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Personally-made-to-order fast food pizzas? Sounds like a pretty good idea, and for a few years it was one of the thriving sectors of the fast casual market. So, why is it flailing now?

It was over a decade ago when restaurants like Blaze Pizza and MOD Pizza burst on to the scene, offering customers a way to build their own pizza much in the same way you could build your own burrito at Chipotle. Ordering at the counter, the customer would pick and choose from a wide selection of toppings, and then the pizza would be fired in a high-heat oven and available in a matter of a couple of minutes. Your own personally-made, personally-designed pizza fast enough for lunch break!

Hundreds of stores expanded across the nation, and then they faced the nemesis that so many other restaurants have had to overcome: COVID. With a service model designed for in-store ordering, the dramatic drop in traffic resulted in many of those hundreds of stores just as quickly shuttering their doors.

Pieology was not immune to this, either. At its height, there were over 140 locations; by the time they declared bankruptcy in late 2025, 70% of those had already closed their doors, and in the past half year, half of those remaining are still open.

Even so, I did visit Pieology to give it a try. I've had good experiences with these type of fast-food pizza places (like at Urban Bricks), and also terrible ones (like at Blaze). One thing I've learned is to keep the number of toppings fairly light, since the way it is baked does not work well with thick pizzas. An 11-inch pizza with sausage, tomatoes and mushrooms, thank you very much. And turns out, it was actually pretty good. I think the key to its success was probably the sauce and cheese, actually - far too many places skimp on both, and they didn't here.

Will Pieology be able to turn the corner and survive? Well, it's going to be a tough challenge. The entire fast food category of pizza has been in the doldrums for the past few years (from Domino's all the way down) compared to other restaurants, and Pieology may already be too far gone to emerge from bankruptcy intact. Time will tell.

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(About this review series: Starting in late 2025, I am visiting a different fast food/fast casual chain every day, until I run out of places to visit. Aiming to review as many chains on the Technomics Top 500 Restaurants list as possible, plus key/important regional and some local chains as well. UPDATE - I will be wrapping up this review series with Day #365. And no, I haven't gained weight, and no, it hasn't hurt my health.)