Spinato’s Pizzeria & Family Kitchen has added around 150 people to its ownership group.
The Valley pizza restaurant, which has six brick-and-mortar locations as well as operations at State Farm Stadium and Mortgage Matchup Center during Arizona Cardinals, Phoenix Suns, and Phoenix Mercury games, announced this week it has transitioned 49% of company ownership to its employees in an employee stock ownership plan. The Spinato family will keep the other 51% of ownership.
Employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs, are uncommon across businesses in general – less than 1% of Arizona companies use the model – and they are rarely heard of for restaurant companies. But the Spinato family felt like many employees already work as if they own the place, so why not give them more, so around the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, he started looking at ways of rewarding employees.