Flashy fresh

Bob Basham and Nick Reader wanted something “flashy” for their next restaurant concept. So when Basham, an Outback cofounder, and Reader, former CFO of the Tampa Bay Bucs, put their heads together with former Carrabba's VP Bill Kadow to diversify the PDQ empire, they came up with pizza and burgers.

Pizza and burgers might not sound that flashy, with more than 71,000 pizza stores and nearly 51,200 burger joints in the United States, according to industry publications. But the idea had been brewing for some time. “Bob Basham and I always talked about doing something with pizza,” Kadow says. If you ask 1,000 people to name the top three food items they go out for, Kadow is willing to bet that burgers and pizza would make the top two.

So last July, Basham and Kadow went on a trip to California to evaluate restaurant concepts. They visited Habit Burger and were impressed by how well received and busy the chain was. “They also just went public, so that was intriguing,” Kadow says. For pizza, they were inspired by Mario Batali's concepts.