When Tony DeMartino and Michael Gavenchak bit into a slice of pizza made by the family of New York pizzamaker Vito DiBartolo, they knew they had found a little of the Big Apple in north Georgia.
The pair, chief executive officer and president, respectively, of Atlanta-based advertising company The Titan Agency, were so enthralled that they pitched an idea: Titan would be the agency of record for the family’s chain, PizzaVito.
The only problem: the small chain couldn’t afford Titan’s fee.
So instead of payment, Titan has become a franchisee of the New York-based pizza restaurant.
“In lieu of a fee, I said ‘We’ll take Georgia,'” said DeMartino, who is a native New Yorker as is Gavenchak. “We believed in the concept so we are pretty much betting on ourselves.”
Titan opened the first PizzaVito in Roswell recently, and hopes to open about 20 of the restaurants in metro Atlanta. The agency hopes to grow the business to be a contender in the $35 billion pizza industry, which is dominated by Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s. Continue reading this post.