MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2023

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A relentless hunt for their favorite foods and drinks led Scott and Ally Svenson into launching not one but two multi-million dollar businesses. The first came about in 1990s London when they discovered that British coffee meant instant coffee. So, the Washington natives decided to start the Seattle Coffee Company in the U.K, inspired by their love of Starbucks—which was still only in the U.S. But, once Starbucks started to go global, Scott and Ally decided to sell and move back to Seattle. They soon found themselves looking for quick, affordable, crowd-pleasers to feed their growing boys on busy nights; pizza is a good solution, but it can also be slow and expensive. So Scott and Ally wondered if they could figure out how to make individual, fast-casual pizza work; and they started MOD pizza as a one-store experiment. 15 years and more than 500 locations later, Scott and Ally have their answer: they can make it work.

This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music by Ramtin Arablouei

Edited by Andrea Bruce, with research help from Casey Herman.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Guy Rise here on the Wisdom from the Top Podcast.
0:03.1	I talked to leadership experts in some of the world's greatest business leaders about
0:07.0	how they lead, innovate, and transform the people around them.
0:10.9	If you're trying to make it in business or just want to think more like a leader, this
0:14.5	shows probably for you.
0:16.4	Listen now to the Wisdom from the Top Podcast from Luminary and NPR.
0:20.7	Want to learn how to be a master of business without going back to school?
0:25.2	Listen to the Planet Money MBA.
0:27.5	No suits, no power points, just the secrets of business school delivered straight to
0:31.7	your ears.
0:32.7	Every Wednesday till Labor Day on Planet Money from NPR.
0:36.6	Hey, it's Guy here.
0:38.2	So on how I built this, we talked a lot about working with colleagues who have different
0:42.3	points of view.
0:43.3	And this made me think of a conversation I recently had with actor Rain Wilson, who famously
0:48.1	played the nerd, bully, Dwight Shrewd on the office.
0:52.0	And Rain told me what it's like to be a person of faith in the world of comedy, where religion
0:56.9	and spirituality are more often a punchline than a way of life.
1:00.8	To hear more, check out my conversation with Rain Wilson over on my other podcast.
1:05.0	It's called The Great Creators.
1:06.9	Just search for the great creators with GuyRaz wherever you listen to podcasts or go to
1:12.1	TheGreatCreators.com.
	...

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