LaRosa’s Family Pizzeria Case Study: Benchmarking 65 Locations with MeazureUp
For almost 65 years, LaRosa’s has served real Italian family recipes to communities, guests and patrons.
Why was LaRosa’s completing performance inspections with paper and pen?
LaRosa’s Family Pizzeria has served Italian family recipes for almost 65 years and operates 65 locations. The menu runs past 40 selections, from the family recipe pizzas to calzones, hoagies, pasta and desserts, available for dine-in, delivery or carry out.
Diane Rushford has been with LaRosa’s for 41 years. She started as an hourly team member and worked up through assistant general manager, general manager, district manager and social media specialist, and now supports the Operations Team of District Managers as a Communications and Training Specialist. Her remit covers training materials for company operations and franchises, recordkeeping of follow-up audits, monthly and daily communication pieces, and arranging third-party training for managers on food safety and gluten-free handling.
Her fifteen years as a district manager from 2000 to 2015 shaped how she sees the assessment process. She oversaw 22 pizzerias and was responsible for completing four to six audits at each location every year, plus re-inspections when they were needed. All of it was done with paper and pen.
How did MeazureUp change performance inspections at LaRosa’s?
LaRosa’s started with MeazureUp when the company was itself just beginning, and it is now their sole source for performance inspections. Rushford describes the reports as thorough and customizable, and the platform as responsive to what the team needs as more locations are added each year.
What the team values is the shift away from paper: the ability to take pictures, which she notes are worth a thousand words, along with the scoring, the dashboard, the action plan reminders, the help desk support, the ability to customize audits to their own requirements, recordkeeping available at their fingertips, and the ability to flag which tasks are chain priorities.
“Our District Managers love the reminders for the action plans and are constantly using them to track results. It’s really among the main methods of communication and feedback from our Pizzerias to our corporate team.”
Diane Rushford, Communications and Training Specialist, LaRosa’s Family Pizzeria
How does LaRosa’s benchmark store performance across the chain?
LaRosa’s uses the system as an internal benchmark for both company pizzerias and the chain as a whole, and the team can see it making a difference in the correction and maintenance of standards. Because the reports are electronic, chain rankings can be analyzed easily and the underlying data is more accurate than what the paper process produced.
“Now, we can set goals and track performance towards those goals, empowering each individual District Manager and Pizzeria General Manager to understand how their location compares to others in the organization.”
Diane Rushford, Communications and Training Specialist, LaRosa’s Family Pizzeria
Why does inspection consistency matter for a multi-generation restaurant brand?
A brand with 65 years of history and 65 locations has a reputation built one meal at a time, and it is only as good as the food coming out of the kitchen on any given day. Consistent, comparable inspections are how a chain that size knows whether the standard is actually holding across every location rather than assuming it is. When each general manager can see where their pizzeria stands relative to the rest of the organization, the standard becomes something the team measures itself against rather than something head office asserts.
