Brandon Hoy Roberta’s Pizza, Brooklyn NYC

What's the story behind Roberta's Pizza?

We started 17 years ago in Bushwick and we started really as a small pizzeria and we were just some young guys who really were looking for a new life outside of kind of the bar scene and everything that we had been doing previous. There was a kind of young movement that was happening in the food scene and I think it was a really cool time to start a restaurant because everyone was kind of like coming together.We chose pizza because we found it to be the most kind of communal like dining experience you could have.

What digital challenge did you face and how did Influence Society help you?

In the early days, nobody had a huge digital presence. In 2008, you were lucky if a restaurant had a website.

So going from like an era of almost no tech involved in building your business to where we are today was very challenging. I needed support from people like yourself to really like help me transition into this more kind of tech driven era. The landscape is so confusing and if you don't have a guide to help you through it, you can just get lost out there.

The great thing about Influence Society is kind of like channeling all that information and showing you where it works best. I think the future really is like trying to analyze and study the data that comes back to you. Are the moves you're making, are they impactful.

Can you tell us about your growing the number of Roberta's Pizza around the world?

I started with one in Brooklyn, New York. That's where all the magic started. We grew pretty quickly. After the first like two years, we really started to expand the business. The first business that we did was kind of like mobile catering. We built all these pizza ovens on trucks and we started doing everything, like a lot of festivals. It was a lot of like creative stuff. And then we moved into some food halls right around that same time in Manhattan and we opened three of those over the years. And that was kind of our first foray into expanding the brand, Roberta's. We had taken the pizza oven out to California and it was like Coachella, but it was targeted towards like an older crowd and they wanted to have like elevated food experience. So while I had the oven out there, I had a buddy in Culver City who had a development that he was opening and he had an empty lot. So I brought the pizza truck there and I did a pop up and it was like fantastic. It was crowded. We were so excited that all these people from California like even knew who we were. That was really our first real dine in. Roberta's expansion was in Culver City. So we took that idea, you know, we went to lease with one of his properties. That was number two, you know, kind of from there it started to go really fast.  We opened a second in L.A., we opened a second in Brooklyn. There's a lot of lessons to be learned and growth. It's like when you own one restaurant, it's like your baby. It's like having a child. It's easy to take care of it. And growth really is trying to figure out how to solve all those problems efficiently. I think to be able to do this kind of growth, you really have to like, one, you have to find good partners who you bring into your team. Roberta's was always had this like DIY mentality. Like if there's something to be done, we can do it ourself. And as you get big, that's really hard to do. Then what you start doing is you do it with the help of many specialists. I'm not really great at like gathering analytics, having the best user experience on the Web. So now it's my job to like work with the best and really like get them to show me ways to improve my business by using their special skills.

How was your experience with Influence Society?

Influence Society kind of was immediately impactful, really understood what we needed. Again, I think it goes back to just like choosing people who you have confidence can do things that are maybe beyond what your reach is. And I think to grow a big, good business, first thing you have to do is know where you're not strong and find people like yourself to help. You guys were very immediate and quick and responsive. Hopefully we can do more of that.