Naked Pizza: Healthy, But Not Bragging About It

The Daily Advertiser:

New Orleans’ first pizza restaurant promoting digestive health opened as World’s Healthiest Pizza in September 2006. Its first boxes explained in colorful detail how its macrobiotic ingredients clean the digestive tract.

That was the company’s first major mistake, co-owner Randy Crochet said.

“People don’t want to eat pizza if it says it’s healthy,” Crochet said. “You’ll always get that segment of Whole Foods people who get it and eat it, but those aren’t the people we want to capture. We want the ones who are eating Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s and the others.”

With that in mind, Crochet and partner Jeff Leach decided they would go from being the “healthiest” to just Naked Pizza in March 2009. That required a new approach.

Patrick Murphy, assistant professor of management at DePaul University in Illinois, said finding something that separates a company from competitors is key. Read more.