Marco's Pizza has officially opened a new CloudKitchens location in San Antonio, continuing its strategic expansion and solidifying its position as one of America's fastest-growing pizza brands.
The new location, situated within the CloudKitchens delivery hub "Lombrano Food Hall”, enables Marco’s Pizza to reach previously untapped areas of the city with a low-risk, low-capital investment model.
Located near the densely populated Downtown area and San Antonio College, which enrolls around 20,000 students, the CloudKitchens hub houses 25 commercial kitchens featuring a mix of national chains like Marco’s and local brands.
Their ongoing partnership with CloudKitchens enables Marco’s franchisees to grow their customer base with minimal overhead, delivering strong returns without the cost of traditional brick-and-mortar setups.
Marco’s Pizza first partnered with CloudKitchens in 2020
Brands like Marco’s Pizza demonstrate the potential of the CloudKitchens format. The chain entered the ghost kitchen space in 2020 by launching two Houston locations and has since expanded to Cleveland, Denver, and Austin and continues to grow their reach.
According to Gerardo Flores, Chief Development Officer at Marco’s Pizza, the goal is to establish a presence across the United States with dedicated ghost kitchens.
“We are very much an evening and weekend concept, so we’re not going to go into an eight-to-five office environment, but we can put one right outside of that,” said Flores to QSR magazine in an April interview.
The numbers continue to show the success of their CloudKitchens partnership. For example, a study by Deloitte and NerdWallet found that customer spending is 20% higher in delivery-only kitchens. In addition, the frequency of visits is 67% higher when orders are placed online.
Marco’s Pizza ranks among the top five pizzeria brands in the United States. Moving forward, the company plans to continue its ghost kitchen strategy to reach high-traffic locations across the country.
Read the full Marco’s Pizza interview with QSR here