 Business Today Thursday, May 28, 1998 Goodfella's is Growing in More Ways Than One Goodfella's Brick Oven Pizza & Pasta is expanding its business on two important fronts. The Dongan Hills-based eatery just got the green light to franchise its operations across the country. At the same time, the three owners have expanded their families, becoming fathers to three sons within two months of one another. "We need to have heirs," said E. Jay Myers, a partner in the five-year-old Goodfella's with his brothers-in-law, Scot and Marc Cosentino. To emphasize the part their newborns would play in their franchise business lives, the partners posed for photos with their infants (Lucas, Alexander and Harrison) cradled in their arms near Goodfella's trademark brick oven. "We can't put all our eggs in one basket," Myers said, regarding the business partners' double-front expansion. Of course, their life partners, Leslie Myers, Marc's wife Michelle, and Scot's wife Vilma, are given credit, too. No franchises have signed yet on the dotted line, but the partners say they've gotten lots of nibbles for their brick-oven pizza dough, toppings, pastas, and the special sauces that will be dispensed from Staten Island. Essentially, Goodfella's, which opened in 1994 on Staten Island and a year later in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, will market its Old World look from its home base on the Island. For an investment of from $250,000 to $400,000 in turnkey costs, and about 5% of gross sales in royalties, franchisees will get Goodfella's replicas down to the tiniest details, including brick ovens, menus, tables, chairs, checkered tablecloths, lighting, flooring, windows and signs. A recipe book is part of the package, but special concoctions like Goodfella's prize-winning vodka pizza sauce would probably be shipped in liquid form from the Island home base. Myers said Goodfella's Pizza a la Vodka won the "Industry's Best Pizza" award two years in a row from Pizza and Pasta magazine. Initial ads in the Advance and elsewhere have fetched inquiries from existing restaurant owners as well as people who have never been in the food business before, like a retired police officer, a Wall Street broker, and a large corporate owner, he said. The partners will operate the franchise end of their business under the name Globe Restaurant Group Inc., with Richard Nicotra of Restaurant Systems International, Bloomfield, as their management consultant. Nicotra brought the partners from a two-store concept into a system that’s ready to be duplicated by other people, said Marc Cosentino. When the trio opened Goodfella's in January 1993, their main qualifications were that they loved to eat pizza, said Scot Cosentino, who was originally in the carpet-cleaning business. His brother, Marc, was a city police officer and Myers, who's married to their sister, Leslie, and who has a degree in marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology, though his future would be in fashion and cosmetics. "We went into business despite all the reasons not to do it," Scot Cosentino said of their restaurant initiation. "The economy wasn't so good at that time in the early 90's. But we were lucky." The partners have learned a lot in their five years in business, Scot said, and the least of which was that "It's not so easy to run a business." The franchise has been set up to provide answers that the partners had to learn the hard way in the brick-oven fires, Marc said. Goodfella's and Restaurant Systems International will provide franchisees with reference manuals covering all stages of the operation, as well as a minimum of four weeks' hands-on training in a Goodfella's restaurant and in classrooms, according to the company literature. Step-by-step training, practical drills, and exercises will supposedly give new recruits the benefit of years of experience. Right now, Goodfella's will be concentrating on marketing its franchise operations in the New York metro area, including on Staten Island, Myers said, adding that each franchise contract will carry territorial guarantees so that no Goodfella's would infringe on another, according to the offering circular. Marketing includes information about their operation on the Web at www.Goodfellas.com. For the biggest boost to a prospective franchisee's bottom line, Globe Restaurant Group will share what it considers the three most important aspects of a successful business, "Location, location, location," Myers said. |
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