Cannoli Kitchen employs a quick-service model to provide Italian cuisine to customers.
Cannoli Kitchen, a nearly 30-year-old Florida pizza brand, is expanding by relaunching its franchise system in 2023 in partnership with United Franchise Group, opening its first franchise locations.
Boca Raton-based Cannoli Kitchen began as a family-owned pizza place in 1996. After establishing the brand with five locations in South Florida, the founders approached UFG looking to expand more quickly.
Cannoli Kitchen will join UFG's Big Flavor Brands food division in spring 2023, and President Austin Titus sees an opportunity to disrupt the highly competitive category. Titus said the brand's menu diversity and catering capabilities differentiate it from other quick-service pizza brands.
“Cannoli Kitchen's catering opportunities are much more extensive than other pizza franchises,” Titus says, “We can cater for family gatherings or large business meetings. We can do chicken trays, salad trays, dessert trays — we're not just catering for 7-year-olds' pizza parties.”
Titus said the brand will bring the quality and customer service diners expect from traditional, independent Italian restaurants without the inconsistencies.
“That's what the franchise system does,” Titus said. “At Cannoli Kitchen, we're building a chain of large, high-quality franchises that demonstrate consistency in quality.”
Austin Titus is president of Cannoli Kitchen.
Franchise expansion is underway with six agreements signed for eight locations. These locations will join six existing locations in Boca Raton, Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Deerfield Beach, Florida.
The new deal will expand Cannoli Kitchen's presence in Florida, adding locations in Coral Springs, Coconut Creek and Orlando in addition to its Fort Lauderdale location, with Michigan being the exception to agreements also in place in Alabama, Georgia and Michigan.
“Our growth strategy is primarily for Florida, but we are also developing in the Southeast,” Titus said. “We have one store in development in Michigan just outside of Detroit, but that will be our only store. Georgia and Alabama, as well as the Carolinas and Texas, will be secondary markets while we expand primarily in Florida.”
Carla Jackson, one of Florida's leading franchisees in development, is opening Cannoli Kitchen in Fort Lauderdale with her husband, Andre. Jackson, who has a background in social work, said she didn't necessarily plan to go into the restaurant industry, but she did want a brand that focused on good customer service. She said she found that and more with Cannoli Kitchen and UFG.
“We wanted something family-friendly and a brand that would work with us one-on-one because we'd never done anything like this before,” Jackson said. “So far, they've been amazing. I can't tell you how much I've learned starting a business and what it takes to sustain it while maintaining the quality of the product we offer.”
Titus called the Jackson brothers the perfect duo because they embody the type of franchisee the brand is looking for.
Franchisees Carla and Andre Jackson are preparing to open a Cannoli Kitchen in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“In every business we go into, we're looking for people who can fill a really important role,” Titus says. “In this case, we're not looking for someone who's really good at making pizza or someone who's really good at running a kitchen. We can hire those aspects of the business. What's most important to us is someone who wants to be the face of the business and inspire customers to want to come back. That's why these two have been great additions to Cannoli Kitchen.”
Titus said most of the eight stores are scheduled to open by the end of 2024, but one may slip to early 2025. The early restaurant openings are being driven by the brand's strategy of expanding into existing pizza joints.
“We're not just looking for second-generation buildings,” Titus says, “we look for existing businesses that are for sale. We approach people who own pizza places either to renovate them into a Cannoli Kitchen and offer all the benefits of a franchise, or we look for someone to buy the business from the owner, renovate it into a Cannoli Kitchen ourselves, and then sell it as a franchise.”
Another part of the strategy is smaller build-outs, Titus said.
“We're focused on the quick-service side and we're going to have very small spaces for people coming in for takeout,” Titus said. “We'll have some dine-in space, primarily for the lunch rush, but that's not our focus. We're going to be focused on the off-premise experience with catering, delivery and takeout.”
