Hungry Howie's
Business type
Products used
Location
National
In conversation with
Aman Narang
Chief Executive Officer, Co-founder & Director
Elena Gomez
President & Chief Financial Officer
Scaled franchises
Hungry Howie’s is a pizza brand over fifty-years-old, with over 500 stores in 19 states. Famous for inventing Flavored Crust® pizza, Hungry Howie’s caters to customers who are fans of pizza bursting with flavor made by independently owned and operated restaurants run by the people who live and work in their communities.
Toast creates technology to help restaurants and local businesses get busy, run busy, and stay busy. The "Toast to..." series celebrates the people at the heart of those businesses and their communities, and the hard work and dedication it takes to get there. We sat down with Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Hungry Howie’s, Moe Shrikian, to chat about the complexity of pizza operations, seeking out best-in-class solutions for your tech stack, and of course, his favorite pizza.
What is your role at Hungry Howie’s?
MOE SHRIKIAN I’m Executive Vice President and General Counsel. As well as being a member of the Leadership Team, I’m responsible for all the legal matters that impact Hungry Howie’s. I learned early on in my career that conceptually my primary role is to protect the brand on behalf of our entire franchise community. The day-to-day of accomplishing that is the hard part.
What does an average week look like for you?
MS On any given week I touch on issues that impact actions and decisions in every aspect of our business, including operations, marketing, technology, distribution, and corporate communications. That includes a lot of meetings, document reviews, and vendor negotiations. Lately, a lot of our attention has been focused on technology. I have been working closely with Dan McKay, our VP of Technology Services, as he spearheads our brand’s transition to a new technology stack. Technology is such a big part of the restaurant business now. If you’re in-house counsel and don’t have any sense of what you’re doing with technology, you might be a bit behind the times. So I am involved in a lot of technology contracts and vendor discussions, including our most recent relationship with Toast, which we are very excited about.
Besides Toast, are there any tools you would recommend for other pizza restaurants or operators?
MS It’s important nowadays to have a technology stack that covers all the bases — each part needs to be best in breed and integrate with the others. That’s why we chose Toast. One thing we appreciate about Toast is that they’ve focused on POS and opened up their ecosystem for restaurateurs to seamlessly connect other aspects of their technology stack. To be successful, you need a great online ordering experience, mobile app, CRM, CDP, and customer feedback loop, and you need a foundation for all that, which is a great POS system like Toast.
It’s important nowadays to have a technology stack that covers all the bases — each part needs to be best in breed and integrate with the others. That’s why we chose Toast.
Moe Shrikian
Executive Vice President | Hungry Howie's
You might have seen we just unveiled our new brand platform, “Built for Busy.” How do you handle your busiest moments?
MS Professionally, I handle my busiest moments by prioritizing my time. Earlier in my career, everything was a fire drill. No matter what someone asked for, I felt like I had to get it to them immediately. But I have learned that you need to be able to set priorities and manage expectations, both internally and externally.
About Hungry Howie’s
Known for inventing Flavored Crust® pizza, Hungry Howie’s has been around for more than 50 years and provides customers of all ages high-quality products at a great value. Currently, the brand has nearly 500 stores in 18 states across the United States and their customers are big fans of flavor. The menu aims to satisfy all – with dough made fresh daily in-house at all locations, offering original round, deep dish, thin crust, and gluten-free options, coupled with the array of options for just crust, including 8 free Flavored Crust® options – Butter, Asiago Cheese, Cajun, Butter Cheese, Sesame, Garlic Herb, Ranch, and Italian Herb. No one can live on pizza alone, so Hungry Howie’s offers a great selection of calzone-style oven-baked subs, Howie Bread®, fresh salads, Howie Wings®, Howie Rolls®, desserts & Pepsi® products.
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