How Little Caesars uses storage solutions to expand and remodel their stores

Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, Little Caesars® is the largest carryout-only pizza chain in the United States. Founded in 1959 as a single, family-owned restaurant, Little Caesars has become the third largest pizza chain in the world with stores in 23 countries and territories worldwide, including in each of the 50 U.S. states. Each day it serves more than three million pizzas to its customers.

All the equipment used by Little Caesars is supplied by Blue Line Distribution, a wholly owned subsidiary of the restaurant franchise. This includes foodservice equipment, fixtures, and furnishings—in other words, everything a restaurant needs to either build out a new store or remodel an existing one.

The challenge

Over the past few years, Blue Line Distribution has undertaken a series of remodels of Little Caesars stores in the United States. Each time a store is built or remodeled, large quantities of fixtures and equipment need to be transported from warehouses and delivered to restaurant sites. Space is at a premium for each store, so it can be difficult to find enough on-site storage for the goods when they are delivered. The same goes for the old items being replaced.

Construction work of this kind is also a time-consuming organizational challenge. Plans need to be adapted on the fly to suit the workers’ schedules and meet the needs of the build as it progresses. In light of this, Blue Line Distribution needed a wide-ranging and flexible delivery solution that gave them access to locations all over the country, while also providing the extra space they required. That’s where PODS® came in.

The PODS solution

Thanks to its own nationwide reach, PODS was able to deliver containers to the Little Caesars warehouses, where they were loaded with all the equipment needed for each new store. Once loaded, the containers were transported to the new Little Caesars restaurant using the PODS nationwide distribution network.

When the containers arrived, they were offloaded at the outlet and used as on-site storage until the fixtures were ready to be unpacked and installed. When the job was done, the containers were collected and shipped back to PODS for reuse.

The results

“The best word to describe PODS is easy,” says Eric Brasseur, Global Director of Engineering and Architecture at Blue Line Distribution. “They’ve been easy to partner with, and that’s why the relationship has worked so well for us. It doesn’t feel like a vendor-customer relationship, but rather that we’re all working together as one team.”

Over the last 15 years, PODS has helped Little Caesars with thousands of new store fittings and remodels. By simplifying the logistics of how equipment was stored and transported across the country, PODS enables Blue Line Distribution to kit out each location faster and more effectively than ever before.