Cicis or CiCi’s Pizza is an American buffet restaurant chain that specializes in making pizza in Irving, Texas. Today, there are a total of 450 corporately owned and franchised Cicis restaurant in over 32 states. Cicis is the first pizza restaurant to create the unlimited pizza buffet and in 2015, the pizzeria had a brand new marketing campaign where they renamed their company from CiCi’s Pizza to just Cicis they also added a new logo and redesigned their website. The marketing campaign is said to give the customers the idea that Cicis has more to offer other than just pizza. In this article, we will be going to find out how the first pizza buffet in America started.
History of Cicis
Mike Cole and Joe Croce started Cicis in Plano, Texas in 1985. And by 2001, Cicis had over 363 restaurants and it is also that time where they expanded their buffet offerings and started to redesign their restaurants. After four years, Cicis had over five hundred locations and became one of the fastest-growing pizza chains in the United States. Joe Croce decided to retire from the business in 2003 and he passed the ownership of the company to its executive team. Craig Moore who was the general manager in Cicis Dallas, became the general manager of the company. He stayed the company’s vice president for five years until he became president of Cicis after the sale. Craig Moore supervised Cicis operations and its franchise growth for seventeen years until he announced his retirement in 2009.
Michael Shumsky, who used to be a CEO of La Madeleine Restaurant, Inc., took over Craig Moore’s position in late 2009. In 2010, in addition to all their current restaurants, Cicis announced that they had plans to add another 500 more branches in the next ten years. They also laid out the plans of expanding their company internationally more specifically in Canada and Mexico.
Since its founding, Cicis has won several awards where they were named as one of the top 25 performing brands by The Walls Streed Journal and they entered the top 200 franchise concept by Franchise Today.
In 2015, Cicis began a new marketing campaign where they renamed their company from Cici’s Pizza to simply Cicis and they added the tagline “Beyond Pizza” along with a new logo and a restructured website.