Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Juniet / Mert Ozturk. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Juniet / Mert, appreciate you joining us today. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?

We owe our big success to the quality in everything we do. Our ingredients, standardized prepping, and cooking processes are key to delivering the consistent Angeli’s flavor Baltimore knows and loves us for.

This has been even more crucial as we opened our first franchise location, truly testing our quality in scale.

Juniet / Mert, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Going back to our childhood, my brother Mert and I spent countless hours in our small family-owned bread factory back in Turkey. And little did we know this invaluable experience was the precursor to our now pizzeria franchise.

Mert and I first arrived to the US with a renowned international program called Work and Travel. We quickly found ourselves exploring a whole new culture and stumbled upon the restaurant world as we picked up jobs. We spent an incredible summer in Virginia Beach making friends, working, and enjoying one of America’s best summer destinations. Then continued our journey up North to New York City. There, we quickly rose in the industry and had gigs at different times managing both a large night club and a restaurant. We were astounded and thrilled with the new life we made ourselves here, and through a friend, decided to take our experience and talents to Baltimore to open up our very own restaurant!

Our first establishment lasted 3 years, then we moved and opened up a better concept in our current place serving delicious pizza. Angeli’s Pizzeria was born just before the pandemic, but we quickly built a reputation and a loyal customer base that enabled us to further grow even during lockdowns through delivery & pickup orders. Fast forward a couple more years, we’ve won multiple awards, grew our success and opened our second restaurant through a franchise model.

We are proud to have created a warm community for our staff, friends, and customers that all made Angeli’s their go to hangout spot. This is partly due to the personal care and attention we give to everything we do. We’ve delivered one-thousand (free) pizzas across Maryland as a way of giving back to our health care workers. We provide well above average wages to our staff and drive each other to/from the restaurant at times. We’ve hosted countless birthdays parties within our extended circle of friends at little to no charge. Just like back home in Turkey, we’ve managed to create a culture of giving. And the success of this shows well in our community. We regularly have friends & family showing to cover shifts for fun, hangout, to just be in a warm, safe, and fun atmosphere. It’s even surprising to us how positive and a welcoming vibe Angeli’s has become. One day when this is all behind us, my brother and I will mostly cherish this part.

Any advice for managing a team?

Managing a team in the service industry is just straight tough. Some might even find it extra intimidating to own & manage a high traffic restaurant at a relatively younger age. But like any other job, what matters most is building trust and respect among your team. As long as people feel those, and are well compensated, trust will naturally be built. Everyone has their specific duties and knows from history that, as we all perform at our bests, the business keeps growing. This results in higher wages and more opportunities within the restaurant which is now becoming a bigger organization through franchising.

But maintaining good spirits and a high morale is more than any of that. This is what in my opinion, separates a great leader from the others. The busy days are like going to war, and the slow days can feel like a drag. We must deal with both very high stress and sluggish deals among the team to still maintain our focus and quality. Although I’m the extrovert, both my brother and I always try to come into work and treat everyone with high energy. We laugh, we joke, we dance in the kitchen, and we share meals together behind the scenes. And good energy is infectious, our team feels it and we all radiate it back to each other as much as we can.

Because when you’re spending majority of your waking hours at such a physically and emotionally demanding job, it has to feel more than just an employment to motivate people into coming everyday. We all keep each other accountable and remind ourselves of our blessings, and remind each other that this is just the beginning and there’s plenty to more to achieve all together!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Despite our occasional fights, I’m forever grateful for the amazing team my brother and I make in this business. We both have a unique and sharp set of skills that vastly differ from each other because of our opposite personalities.

Mert is the eternal source of our structure and organization. Without him, this restaurant would just be a mess and likely unsuccessful. His stable and pragmatic attitude keeps us grounded and focused on efficiency while also bringing in warmth to our customers and staff. While everything feels safe and handled on planet Earth, I like to dream big, and aim high 24/7. We use my extroverted personality and past sales experiences to our marketing advantage. I talk virtually talk about our restaurant one way or another in every conversation. I post ads in every single channel we could think of. I hand gift cards to strangers I meet. I ask friends to bring their friends in, etc.

My pure joy and excitement of growing this business is likely (over)felt by everyone around me. And we’ve seen it pay off time and time again as our network and reach grows. We’ve so far catered events at our local gym, yoga studio, orange theory, and many more small businesses. Through our digital marketing, we’re now starting to get regular private bookings for our newly renovated second floor. And it is this infectious advertising attitude that actually started our franchise efforts as we constantly pitch it within our network and eventually found our first partner. And only 1 month after opening up our second location, our franchise model is already proving extremely successful and we’re already scouting for our next locations and franchisees!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.angelispizzeria.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelisonhigh/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=angeli%27s%20pizzeria
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/angelis-pizzeria-baltimore-2