If there’s a common thread that ties together Ian’s Pizza on State and Madison NO FEAR Dentistry – two of the Dane County Small Business Awards’ 2011 Emerging Business winners – it’s an appreciation for lifting the spirits of customers and employees and a knack for seizing opportunities when they present themselves.
This entrepreneurial elan was never more evident than when Ian’s raised its profile during the Capitol protests that rocked our city, state, and nation earlier this year.
According to Lexy Frautschy, Ian’s Pizza on State’s majority owner, it all started simply enough. Ian’s delivered some free pizzas to some folks at the Capitol, a blogger picked up on it, and a faraway reader called with an offer to donate a couple of pizzas to the protesters.
That sparked a viral campaign, and soon Ian’s was the epicenter of the pizza world, seeing its wares featured across the media spectrum, including in The New York Times and the U.K.’s The Guardian.
Heady times? That doesn’t begin to describe it.
“In the next three or four days, our business was completely turned into a call center, basically – people from around the world were calling,” said Frautschy. “At the peaks over the weekends, we were bringing in help from our Chicago and Milwaukee locations. We had people who were just dealing with phone calls and dealing with press and things like that. We had volunteers, friends, and family coming in and helping us deliver pizza to the Capitol. … It was really something else.”
When all was said and done, Ian’s had received orders for donated pizzas from 70 countries and all 50 states. The company strove to remain as neutral as possible during the protests, seeing its role in the campaign as a way to support the democratic process.
“In the next three or four days, our business was completely turned into a call center, basically – people from around the world were calling.” – Lexy Frautschy, majority owner, Ian’s Pizza on State |
As extraordinary as the campaign was, however, its success is perhaps not all that surprising considering the force that Ian’s on State has become since Frautschy took the reins in 2008. Since that time, the location has more than doubled its sales and created more than 50 jobs, both at the restaurant and by spinning off other businesses. (One of these, Alto Clef Productions, is a growing design company that had Ian’s as its first client.)
This impressive bottom-line performance is perhaps partly a result of the fun vibe the restaurant tries to foster among its employees. For example, this past holiday season, the restaurant held its second annual Mustaches for Kids fundraiser. For one month, employees agreed not to shave their mustaches (female employees wore fakes), and then raised sponsorship money and donated a portion of their tips to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Wisconsin.
The company is also committed to providing all its employees with health insurance while offering competitive wages and profit-sharing. And it strives to be friendly to the environment as well. In the last couple of years, it has focused on using local, organic, and environmentally sustainable products, in the process doing away with almost all plastic packaging.
Of course, such socially conscious business practices tend to cost more, which is why Frautschy – an art major in college and a former part-time employee of Ian’s – had to quickly get creative and adapt when he took over the business three years ago.
For example, the company seized on both modern social media opportunities and the oldest marketing strategy in the book.
“We never traditionally did a lot of marketing or traditional advertising like fliers and things like that,” said Frautschy. “It was based on word of mouth and things, and Facebook and all that stuff started happening, and we really focused a lot of energy on the website, just trying to get a big online presence so that we’re a little bit different from a lot of traditional pizza places. I feel like people really seemed to resonate with that.”
And how has Frautschy dealt with the lackadaisical economy of the last few years? Very well, given that the restaurant business’ halcyon days long preceded his tenure as an owner.
“It’s interesting because this is all we know,” said Frautschy. “When we started, things were already plummeting. We had to be really ready to adapt and try to find different ways to structure business, and a lot of us didn’t have a lot of formal schooling in business, so it really was a matter of talking to different business owners and finding different mentors and things to see what they were doing, and finding the best parts of what they were doing and apply it to what we were doing.”
Like pulling teeth?
While it’s relatively easy to get people to walk through the doors of a fun pizza joint – assuming the business is well run – getting people to go to the dentist is another matter entirely.
At Madison NO FEAR Dentistry, however, the focus is on making people comfortable enough with dental visits that they won’t postpone dental care.
It’s a goal that owner David Ducommun and Keith Dobracki, associate dentist and future partner, take very seriously.
“Think about walking into a dental office, and you’re greeted by name,” said Dobracki of the personalized care. “You come in and there’s [ironically] fresh cookies, and someone comes in and gives you a tour of the office so you feel like you’re right at home. You get to meet a lot of the staff, and you’re seated down, you’re treated more like a person than a number. They offer you a hot neck wrap and have TVs with headphones. Then you sit down and have a chat and get to know each other, really just receive every comfort before we try to do anything clinically.”
Of course, the company’s business model is not simply based on offering creature comforts. Ducommun and Dobracki also offer sedation dentistry to people who are particularly phobic about going to the dentist. The technique is designed to put people at ease, which allows the dentists to complete several years’ worth of dental treatments in one or two visits.
As a result, many people who have feared the dentist their entire lives end up walking away satisfied.
“We have had people who’ve had lifelong fears of going to the dentist, and once they get through with us here, they literally bust out in tears knowing that all of their dentistry has been taken care of and, even if they do have a problem in the future, this is a comfortable way to have it taken care of.”
That relief that many patients feel is reflected in the company’s referral numbers. According to Ducommun and Dobracki, Madison NO FEAR Dentistry is a 70% referral office.
“Yeah, that’s one of the things we’re most proud of,” said Dobracki. “Statistically, an average dental office is like a 20% or 25% referral, so for our number to be that high really shows the genuine nature of David and I and the entire team here, and we trust those patients to go home and tell their loved ones or even their neighbors what they experienced here. That’s kind of a testament to what we offer.”
Ducommun is quick to note, however, that sedation dentistry is not the main focus of the practice.
“Five or 10 percent of our practice is sedation,” said Ducommun. “The rest is just general family practice. We’re just regular dentists and we don’t want to be put somewhere in a pigeonhole that says all those guys are about is sedations, because that’s not the truth. Ninety percent of our practice is really just family practice where we do regular fillings and crowns, root canals, wisdom teeth, you name it. So we don’t want to be pigeonholed, but we do want to make sure people out there know that we can take great care of them whatever the need is.”
While the company has experienced a 25% growth rate each year, Ducommun and Dobracki aren’t just about making money and expanding the business. In addition to their involvement in the Give Kids a Smile program (through which they provide free oral health care services to children from low-income families) and the Touched Twice Volunteer Clinic (an outreach program that helps people in the community who can’t afford dental care), the dentists stress the importance of putting people first in their practice.
“We’re really not interested in growing unless we can expand the model that’s worked here, which is the personalized care,” said Ducommun. “Neither Keith nor I are interested in that. Do we need to make money as a business? Of course we do. But that’s not really what we’re after. We want to build a better model. That’s what we’re interested in, because that’s good for people.”
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