frustrating moment is never good to try to call somebody out for making a mistake or like you could do this better because they’re already frustrated. Anybody that’s working in the restaurant industry, like the term in the weeds, I would say on the in the pizza business and the pizza industry on a Friday night here, especially between four and eight p.m. That’s all our kitchens, you know, it’s like Saturdays tends to space out a little bit more because I think people, you know, a lot more to go off work and they eat in different regimen. But on a Friday night, it’s like a lot of people get done with work at a very similar time and are looking to eat at a very similar time. And it is just organized chaos is often how we describe it. You know, we we’re fast paced environment trying to pump out as much pizza as we can, breadsticks, salads and yeah, you can have customers write reviews like it looked like chaos back there. And I was like, actually, that’s exactly how we describe it sometimes. Try to have it be organized chaos.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, and I love what you said there about learning to pick your battles. That’s something as a parent of two relatively young boys, eight and 10, that I have to remind myself of on a regular basis.

Ryan Donovan: And yeah, I think children does help that. I didn’t obviously as a sub in the leadership role originally, I didn’t have kids. Now I have a nine year old daughter myself and a three year old son. And it definitely like you kind of like going to that parent mode, even my employees like drunk like someone was like, you’re such a dad. It was like, you know, like again, a lot of my employees, I like to you, like mentioned, like I’m fairly young for what I’m doing.

I just turned 40 last year. But like to some of my employees, I’m like, almost as old as their parents now. And it’s like, wow, but I’m like hiring these like people.

They’re working with me hand in hand or working with us. And then I realized like the parent comes in and I say, Hi, I was like, whoa, how is your parents like, oh, they’re like my age. You know, it’s like, yeah, I am becoming the old man. It’s like, this is how things used to be. Like you find yourself saying those things and you’re joking when your parents said it and whatever. And now it’s like I’m 40 years old, catching myself saying the same stuff.

Anthony Codispoti: I’ll go through the cycle. Yeah. Now your, your employees, they’ll be in that, that era, you know, before they know it as well. You know, you mentioned something that I think doesn’t get enough quote unquote airtime. You talked about, you know, something bad happens. And then something else bad happens and it cascades into, you know, uh, stuff at home and now it just feels like there’s this dying downward spiral. And you’re just sort of stuck in it. And it feels like you can’t get out. And I’m curious to hear when you found yourself in some of those really tough moments where it feels like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Where do you go? Where have you gone to find a hand up to find a little bit of help to kind of get out of that cycle?

Ryan Donovan: Yeah. I’ve turned to friends, family, fellow leaders in the, in the store. I feel like, uh, you know, talking it out, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people that go to therapists and it’s, it’s all about a lot of times just talking it out, hearing other people’s perspectives, helping them like help, help you compartmentalize like the things that are happening. And then what can we do with now? What, what, what, like, what can we get off the plate?

So like start making things better. Um, you know, reducing the hours, you know, multiple, I mean, there were times where I think I had 20 plus days in a row without a day off. And my shortest days were seven hours and my longest days were pushing 18. So like those, you need to like get that day off just to like breathe, go to, go to the beach, relax.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. And how do you find your peer groups? Cause I think that’s really important. I hear this from a lot of business owners. I know it’s been helpful for myself in the past to be able to have other like-minded folks that you can have these sort of open conversations with and get support and advice. Yeah.

Ryan Donovan: You know, over the years, I, I found a lot of people, they, they assume that like, oh, you’re a business owner. You know, all these other business owners around here.

And it’s like, honestly, that’s not the case at all. Sometimes I don’t know any of them. Like some of the, the businesses in some areas, or I kind of know their owner, a little friendly with them. Like, Hey, you know, we chat, um, and some more than others.

And I have more of those conversations. I found, uh, one of my stores downtown, there was a bar next door. They were running a, a bags league cornhole.

You might be familiar with it. And, uh, that league had a lot of fellow bar owners, restaurant owners that that was their night like in the bags league. And I, I, through them, I, I, I met, I met them. I met other, you know, friends of theirs come that happened to be also a business owner. And you start meeting some of these people through events like that, or even the bid, uh, the business improvement district at one of our stores. And we have meetings and that’s where I’ll meet some of these other owners and, you know, sort of establishing some of these relationships where you, you know, call them out, let’s go and grab a coffee or let’s go grab a beer.

I, I’ve run out of much of a coffee drink here, but when we’re grabbing coffees, I’m more of like the chai latte. But, uh, but, but yeah, you just start kind of establishing some of those relationships. And then, you know, when you have those issues, how do you ever run into this? You ever run into something like this? How did you handle it? And, you know, you start hearing how they dealt with it and, you know, maybe you take a little piece of what they did and a little piece of what this other person did and you kind of mesh together your own solution. Uh, like you said, when you get in that down road, spoiled and you feel like the world’s at the bottom, I mean, sometimes it’s been like, but then all of a sudden I see the sales for that month and it’s like instantly attitude improves because you see, wow, all that hard work was really worth it because we just did our best month ever in sales. Uh, yeah, I’m thinking like last summer, correct.

Yeah. When things are good and sales are sales are looking great and profitability is looking great and you’re able to give bonuses to your staff. It, it feels good and it really helps boost your morale and boost the mood and make you realize, I hear this, this is why we’re doing this.

Anthony Codispoti: Ryan, you mentioned that, uh, you know, if you were to read a book about, you know, tech leadership, uh, you know, Apple or Microsoft or something may not be as helpful or as applicable to you. I’m curious from your perspective, there were you set a particular book or a podcast or a course that you would recommend to other folks that’s been really helpful for you?

Ryan Donovan: Well, recently I had read a book, Your Restaurant Sucks. Uh, it’s a pretty famous, I think it was pretty famous book, uh, uh, Best Seller when it’s been up for a little bit. I can’t think of the author offhand.

I’d have to search. The book’s probably in my backpack even right now, but there was a lot of great stuff that really just hit home in there because it was a restaurant here. And I, the gentleman now does like, he does consulting and like helps people like that are maybe hitting a wall or trying to figure out how to like do stuff better in their business. But his book really hit home to our industry because it’s exactly what it is. It’s the restaurant and he, situations he brings up and like deal with it. And I feel like he didn’t try to drag stuff out in his, in his description on things.

He’s really like in your face. I mean, this guy has an ex military. Uh, if you use a special forces guy, uh, before he got into restaurants, I think he had some restaurant experience when special forces went back sort of situation, but a really good book.

Uh, if you’re in the restaurant industry, another really good book I read, I think that could kind of coincide in any industry is atomic habits. Kind of that idea of, I’m sure you, I mean, you read it, you read it yourself? I have. Great. I, uh, I was the author that was Stiggs.

Anthony Codispoti: James clears his name. Or James actually, uh, from the same area I am here, I know him a little bit.

Ryan Donovan: Oh, okay. He’s a good guy. Well, excellent book. Uh, I, I, that one hit home with me because personally, like that is a lot of the things they done. I found myself doing to improve my leader leadership over time. You know, avoiding things like procrastination and things with a lot of the little tips that he gives and like making these little changes in your life that will grow and grow. If you stick with them, um, I really found that book to be one, uh, that one in that your restaurant sucks. So two that for new leaders, I recommend right away. Hey, when you have time, read these books

Anthony Codispoti: and even with the restaurant sucks, the author is a Donald Burns. If you’re familiar with a book called unreasonable hospitality, I actually had a, one of my guests send it to me. Unreasonable hospitality.

Ryan Donovan: I, I have no, I mean, I have to put that on my list.

Anthony Codispoti: So to that one, uh, the author is, I’ll find it here in a second, but, uh, the guest who sent it to me is not even in, uh, the restaurant industry, but it’s, it’s sort of written from that perspective. The, the author is Will Guidera. So I highly recommend that one as well.

Ryan Donovan: Unreasonable hospitality. I’ll have to check that out because that is one thing I’ve been trying to do more of is trying to develop myself as a better leader with other things than just doing it and talking with other people I know, but actually reading some of these books and seeing them and to the comment I made, it’s not that the person that worked at Apple or whatever, you know, different tech industries that writes this book, it’s not that they don’t have great things to say for leadership. Cause I think there is great points to be taken out of most leadership books I’ve written. I’ve just found that some of the stuff they really focus on doesn’t necessarily coincide with our industry as well as there’s not always crossover applications.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. Um, right. I’ve just got one more question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do two things for everyone listening today. I know that you love today’s content because Ryan’s been a great guest. Hit the like, follow, subscribe, share button on your favorite podcast app.

So you make sure to get more of these great episodes. I’m also going to let you know the best way to get in touch with Ryan if you’re interested. We’ve got his email address, Ryan at Ian’s pizza.com. You can also look for them on social media, Ian’s pizza Milwaukee on Facebook.

And Ian’s pizza MKE on Instagram and blue sky. So last question for you, Ryan, as you look to the future, what exciting changes do you see coming either for your industry as a whole or in particularly for your business?

Ryan Donovan: Um, well, there’s the industry as a whole. There’s this, always these technological changes that are making things just more and more efficient in some ways. And I think some of that is just like the idea of like a decade from now, we could have, we might not need our own delivery drivers to be out on the road. You might have drones that are able to deliver this stuff for you.

And things like that is just always blows our minds. You know, you see these pizza robots and things that can work in kitchens and help expedite things probably quicker and more efficiently at times than if you had to constantly rely on getting those employees in the door and training them and things like that. So I mean, it’s, it’s hard to say like who knows where the industry could go in the future. I think more automation is probably going to end up being something that does happen, whether it be we have cars that can get delivered pizzas for us sort of situations and things like that. As far as like the actual products we use and stuff, even when you go to these like international pizza expo like in demos and you see the new equipment coming out, they’re always trying to make things better and more efficient. We do everything by hand.

So our cook takes a raw dough ball and stretches out, put it in the oven. Other industries, they already have people that they have machines and presses and things that are constantly getting better and getting to the point where it’s like harder and harder to tell the difference between that hand stretch pizza and that pressed out, you know, machine pressed pizza where you can do it a lot quicker than somebody could by hand. And so I, you know, some of those things though it’s space and again, some of these pieces of equipment are large, so they might not all necessarily work for our industry. So I mean, you can kind of see my store I’m in. I mean, it’s a pretty small, small space.

Some of these stores are little and we’re working with very tight parameters in kitchens. So again, it really just depends on what’s created and would it work for us, even to the things like the machine that will spit you out water that’s got the same mineral contents as the ones in New York or whatever region of the world you want to select to have your mineral content be like. And you know, and just in changes in general, I mean, not just the changes in equipment, but we were kind of discussing before we started just changes in the political landscape and things that are happening as a company. We’re very about inclusivity, not just for our employees, but also for our customers. Everyone to feel welcome when they come in. And unfortunately, we seem to be in a world right now where it kind of seems to be going the other way in some directions and it’s sad to see. But as a business, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and let people know this is a safe place.

Anthony Codispoti: Say more about that. Why is that so important to you?

Ryan Donovan: Well, I think I kind of went on it earlier as your attitude when you go into summer, especially when it comes to food can play a huge role in your experience of that food. And somebody might eat the same food in a bad mood and it might not be nearly as good as if they ate that same food in a good mood. And so, you know, when someone comes into a business, especially a restaurant, I feel like you should feel welcome. You should feel accepted. You shouldn’t feel like I’m going to be an outcast here or it’s okay for people to discriminate against me here. And I also feel like the, you know, the laws and regulations in a city, state, country should affect that accordingly as well. Like everyone’s a person and everybody should be treated equally. I think that’s something we learned in grade school kindergarten. I mean, as a young child, that’s a fundamental thing you’ve gotten and still didn’t you yet. Doesn’t seem to necessarily be the case right now.

Anthony Codispoti: Got a better way to convey the warm welcoming environment that you’d experience inside in Ian’s Pizza. Ryan, any plans on the table right now for more physical locations?

Ryan Donovan: I don’t know if there’s anything I can say officially. I know Madison, a Madison store might be close. Another, a fourth, not in Madison, but in the Madison area is some of the big talks I’ve been hearing recently. Here in Milwaukee, I think we’re probably a couple of years away from our fourth location. That would probably also be in more of a suburb region of Milwaukee, a bordering city. Given our Madison connection, probably heading more west from where we currently are. Obviously, we have Lake Michigan on the east. There’s nowhere to go there.

Anthony Codispoti: Well, it’s going to be exciting to follow what’s to come for you guys. Ryan, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me, Anthony. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.