MOD Pizza opening 1st Dayton-area restaurant today

MOD Pizza is poised to enter the Dayton market with the opening of an Englewood restaurant, with a second location already in the works at Cornerstone of Centerville.

The Seattle-based pizza chain will open a restaurant at 9196 N. Main St. (Ohio 48) with a special promotion on May 9, with a ribbon-cutting and grand opening planned for the following day, May 10, according to Garyen Denning, managing partner of Cool Dough, LLC, the franchisee of MOD Pizza for the Dayton and Cincinnati areas.

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The new restaurant is hiring, Denning said. An application and more information are available at Applyatmod.com .

“We are very eager to be entering the Dayton market,” Denning told this news outlet. “We will be hiring 35 enthusiastic MOD Squaders to open our new location. The MOD Squad — our employees — are the heart of MOD.”

RELATED: MOD Pizza confirms 1st Dayton-area restaurant will open in Englewood (August 2016)

In Butler County, a MOD Pizza opened in West Chester across from the Liberty Center in December.

Founded in 2008, MOD is among the pioneers of the fast casual pizza segment, in which individual pizzas are made on demand, then cooked in an 800 degree oven in less than three minutes. Made-to-order salads also are available, as are milkshakes, house-made lemonades and iced teas, and local craft beers and wine.

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The concept is similar to that of Kettering-based Rapid Fired Pizza, which has opened multiple restaurants across the Miami Valley in the last 18 months, and Cleveland-based pizza chain PizzaFire, which opened its first Dayton-area location last August in Kettering.

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Opening day on May 9 will be “Bridge Fund Day,” in which the restaurant offers its menu at 50 percent off all day, with all proceeds going to a fund that the company put in place to offer assistance to its employees in times of need, Denning said.

A ribbon-cutting and grand opening is planned for 11 a.m. May 10.

The new restaurant —which shares a 4,510-square-foot building with a Starbucks coffee shop on Ohio 48 just south of I-70 — seats 100: 76 inside and 24 on on outdoor patio.

According to a March 2 MOD Pizza news release announcing the company’s 2016 full-year financial results, the pizza chain more than doubled its store count for the second consecutive year with the addition of more than 100 new stores, grew system-wide sales to over $150 million, and reported 5.3 percent same-store sales growth. Company net revenue reached $131 million, up 116 percent over 2015.

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