How does a suburban pizza joint end up profiled on national magazine covers and network TV news? (Hint: The secret is not in the sauce.)
When Nick Sarillo decided to open a family-friendly pizza restaurant in the suburbs of Chicago, people thought he was nuts. Having worked as a carpenter for much of his adult life, he lacked any formal experience in restaurants or in managing a small business. Everyone told him no one else would ever care about his place the way he did. They warned he'd have to work 20-hour-days and monitor every employee just to stay in business.
But Sarillo saw things differently, and set out to run his business in a radically different way. Today Nick's Pizza & Pub is one of the top ten busiest independent pizza restaurants in the country, with two locations that gross about six times the revenue of the typical pizza restaurant. And in an industry where most employees leave within less than a year, Nick's annual turnover rate is less than 20 percent.
How did