At Hungry Howie’s Pizza, the secret ingredient has always been more than being the originator of the Flavored Crust® pizza. It’s consistency in quality, service, and the culture that binds more than five hundred franchise locations across the United States. That consistency isn’t accidental. It’s learned, practiced, and reinforced through one of the most thoughtfully structured and continuously evolving training systems in the quick-service restaurant industry.
For Hungry Howie’s, training is not a one-time event but an ongoing process that scales with every new location. The company’s approach reflects a principle at the heart of the LatitudeLearning Training Program Roadmap: learning must be treated as a strategic system that connects knowledge, skill, and performance. From onboarding new franchisees to coaching seasoned managers, Hungry Howie’s has turned education into an operational advantage, where the art of pizza-making meets the science of learning.
Hungry Howie’s began in 1973 as a single pizzeria in Taylor, Michigan. Founder Jim Hearn partnered with Steve Jackson to build the brand around community, creativity and quality. Introduced later in the brand’s journey, the flavored crust started as a small differentiator but ultimately grew into a cornerstone of their identity.
As the business expanded through franchising in the 1980s and 1990s, the challenge shifted from making great pizza to making great operators. The leadership team recognized that growth would only be sustainable if every franchisee could replicate the same guest experience, culture, and operational excellence that defined the original store.
From this insight grew a foundational belief: a strong franchise system isn’t held together by manuals, but by a shared learning culture. That belief still guides Hungry Howie’s today.
The Hungry Howie’s learning ecosystem serves a diverse audience of franchise owners, managers, and crew members. Each group plays a distinct role in creating the brand’s signature experience, and each receives training tailored to its unique responsibilities.
Franchise owners begin with immersive onboarding that combines classroom education, digital coursework, and on-the-job immersion at certified training stores. The focus extends far beyond pizza-making, it encompasses leadership, financial management, hiring, and community engagement.
Managers learn how to coach employees, manage costs, and drive store performance, while team members receive structured microlearning lessons focused on speed, safety, and service quality. This tiered approach ensures that learning cascades from leadership to the front line, creating an organization that learns and teaches continuously.
Hungry Howie’s training is designed to build confident, capable business owners who lead teams and make informed decisions. The program’s goals are threefold: help franchisees master operations, develop leadership skills that foster team engagement, and understand the financial drivers of profitability.
The company’s training team often describes their mission as teaching franchisees “how to think like owners.” That perspective has created a network of entrepreneurs who understand both the brand’s technical standards and its cultural heartbeat. It’s an approach that ensures every franchisee isn’t just replicating a recipe, they’re replicating a mindset.
Each learner within the Hungry Howie’s network follows a defined learning journey aligned to their role. Franchise owners progress through an eight-week onboarding program that includes online learning, classroom instruction, and extensive in-store practice. Managers and crew members complete certification-based learning paths that combine self-paced modules, instructor-led sessions, and peer mentoring.
This multi-layered ecosystem mirrors LatitudeLearning’s structured, role-based model, in which every learner’s progress contributes directly to business outcomes. Each module, checklist, and evaluation reinforces accountability and performance. The structure also supports self-paced review, allowing learners to revisit content when needed, an essential feature in high-turnover industries.
Maintaining brand consistency across hundreds of independently owned stores is no small task. With new locations opening regularly and a workforce that turns over rapidly, the company must ensure that every team member, from first-day employees to multi-unit operators, understands and delivers the same guest experience.
At the same time, rapid shifts in technology and consumer behavior require ongoing adaptation. Digital ordering, mobile marketing, and delivery logistics have transformed how stores operate, forcing training to keep pace without overwhelming learners. The balance between speed and depth remains critical: new hires must become productive quickly, but true mastery takes repetition and reinforcement.
Hungry Howie’s training team approaches learning with a clear methodology known internally as EDOR – Explain, Demonstrate, Observe, Reinforce. This cycle forms the backbone of every lesson, every role-play, and every store-level coaching interaction.
The “Explain” phase introduces the concept or skill. Whether it’s how to proof dough, balance a cash drawer, or greet a customer, trainers first communicate the purpose, steps, and standards behind each task. The “Demonstrate” phase brings the explanation to life. Trainers model the behavior or skill, showing exactly what right looks like and linking it to brand standards.
Next comes “Observe.” Here, learners perform the task while trainers or managers watch closely, offering real-time feedback. Observation transforms knowledge into skill by creating an active, experiential loop. Finally, “Reinforce” ensures the lesson sticks. This stage involves structured repetition, positive feedback, and, when needed, corrective coaching to make sure the skill becomes habit.
The EDOR method reflects the same evidence-based principles that underpin LatitudeLearning’s Stage 2: Knowledge Acquisition and Stage 3: Skill Development. It transitions learners from knowing what to do, to doing it correctly, to doing it consistently. The repetition and feedback inherent in EDOR address one of the franchise industry’s most persistent challenges: maintaining performance quality across multiple locations and learner types.
Hungry Howie’s integrates EDOR into every training format, corporate classrooms, digital modules, and live store environments. A franchisee learning how to manage food costs might begin with an online overview (Explain), watch a recorded financial analysis session (Demonstrate), complete a practice exercise with feedback from a trainer (Observe), and then track and report their own results over time (Reinforce). A crew member learning to make a pizza follows the same rhythm: hear it, see it, do it, repeat it until it becomes second nature.
This systematic approach ensures that training is not passive but participatory. Learners don’t just absorb information; they practice, reflect, and refine. It’s the kind of structure that turns a brand standard into living behavior.
The outcomes of Hungry Howie’s training strategy are as tangible as they are cultural. Certified managers consistently report lower turnover and stronger engagement within their teams. Franchisees who complete the full onboarding and EDOR-based reinforcement program reach profitability faster and maintain higher customer satisfaction scores.
The company’s field consultants note a measurable difference between locations that actively use the EDOR method and those that do not. Stores that emphasize observation and reinforcement see fewer operational errors, better food quality, and stronger team morale.
Perhaps most telling is the feedback from learners themselves. Many describe the training experience as transformational, not procedural. “They don’t just tell you how to make pizza,” one franchisee remarked. “They show you; they watch you do it, they coach you through it, and they stay with you until you’re confident. That changes everything.”
This approach reflects the Surefire Training Impact™ philosophy: real learning doesn’t end with comprehension; it’s sustained through practice and reinforcement. Hungry Howie’s has created a scalable system that teaches, validates, and strengthens performance across its entire enterprise.
Fifty years after its founding, Hungry Howie’s remains one of America’s most beloved pizza franchises not just because of its product, but because of its process. Training is the connective tissue that keeps the brand strong, and the EDOR methodology ensures that learning doesn’t stop when the course ends, it continues every day, in every store, with every pizza made.
By combining experiential learning with structured reinforcement, Hungry Howie’s has built a true culture of capability. The program reflects the early and middle stages of the LatitudeLearning Training Program Roadmap, where knowledge acquisition evolves into skill development through observation, feedback, and measurable performance improvement.
In an industry defined by fast service and constant change, Hungry Howie’s has proven that consistency is learned behavior, and learning, when practiced deliberately, becomes the most reliable ingredient in long-term success.
For more about Hungry Howie’s visit their website – https://www.hungryhowies.com/
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