December 2013
| Business World Magazine | 177
T
wenty-two years ago, it was an
experiment.
And for each of the more than
192,000 hours since, it’s been a work in
progress for George Hadjis.
These days, the co-founder of the Og-
gi’s pizza restaurant chain admits to being
a little overwhelmed when considering
exactly how far the entity he first signed
onto with his brother, John, has come.
“When we first started, we thought we
had our concept,” Hadjis says of the busi-
ness, which has evolved into Oggi’s Pizza
and Brewing Company and now employs
several more generations of his family
from its Southern California headquar-
ters. “Then you see there are changes tak-
ing place and that it’s a very fluid market.
That’s when you start realizing in practi-
cal terms just how much labor is involved
in success.”
The two brothers opened the first res-
taurant in 1991 with an aim at attracting
the typical go-to family unit – mom and
dad, two kids – who’d go for the standard
fare of a large pie with pepperoni, along
with four drinks and the requisite free re-
fills. Problem was, that was precisely the
demographic impacted most by down-
ward cycles in the economy, which neces-
sitated mining for a new ideal customer.
EMBRACING CHANGE
The arrival of satellite dishes on the roof
began paying off with a younger, sports-
centric crowd, which also led to a hun-
ger for the ingredient which ultimately
changed the overall Oggi’s focus – craft
beer.
“We struggled to raise the average
spend per person in the restaurant, and we
decided that we had to bring some oth-
