Giles Flanigan and his staff at Blue Pan Pizza are too busy.
“Those guys just get clobbered,” he said of a typical weekend night at his Congress Park location.
So, he’s adding a special section dedicated to the takeout and delivery business at 3509 E. 12th Ave., where he opened in 2017. Flanigan and Blue Pan nabbed the corner unit of the building, which for 20 years was home to the recently shuttered Under the Umbrella bakery.
With a new 900 square feet on the ground floor and a kitchen space below, he thinks delivery times can be cut by 50%. Flanigan said he expects to open the space within the next six months. Blue Pan currently occupies 3,000 square feet across two floors.
“It takes a sh*tload of pressure off the kitchen that currently exists and, hopefully, recaptures some of our great customers who are like, ‘I want pizza tonight, but, dude, I ain’t waiting an hour and a half,’” Flanigan told BusinessDen.
Along with takeout and delivery orders, the kitchen space will be used to test a commissary. Flanigan said workers will make everything from sauces to salad dressings in the space, which will be shuttled to Blue Pan’s other locations, in the Highlands and in Golden.
If all goes well, he’ll add a bigger commissary space elsewhere.
“The biggest mistake people make in commissary models is if they rent too much space. You can be in trouble that way,” Flanigan said. “So this gives us a chance to initially test our commissary ideas and see if itap something that works for the company.”
He’s planning for the long term in the area. He just renewed his lease for another 10 years with landlord City Street Investors, the local firm run by Pat McHenry, Joe Vostrejs and Rod Wagner.
In the past several years, the shop has been propelled to the best performing location of the three Blue Pans, Flanigan said. Thatap in part because Dave Portnoy, the internet personality, famed pizza reviewer and founder of media company Barstool Sports, said Blue Pan had “great Detroit-style pizza” that is “really really (expletive) good” in a 2021 review.
“We’ve had people flying in from all over the country to eat there because of that review,” Flanigan said. “We had one person three or four weeks ago that flew in for the day. They landed at the airport, came in, ate and then headed right back to the airport.”
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