Mr. Morrison: In 2008, we will celebrate our 50th year in business. Our primary restaurant offers a pizza, pasta and salad buffet, offering a variety of high quality fresh made pizzas, a bountiful salad bar and a variety of dessert pizzas called Pizzerts. We are located in the southeast quadrant of the United States. We have 340 restaurants today, of which one is company owned and the remainder are franchised. Seventy-five of those restaurants are located in nine countries around the world. The company has a distribution business called Norco Restaurant Services, which is a food distributor to all of our franchisees both domestically and internationally. We provide them with most of the ingredients and supplies to their restaurants that they need to run the business. We compete across the spectrum of the pizza industry, including the big three players, Pizza Hut, Domino's, and Papa John's. However, our brand is positioned primarily in smaller markets. We compete with local independents in these markets. In the buffet category, we do have a prominent competitor in Cici's Pizza.
TWST: You joined the company last August and just became CEO?
Mr. Morrison: Actually, I joined the company in January 2007 as CFO and then
took over when my predecessor left in August as interim CEO and then just was
appointed CEO in December.
Tickers included in this excerpt: PZZI
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