Fast-casual pizza franchise Your Pie plans to enter the Chattanooga market in spring 2018 with a new restaurant near Hamilton Place Mall.
Customers will go down the line and select their own hand-tossed dough, sauce and toppings - sort of like at a franchise Subway sandwich shop - and then have their pizza baked in minutes inside a high- temperature brick oven.
"We felt that Your Pie's customizable, down-the-line pizza experience would be a perfect fit," Harshil Patel who co-owns Your Pie Chattanooga with his father, Himanshu Patel said via email. "Chattanooga is such a vibrant, creative area."
"With a fixed price of around $8, regardless of toppings, we expect to attract wide range of guests," Patel said. "We also offer vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free pizzas, as well as local craft beer, wine and Italian-style gelato."
Most customers choose to build their own custom pizzas.
However, Your Pie does have a menu of signature pizzas. The chain says the most popular menu items are the Lineage (marinara, mozzarella, pepperoni, Italian sausage, red onions, mushrooms, black olives, green peppers) and the Nat (basil pesto, mozzarella, feta, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, chicken).
The father-and-son team signed a lease for their first Your Pie Chattanooga restaurant at 1919 Gunbarrel Road, Suite 103, near Hamilton Place Mall, where Fresh to Order closed in September.
Your Pie Chattanooga will have between 80 and 90 seats. The chain typically employs 20 to 25 people per store.
Your Pie, which operates 49 store locations, got its start in the college town of Athens, Ga.
In 2006, the restaurant's founder Drew French was visiting his wife's family in Ischia, a small, volcanic island 19 miles from the city of Naples, Italy. There, the company says, "He fell in love with the region's use of brick ovens and the perfectly-crisp doughs and smoky, earthy flavors that came out of it." Two years later, the first Your Pie opened in Athens.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@times freepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or on Twitter @meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.