A Toast To Flavored Crust® and Franchisee Success with Moe Shrikian from Hungry Howie’s

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?

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?

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.

Moe Shrikian, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Hungry Howie's

What’s the most exciting part of your job? What’s the hardest part?

The most exciting part is watching people succeed. I’ve been directly involved in the pizza business for about 30 years, and I have gotten to know a lot of franchisees both on a business and personal level. I have lost count of how many of them started with next to nothing, and, because of being involved with a solid franchise and a lot of hard work and dedication, have built successful businesses, employ lots of people, and contribute to their local communities. The worst part is obviously the converse of that, which is not seeing people succeed. Unfortunately, it does happen. Fortunately, I’ve seen much more success than failure.

Pizza is something that for a guest is a quick decision and a way to serve a lot of people, but it requires some of the most complicated technology of any part of our industry. What’s something that people would be surprised to learn about how complex it is?

It’s a lot more complex than people think. Sure, it’s seemingly an easy product. But it’s all about the multiplicity of choices that you have to deal with when you provide it to customers at scale. Our VP of Product Development, Jeff Rinke, figured out that  the number of choices you can make with our pizza — between style, size, Flavored Crust®, and other options — is in the tens of millions. It’s a simple product, but it’s a simple product that has to be made ten million different ways. That’s why it’s complicated and hard.

What’s your favorite thing on the menu at Hungry Howie’s?

I love any pizza that follows the “three pork rule”: that means a good pizza that has three pork products on it. Bacon, sausage, ham, and pepperoni in any combination of three with my favorite Flavor Crust®, which is sesame, and you have a winner. Put anything else you want on it, put those three things on it and add sesame Flavored Crust®, and you have a great pizza.

I also really like our Detroit style — it’s old school, and since I’m from Detroit, that’s what I grew up with.

What makes Hungry Howie's special?

There’s nothing wrong with the obvious answer: our Flavored Crust®. We were the inventors, and it totally elevates pizza. Others have tried to copy us, but no one does it as well as we do.

Courtesy of Hungry Howie's

Besides Toast, are there any tools you would recommend for other pizza restaurants or operators?

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.

You might have seen we just unveiled our new brand platform, “Built for Busy.” How do you handle your busiest moments? 

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.

If you had one piece of advice for someone looking to be a CEO of a big restaurant group one day, what would you say?

I’ve been fortunate. I have directly reported to the CEOs and founders of four successful privately owned companies. A good CEO wants straightforward advice. They want you to give them all of the reasonable options to help them solve a problem, not just, “you can’t do that.” Quality CEOs aren’t looking for yes men; they’re looking for people to help them make good decisions for their business and once a decision is made, they want to be respected in their decision and for you to do your best to help implement it with hard work and integrity. 

Who in the industry would you like to Toast? 

I’d like to Toast to someone who’s no longer with us, Ed Pugh, Jr. Ed was my first mentor and  the first attorney I worked with. He gave me my start in franchising. I’d also like to Toast to Ron Hancock and Dan Morelli; Ron was the CEO of the first pizza company I worked for, and Dan was the first VP of Operations who worked hand-in-hand with me. They both taught me what it takes to be successful in the pizza business. Finally, I’d like to Toast to Steve Jackson, our CEO. He has been in the pizza business for over 50 years. Steve knows all aspects of this business, including daily operations, marketing and distribution. Most importantly, he never makes a decision without considering whether it’s the right thing to do for our franchise community and our customers.

What are you Toast-ing with today? 

I’m Toast-ing with my blueberry banana chocolate protein shake – I have one every day.

This interview was edited for space and clarity.

Moe Shrikian is Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Hungry Howie’s, you can follow the brand on Facebook, X, Instagram or Tik Tok. For franchising opportunities, visit the  Hungry Howie's franchising page.