Urban 360 Pizza Grill and Tap House

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Concept:
 I was born and raised in NYC, so the foundation is New York Style pizza. Pizza tastes great with beer. We created a great pizza and paired it with local craft breweries. We fill out the menu with items from all over the world — that is a reason our name has 360 there. We create a top-notch customer service environment that keeps people coming back.  

Pizza & Dough:
New York Style pizza. The New York Style pizza dough is made from scratch daily and rests for a minimum of 24 hours. We worked long and hard to create the recipe for the dough. In the testing phase they even shipped in New York City tap water. We are regularly adjusting and tweaking all the different aspects that go into the dough — like weather temperature and water conditions, especially we live in the desert.

The dough is spun out and put in our kitchen that is centered around the massive beast of a brick oven to cook the pizza to perfection.

How have you been able to drive high sales?  

During COVID-19/health and safety protocols, we made sure we are always keeping food quality our highest priority. No one will come back if they are not getting food that they enjoy. We have focused on training the front-end staff to provide excellent service, making sure they know they are an important asset that represents the restaurant. Customer service extends to social media. We have made sure to keep our ratings high across all platforms, all while connecting/communicating exciting information to customers. 

We have been keeping up with different trends in the culinary world to create items that return a high profit. The employees attend trade shows on a regular basis, making sure they are getting the tips and advice on anything relevant to the restaurant industry. 

One example of driving high sales is that pre-COVID we were barely doing any deliveries or using delivery services. From 2019 to 2021, profit went from one percent revenue from delivery to 31 percent. We adapted our menu to better fit the boom in takeout services/home delivery apps. 

Another high sales driver is always having fun events for our customers: karaoke, live music and painting parties. We strive to make fun experiences for customers by giving them many reasons to attend our restaurant. 

Tell us more about your menu mix and customer base?

Urban 360 Pizza, is 360 as in menu, toppings and customers from around the world. We start with a backbone of our killer New York style pizza cooked in our brick oven. The next goal of our menu is to keep those customers happy and coming back for appetizers, burgers, calzones, desserts and entrees, with influences of American, Asian, Greek, Italian and Mexican cooking. Our customer base, of course, is backed by green chili loving local 505 (New Mexican) people. It is hard to explain to other parts of the country, but once you have a taste for that heat…it becomes hauntingly good! All sorts of people and families show up when they see our menu. We actually have a huge map of the world hanging up on our dining room wall where customers put in a pushpin/thumbtack/tag of where they are traveling from. We want the whole 360, as in we want the whole world to try a traditional pizza with an Asian topping. One great example is our orange chicken pizza.

What community outreach programs have you used to connect to your neighborhood and city?

For us, connecting to community and neighborhood is making charitable donations to causes we believe in. Two specific causes we help are Veterans and Leukemia. On applicable holidays there are in-restaurant food promotions for Veterans. When we can participate, we donate pizza to Veteran events. For Leukemia, we have had special events where profits from sales go to an individual.