August 28, 2025
SMB Spotlights Cascadia Pizza Franchise Expansion
This summer, the SMB team had an opportunity to spend some time with the franchise founders and leadership behind Cascadia Pizza Co. Based in the Pacific North West, they are now looking to expand nationwide. Here is what Calvin, Buck and Thomas had to share.
SMB Franchise Advisors: In a few sentences, describe what your restaurant concept does and what your brand is all about.
Calvin Freatman, Cascadia CEO
Calvin Freatman, CEO & Co-Founder: We are a high quality QSR, specializing in 100% wood fired pizza, wood fired wings, salads, and dessert pizzas. Our values are passion for pizza, promoting the best environments for our people to thrive in, as well as genuine and passionate hospitality for our guests. We food truck in and around the communities we serve, supporting local events and ingraining ourselves into the broader area. 92% of Americans ate pizza at least one-time last month – that doesn’t mean 92% ate GOOD pizza last month. Through our brick-and-mortar restaurants and our mobile units, we are challenging “big pizza” through our high-quality offering with stellar customer service at a reasonable price point. The entire country has been missing a concept like ours, as demonstrated through our rapid success and winning market share against legacy operators.
SMB: What makes your restaurant concept unique in today’s dining market?
Full service pizza and craft beer available at Cascadia Pizza Co. restaurants.
Pick your slice at Cascadia
Get your hands on Cascadia pizza and enjoy with friends
Calvin: Promoting pizza of this quality and technique through food trucking and QSR has never been done! We deliver high quality pizza in a fast casual setting at reasonable price points. We do more with less, specializing in high traffic, cost-effective smaller build outs that add more to the bottom line. We get paid to market through food trucking, where customer conversions positively impact store sales.
SMB: How do you maintain service and product quality standards across locations?
Christian Buck, COO & Co-Founder: We have taken the best parts of fine dining techniques and applied them in a fast casual setting but made our system to be easy to understand and digestible so that inexperienced workers can thrive at Cascadia. We are not a 500+ item establishment – our simple model and system promotes quality and consistency through repeatable kitchen functions.
Meet our COO, Christian Buck
SMB: What inspired you to franchise your pizza concept, initially?
Calvin: We opened Cascadia and wanted to grow as corporate owned units. It was our first franchisee, Raffi Peltekian, that asked us to franchise to him. This opened an exciting new world we had no prior knowledge of. Our mission to remain hyper local and involved at the community level is best achieved through a franchise model, instead of Cascadia corporate getting washed away by waves of middle management.
SMB: Okay, so, you had interest first – that can be an important factor. So, why did you partner with SMB Franchise Advisors?
Calvin: Thomas our CFO met the SMB team at the IFA Convention the year we were deciding to start the franchising process. Since then, Steve Beagelman and the entire SMB have been tremendous resources and assets for us! They have brought insight and wisdom through experience into areas where we had no prior knowledge.
Meet Thomas Reinhard, Cascadia CFO
SMB: How many locations did you have before SMB? How many locations have you grown to since partnering with SMB?
Thomas Reinhard, CFO & Co-Founder: Before meeting SMB and starting the franchising process we had 4 restaurants, 5 food trucks. In our initial launch after working with SMB to launch the franchise we are now 7 restaurants and 8 food trucks as of June 2025. (We have more in the works, but not ready to announce yet!)
SMB: What are your long-term goals for your restaurant franchise? How many locations do you hope to grow to in the USA?
Calvin: Our pizza deserves to be nationwide. We want to open up high quality, fun, unique pizzerias and food truck operations around the whole country. Beyond that, we want our franchisees to experience the same life-changing wins we have in creating fun, unique spaces, and making lots of money through pizza. We have a plan to responsibly expand and grow to 300 locations over the next decade.
SMB: We love the ambition and see how you are working to accomplish this goal. What qualities do you look for in successful franchisee candidates? Do you think there are any stand out characteristics that make a difference?
Calvin: We look for pizza lovers, community-oriented folks, and people with passion for great hospitality and serving their local communities. A lot of our staff, and 50% of our franchisees had no prior food experience before Cascadia – but yet have had a lot of success in our framework!
SMB: What makes your franchisee training program unique?
Thomas: During Wood Fired University, franchisees will make 1,000 pizzas that all get donated to local food banks and first responders! We offer radical franchisee support, helping train on-site staff before the grand opening at all of our restaurant launches. We have on-going support and training from some of the best individuals in the whole pizza industry!
SMB: Wow, that’s awesome. We applaud you for instilling the community-focus from day one with your franchise owners. How do you support franchisees in maintaining brand consistency across locations?
Calvin: It starts with our universal training program so that every pizza maker has the same set of quality principles. We have built our system using fine dining techniques in a fast casual setting but have made it easy to understand and digestible. We utilize secret shoppers and have an internal quality control team to ensure on-sight quality is consistent from location to location!
SMB: We know brand culture is important in franchising. How do you foster a positive culture across your franchise system?
Calvin: Positivity is in everything we do. Most kitchens, traditional or not, are high-turnover, toxic, and not very much fun to be in. We have taken the exact opposite approach, using positive reinforcement, focusing on skill development, and rewarding a job well-done. Our core guiding principles are:
- Passion for pizza.
- Our people.
- Our customers.
When we have great pride in the product we make, take great care of the people who make it, the customer will always win. Great pizza is more than just a meal, it’s an experience!
SMB: What advice do you have for business owners looking to franchise their concept?
Welcome to Cascadia Pizza Co.
Calvin: You don’t know what you don’t know. You can be one of the best restaurant operators in the world and still not know how to effectively franchise your business. It is a significantly different relationship between franchisor and franchisee than the traditional employer-employee relationships I was used to. Because of the newfound complexities that franchising brings, my biggest piece of advice is to work with SMB. They have the knowledge, experience, and white-glove consulting services that have tremendously helped my organization avoid making costly mistakes. They have provided suggestions and helped make connections that have completely changed how my franchise business functions for the better. For my partners and I, we always wanted to stack the deck in our favor to give ourselves the best chance at long-term franchise success. Working with SMB and utilizing them as a trusted resource has been a complete game changer and has given us so much more confidence in growing our brand with their trusted and valued support.
SMB: Is there anything else you would like us to share about your brand?
Calvin: Yes. We are extremely excited to share our pizza with the masses, ushering in a new era of high quality pizza in a QSR setting. I believe our mission statement perfectly summarizes our brand:
“Great pizza is more than just a meal, it’s an experience. Cascadia combines unique flavor profiles with traditional cooking techniques, that together create American crafted wood fired pizza.“
