Back to Basics: What a Pizzeria Taught Me About Focus

When people talk about strategic planning, they usually talk about growth. New initiatives. New markets. New programs. New revenue streams. New partnerships. More, more, more.

But sometimes, the best strategic plan is subtraction. Sometimes the smartest thing an organization can do is stop trying to be everything to everyone and instead become exceptional at the few things people actually want from it. There is a tiny pizzeria in Philadelphia called Del Rossi's Cheesesteak Co. that illustrates this idea better than any case study I could invent.

The Menu Kept Growing

When I moved to the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia in 2014, Del Rossi's sat on the corner of 4th and Spring Garden. It was fine. Nothing offensive. Nothing memorable either. I ordered from it once shortly after moving down from New York and was not impressed. Coming from New York, my standards for pizza were admittedly, unfairly high. Over the years, though, I watched the menu grow larger and larger. Sandwiches. Salads. Cheesesteaks. Fries. Specialty fries. Toppings. Wraps. Wings. Chicken fingers. Mozzarella sticks. Endless variations of endless things. It was the classic small-business instinct: if we offer more, more people will come.

But that strategy rarely creates greatness. More often, it creates operational chaos, or what we in the nonprofit world call mission creep. The menu kept growing, and the food stayed forgettable.

Then the Pizza Got Good

Then something changed. A few years ago, my kids had pizza delivered to their after-school program nearby. They came home raving about it. "Del Rossi's," they said. I honestly thought they were kidding. That place? But they insisted it was completely different now. So naturally, I had to try it myself. And they were right. The pizza had become dramatically better. The dough was different. The bread quality had clearly improved. Somebody serious had entered the picture, maybe a new baker. Whatever happened, the core product suddenly mattered again.

When New Management Arrived

But the menu was still sprawling. It still felt like the business was trying to do too much. Then, new management came in. And that is when Del Rossi's became a machine.

The menu shrank dramatically. They essentially doubled down on two things: pizza and cheesesteaks. That was it. And suddenly everything clicked. Every item became operationally aligned. The boxes are the same size. The workflows became standardized. The kitchen became an assembly line. You walk in there now, and nobody is standing around. Every employee is moving. Dough stations. Box stations. Oven stations. Pickup stations. Delivery flow. Technology integrated directly into the ordering process. Constant movement. Constant throughput. The place is packed all the time, and no one waits more than fifteen minutes for their food.

A Bib Gourmand Out of Nowhere

And then came the validation. Philadelphia has always had an incredible food scene, but for a long time, it lived in the shadow of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Michelin never even reviewed the city. When Michelin finally came to Philadelphia for the first time in 2025, Del Rossi's earned a Bib Gourmand designation. What makes that especially remarkable is that the other two pizza spots that received Bib Gourmands were already nationally famous. They had been featured in places like Bon Appétit and Condé Nast Traveler for years. Del Rossi's was the one that came out of nowhere. And I do not think that was an accident. I think it was focus. Not expansion. Not complexity. Not trying to chase every possible customer. Focus.

What fascinates me most is that you can actually feel the strategic clarity when you walk inside. The business radiates alignment. The employees know exactly what the organization is trying to accomplish. The customer experience is fast, predictable, and high quality. Everything from the menu design to the kitchen layout reinforces the same mission. Do fewer things. Do them exceptionally well. Repeat relentlessly.

Why This Reaches Far Beyond Pizza

That sounds obvious. But organizations struggle with it constantly. Especially colleges. Especially arts organizations. When institutions feel pressure, their instinct is often expansion. Add programs. Add initiatives. Add committees. Add offerings. Everybody wants to believe the next new thing will save the organization.

But complexity is expensive. Every additional offering creates more drag. It fragments attention and introduces inefficiency because more silos form. It increases the demand on the people who run things, and the time needed to train new people and bring them into the existing culture. It weakens quality control. It creates more meetings, more coordination, more confusion, and more opportunities for mediocrity. Meanwhile, the core offering deteriorates because limited resources are spread even more thinly than they were before.

Focus Creates Energy

Del Rossi's went the other direction. They simplified. They standardized. They focused. And ironically, that focus made the organization feel more alive, not less. That is the part most strategic plans miss.

Focus creates energy. There is something deeply compelling about watching an organization that knows exactly what it is. As somebody who loves great operational systems, I think that is part of why I crave their pizza now. Yes, the food is excellent. But I also love walking into a place where every moving part feels intentional. You can sense the operational discipline behind the experience. The strategic plan is visible in the room itself.

The lesson here is not that every organization should cut programs or become smaller. Growth matters. Innovation matters. Expansion matters. But before an organization asks what new thing it should add, it should first ask a harder question: what are we already great at that deserves deeper focus? Because sometimes the path forward is not expansion. Sometimes the path forward is mastery.