Mastering the Mattenga’s Playbook

Hengam and Matthew Stanfield set out to work side-by-side to build a restaurant business and prioritize their family. A decade later, that business has grown tenfold into an impactful local restaurant chain in San Antonio, Texas. Mattenga’s Pizzeria – named by combining the couple’s names – has taken many years of transformation and perseverance to fully encompass its vision.

Today, Mattenga’s Pizzeria comprises seven locations sprinkled throughout the San Antonio area, generating annual sales of over $7 million. Ranked as one of San Antonio’s fastest growing businesses under $10M by San Antonio Business Journal, Mattenga’s Pizzeria also was a recipient of the 2024 Small Business of the Year honor by the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

The expanding pizza company has hit its stride with its vision, culture and growth strategy to become a national model for independent pizzerias. Mattenga’s Pizzeria is Pizza Today’s 2025 Pizzeria of the Year.

We traveled to San Antonio to experience the pizza company firsthand, dive deep into its innerworkings with Matthew and Hengam  and, of course, try the pizza.

Humbling Beginnings

College sweethearts, Matthew and Hengam married junior year at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. After earning degrees in engineering, they both found themselves unsatisfied with their careers as their blossoming family grew. Hengam, born in Iran, and Matthew, a California native, yearned to find a place to work for themselves in hospitality and raise their family. Then came those infamous words, “Let’s go buy a restaurant,” Hengam says. “How hard could it be?”

After visiting several cities to potentially relocate, the couple packed up their home in New Mexico and moved to San Antonio to take over an existing pizzeria, not knowing it was deep in the red. Hengam reflected on their naivete in understanding P&L and profitability. With no restaurant experience, the Stanfields faced the obstacles of rebounding a struggling business while learning the intricacies of a pizzeria operation.

“It helps to jump off a cliff and, you know, you either crash at the bottom or you build the plane,” Matthew says.

Using Hengam’s father’s pizza dough recipe, Mattenga’s created a menu of New York-style pizza with a southwestern Texas twist. The light and thin pizzas are baked in conveyor ovens. Known for their creative specialty pizzas, the Honey Bexar (cup n’ char pepperoni, jalapeño peppers and a drizzle of hot honey), Big Matt (creamy beer cheese base, mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, onions, ground beef, bacon, pickle relish and topped with Thousand Island dressings), the Triple P (Bacon, Pickle Chips and pineapple) and the Santa Fe (pepperoni, bacon and Hatch green chile) have become local favorite pies. Unique items include the 10-inch filled dough Texas Roll, and house-made sauces, such as jalapeno-cilantro ranch. Appetizers, chicken wings, pastas, calzones and desserts round out the menu. They also are currently testing a lunch buffet at a location in a medical district.

The first few years, the couple – along with Hengam’s parents, who have been vital to Mattenga’s – focused intently on improving the business. They capitalized on their engineering mindset of problem-solving and analytical thinking to set up the framework for Mattenga’s later success. Their efforts began to pay off at their flagship location in Schertz, on the far northeast side of San Antonio. The Stanfields self-funded the opening of a second location on nearby O’Connor Road in 2018 by taking over an existing 800-square-foot pizzeria. Retrofitting existing restaurants and self-funding are growth strategies that would continue as Mattenga’s opened more locations.

A CROSSROADS LEADS TO THINKING BIGGER

Mattenga’s experienced a seismic shift in 2020. Like many restaurant owners, Hengam and Matthew considered throwing in the towel. The couple even listed the two restaurants and received an offer of more than a half-million dollars for the modest pizza business. “We went through this identity shift of what do we do if we sell?” Hengam says, admitting that they would probably open another restaurant. “We already have this, and we’ve always wanted to be in the food industry. We are doing this together, and we already have something going. Clearly someone wants to pay money for it. We made a ‘why not sell list’ of 10.”

Then came a moment of clarity for the couple, with Hengam saying, “We are not selling, period. So, let’s commit and make this work. From there, we put our heads down and got laser focused on handling all of our frustrations. Why is this causing stress? What are we going to do to solve this issue? We weren’t running profitably then. We have to babysit our numbers. We don’t babysit our people, we babysit numbers. We got really meticulous about our engineering and building and we grew our sales by 20 percent. We added locations and just going all in … our identity as business owners to think bigger.”

Thinking bigger also meant expanding out of their comfort zone of what a restaurant is. Ghost kitchens were popping up around the country in the early 2020s, so the Stanfields decided to test that market and add a ghost kitchen in 2021. They learned quickly that the ghost kitchen model wasn’t for them. “We had this mindset of, ‘Hey, if the rent is cheap, it’s low commitment’,” Hengam says of the endeavor.

The Stanfields aren’t afraid to test the waters in new areas – even if they become a learning experience. In 2024, they experimented with doing a kitchen takeover at a local bar.

While expensive lessons, Matthew and Hengam say they consider such experiments an education. “You fund your own education,” Hengam says. “It’s going to be like this graph of up and down, up and down, up and down. If you step back. ‘Oh, wow. You look at that, over the last three years, we’ve grown 117 percent.’”

Between February and June of 2022, Mattenga’s opened three locations – including its second-busiest location in New Braunfels, a mostly carryout and delivery location with two outdoor tables – stretching further away from the San Antonio city center. Mattenga’s Pizzeria near SeaWorld also opened that year. In June, a Mattenga’s Pizzeria opened near San Antonio’s medical center district. During Pizza Today’s visit to the location, Matthew says, “This is 1,800 square feet here at the Callahan location. This seems to be a more ideal size.”

Mattenga’s experienced another growth spurt in 2024 with the Alamo Ranch and Wilderness Oaks locations.

So, what is the overall growth goal? “We want to get to 50 locations,” Hengam says. “We want to be San Antonio’s favorite restaurant, favorite pizzeria here in the city. We love San Antonio. The culture is great, family environment. We love it here, and so we want to continue to serve the city for years to come.”

To achieve such massive expansion, Hengam says, requires “Looking at how are we going to grow in the next three years differently. What got us here will not get us there. We’ve been gradually growing and with dirt under our nails – scrappy, grinding like.”

Matthew adds, “And self-funding, adding gray hair [for Hengam]. The current plan is to grow with corporate stores versus, say, a franchise. … At this time, we want to keep it our own, our own brand under control. … We’ve done the second-generation spaces. I think the future is going to be our own space that’s built uniquely for us and being creative with the concept, and that fits with who we are as a brand.”

Getting to that level requires “obsessing over the numbers, the recipes,” Hengam says. “I think that has to constantly be the priority of fundamentals, of the best basics, consistency, systems and in standards, training, advancement. Those are all the building blocks that we’re layering.”

Hengam expands further, “That is the vision, and we’re going to figure out how the brand evolves, but we’re going to obsess over our customers. That will always be the basic and fundamentals for us: Texas hospitality; it’ll always be investing in our team. These will never change, at least. I feel these are just the fundamentals we’re continue to master and evolve as we go, and we’ll see where it goes.”

Mattenga’s formula for success is entrenched in the pages of its playbook and guides and affirmed through practice and training in the restaurants. “Our company values are Texas hospitality plus invest plus engineered equals 3x win,” Hengam says. “That is our math. We want to make sure 3x win is a customer wins, the team wins, company wins. All decisions need to be through that.”

Texas Hospitality

People are at the center of Mattenga’s Pizzeria. Even during Pizza Today’s interview with Matthew and Hengam, the couple and the team actively and warmly greeted every guest.

Customer engagement initiatives encapsulate Texas hospitality with a warm, welcoming presence and generosity. “I want to go deeper winning people’s hearts,” Hengam says. “You have to do that before you can win their wallets and some money. You have to win their hearts.”

Giving back and supporting the community is foundational at Mattenga’s as the company hosts fundraisers and Spirit Nights and donates hundreds of pizzas to local schools, nonprofits, churches, first responders and nurses. “Anytime we have a donation in town across the seven stores – it’s happening all the time – we share that. There’s a picture of it in the e-mail. You need to make your customers fall in love with you.”

Communication is key. “We send two texts and two e-mails a week,” Hengam says. That is a big contributor to our steady sales growth.” The consistent communication has several benefits. “Consistency builds trust, that we are a brand you can trust. We’re consistent, we’re there for you. Our ‘Feed the Family’, every Friday at 4 p.m. people will get a text.” Mattenga’s fans often comment that they can rely on their Friday text.

Even Mattenga’s rotating custom-designed pizza box bibs offer customers a fun and memorable interaction with the brand.

Invest

Vital to Mattenga’s core values equation is expanding to a team of 100. Matthew and Hengam have created an employee culture and programs that encourage employee success and growth, while also giving them confidence in understanding the business.

Mattenga’s extensive playbook and guides set employees up for success, addressing scenarios they’ll face.

The Stanfields believe in the power of bringing the team together. They do so through three regular meetings. Engineered meetings drill down the numbers and operations. Invest meetings focus on the playbook one section at time, and managers then take the information back to their teams in duplication meetings with scripting and role playing.

Education is at the forefront at Mattenga’s. Managers also participate in a “Book of the Month” and present what they have learned. Some previous books include “Meetings Suck” and “The Toyota Way.” Initiatives like these help employees grow professionally outside of specific day-to-day Mattenga’s operations.

Engineered

The Stanfields have applied Matthew’s civil engineering background and Hengam’s electrical engineering background to the restaurants. Business is math, Hengam says. Matthew controls the numbers, and the two have built transparency and a training vehicle to help their team grasp the numbers and how they impact each operation.

The pair has excelled at being a married couple as well as business partners. “I’ve got a fantastic wife, and we’ve got a clear vision for our family where we’re going,” Matthew says. “And so, because we have that direction, it’s easier when we have lost focus on the direction.” The two leverage their individual strengths to run the growing company. Hengam is drawn to marketing and customer relations, Matthew dives into budgets, building out new locations and he’s also known to fix equipment.

“Systems are freedom,” Hengam insists. With systems and talented and dedicated employees, Mattenga’s locations are well-oiled machines, enabling Matthew and Hengam to concentrate on growing the brand. With four children ranging from toddler to teenager, systems also have meant flexibility.

The Stanfields’ focus surrounds critical analysis. Each quarter, Matthew and Hengam evaluate areas of improvement with the team. “We’ve looked at strategic initiatives that are short term,” Hengam says. “Last quarter, we implemented a commissary at one of our locations. This next quarter, we’re focusing on adding, upgrading some of our tech. … Short term, it’s important to look at initiatives. We’re looking at AI stuff, some of our software.”

Roughly once a year, the Stanfields carve out specific time with no distractions to think about the business, just as they did during that pivotal moment in 2020. “It takes time to think deeply about your problems,” Hengam says. “Make that frustration list. How are we going to solve our issues? We have a lot of problems in our business, just like anybody else. How are we going to divide and conquer and move forward?”

Denise Greer is Executive Editor at Pizza Today.