Candelari's tosses around recipe to enter the 'burbs
by Monica Perin
Published: Jan 11, 2008
Candelari's Pizzeria is on a sausage roll in the suburbs.
The homegrown chain has opened a fourth restaurant on State Highway 6 in Missouri City, and a fifth is ready to open at U.S. Highway 290 and Spring Cypress in about a month.
A sixth pizzeria is being developed in Pearland with a probable opening in late spring.
Michael May and Greg Wheeler say the key to Candelari's is sausage.
May's grandfather, Alberto Candelari, owned liquor stores in East Houston and made Italian sausage in the back room.
He passed along his secrets to grandson Michael, who teamed with Wheeler in 1993 May to launch Candelari's Sausage Co. as a distributor of specialty sausages to grocery stores.
By the early 2000s, Wheeler says, it became increasingly more difficult to compete with the big grocery distributors, so the partners decided to distribute sausage on top of pizzas.
In 2002 the pair bought a small pizza delivery shop in Bellaire, followed by a first full-scale restaurant on Washington Avenue at Wescott.
The first shop brought in between $400,000 and $500,000 in revenue the first year, says Wheeler. In 2008 they expect six restaurants to pull in $8 million.
May and Wheeler own the first two restaurants. A group of college friends have invested in and operate a Candelari's that opened two years ago in Katy, plus the new one in Missouri City and the two to be opened this year.
Wheeler says the financial structure is not a franchise agreement, but a business partnership.
"We're a close-knit group of guys who met in college and all worked in the restaurant business while we were in school," he says.
The two Bellaire High School graduates who started the business now have their sights set on Austin and Dallas.
Initial investigation indicates those cities have not been tapped by their particular kind of business -- specialty pizzas with dine-in facilities, a sports atmosphere, a full bar and patios.
Says Wheeler: "We don't consider ourselves competing with the chains like Dominos or Pizza Hut. We've enjoyed developing this business, and we hope to take it further."
