Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Key Takeaways
- Ed Bogan and his brother oversee 66 Pizza King restaurants, including 65 in Indiana.
- For a chain with a 70-year history, each restaurant has a role in maintaining what customers expect from the name.
Pizza King has 65 restaurants in Indiana, from South Bend down toward Evansville, plus one in Illinois. For Ed Bogan, the distance between those locations presents a challenge.
“We want consistency from South Bend to Evansville,” Bogan says.
Bogan and his brother bought Pizza King in 2020. They took over a business that had spent decades building a name in communities across the state. Today, they are responsible for what customers find at each of its 66 locations.
The chain began in 1956. Its founder sold it to Don Schutz in 1965, and Schutz ran the company until Bogan and his brother purchased it. Pizza King celebrated its 70th anniversary on April 29, 2026.
“We look forward to about 70 more,” Bogan says.
The brothers are only the third owners in that history. They have a company with an established identity, but customers experience Pizza King one restaurant at a time. Someone visiting in South Bend is unlikely to be thinking about what happens in Evansville. They are thinking about the food and service in front of them.
That is why consistency matters across such a wide footprint. A familiar name can bring someone through the door, but each location has to give that customer a reason to come back. For the brothers, running Pizza King means paying attention to the individual restaurants as well as the company as a whole.
Bogan knows the business will keep changing. He describes the pace of the restaurant industry over the past few years as “100 miles an hour.” The question for he and his brother is how to move with it while giving customers an experience they recognize from one Pizza King to the next.
Bringing new technology to a 70-year-old business
Before this year, Bogan had never attended the National Restaurant Show. After a day walking the floor in Chicago, the Pizza King owner had sore feet and a better sense of what was available to restaurants.
“If you can’t see it, you don’t know about it,” Bogan says.
He saw robots and other new technology, but he kept coming back to the work inside his restaurants. A tool might help Pizza King reach customers or run more efficiently. Someone still has to prepare the order.
“You still have to have that person make the food,” he says.
Bogan and his brother move quickly when they see something useful. That does not mean every idea on a trade show floor belongs in a Pizza King. Bogan wants to see what a tool can do for the business and if the people at his restaurants can use it.
His experience with Popmenu gives him one example. Bogan says his brother saw potential in improving Pizza King’s search traffic and bringing customers to its website. The chain began using the platform at about 22 locations, then added roughly 30 more over a 10-month period after reviewing the data.
His first National Restaurant Show left him with plenty to consider. It also gave him a reason to return. “I will be coming back next year,” Bogan says.
About Restaurant Influencers
Restaurant Influencers is brought to you by Toast, the powerful restaurant point-of-sale and management system that helps restaurants improve operations, increase sales and create a better guest experience. Toast — Powering Successful Restaurants. Learn more about Toast.
Restaurant Influencers is proud to have PepsiCo as a sponsor of this episode. Partnering with PepsiCo Foodservice helps restaurant operators drive sustainable growth through smarter digital experiences, AI-backed menu optimization, and tools designed to create more profitable online orders. Check out PepsiCo Foodservice