When we started CasaGees six years ago, we weren’t thinking about licence models or franchise structures. We were thinking about dough hydration, oven temperatures, and whether anyone in Gloucestershire would actually pay us for a pizza on a Friday night.
It took a few years of running the business – and a lot of conversations with people who wanted to do something similar – before we started thinking seriously about how to package what we’d learned. And when we did, the question of how to do that turned out to matter more than we’d expected.
We tried the franchise route first
We didn’t just consider franchising and rule it out at a distance. We went down that road properly – far enough to pay for a franchise agreement.
And then we stopped.
The more we sat with it, the more it became clear that it didn’t fit the way we wanted to work or the kind of relationship we wanted to have with the people we were trying to help. Running a franchise meant ensuring that everything was done exactly our way . Wit- standards enforced, processes followed and the CasaGees name protected at every point. That’s a legitimate way to run a business. It’s just not how we wanted to run ours.
We didn’t want to dictate to people. We wanted to guide them. There’s a meaningful difference between those two things, and once we articulated it, the decision became straightforward.
We also kept coming back to the financial reality. A franchise model – with its upfront fees, ongoing royalties, and approved supplier requirements – takes a consistent slice of a licensee’s income for the life of the agreement. We wanted the people who worked with us to be as profitable as possible. A model that permanently reduced their margins didn’t sit right with us.
When we finally made the decision to step away from the franchise route and build a licence model instead, we both felt it immediately. The pressure lifted. It felt more like us – more aligned with what we actually wanted to do and how we wanted to help people.
That feeling told us we’d made the right call.
What the licence model actually means
Instead of licensing our brand, we license our knowledge – the hard-won lessons from six years of running a home pizza business from a domestic kitchen. And because we come from a software background, you get something most pizza business courses don’t offer. A fully functioning website and a purpose-built ordering and delivery system. Designed specifically for this model. Ready to run under your own name from day one
The people who work with us through the Pizza Business Blueprint build their own businesses, under their own names, in their own communities. We give them the roadmap. They build the destination.
Everything they build is theirs – the brand, the customers, the reputation. And every pound they earn stays in their business.
The honest case against the licence model
We’d be doing you a disservice if we only made the case for our own approach.
If you want an established brand name behind you – something customers already recognise before you’ve made a single pizza – a franchise can genuinely accelerate your early customer acquisition. And if the idea of building your own brand from scratch feels overwhelming rather than exciting, that’s worth paying attention to. The licence model asks you to back yourself. Not everyone is in the right place for that, and starting a business when you’re not ready to back yourself is a recipe for a difficult experience regardless of which model you choose.
Why this model exists at all
The honest answer is that we built Business In A Pizza Box because people kept asking us how we did it. We answered those questions one conversation at a time for a while. Eventually it made more sense to package the answers properly – not as a franchise, not as a generic online course, but as a genuine blueprint built on the specific model we’d spent six years developing.
And built with the specific intention that the people who use it keep as much of what they earn as possible.
That’s what it is. Not a shortcut, not a guarantee, but a significant head start for the right person – from people who are still running the business they’re teaching.
If the licence model sounds like the right fit for you:
The Pizza Business Blueprint is our step-by-step guide to launching and running a home pizza business — built on six years of doing exactly that at CasaGees. Find out more here.
