Extra Dough For Ilitches With Little Caesars Rankings

Local pizza tycoons/entertainment district architects the Illitch Family have another reason to celebrate their string of good news heralds. Little Caesars Pizza, home of the original "$5 Hot-'n-Ready Pizza" and source of much of the family's sizable fortune, has been named one of the country's ten-fastest growing chain restaurants.

Beating out Chinese fast food hot-spot Panda Express and Chicken peddler Zaxby's for a eighth-place ranking on the 2013 Nation's Restaurant News "Top 10 growth chains" chart, the pizza palace is 19th in overall sales.

In further kudos for Little Caesars, it was the only pizza chain to crack the top ten, and missed out on beating seventh-place Moe's Southwest Grill in annual sales growth by only 0.2 percent.

There are presently more than 3,673 American outlets of the quick pizza establishment, and the company did more than $2.9 billion in sales in the last fiscal year.

All that positive growth can only help the Illitch clan as they move into widescale urban planning with their new downtown sports and entertainment district in 45 blocks bordered by Woodward and Cass Avenues and spanning over I-75. The $650 million development — $283 million of which comes from public funds — is said to include a series of heretofore unseen national chain restaurants and bars, a hotel and maybe a movie theater.

Now that the Illitch group can rightfully claim to be behind one of the country's biggest and fastest-growing chain restaurants, they might have greater say over just which kinds of chains they are willing to let join them in the downtown corridor.
· NRN Top 100 2013 [Nation's Restaurant News]
· $650M hockey arena district moves forward [Det News]
· New Red Wings Arena Revealed, Massive Development Planned [Curbed Detroit]