The LTO
Stoner's Pizza Joint is running a Cheeseburger Pizza as a limited-time offering at participating locations September 1 through October 31, betting that mashup menu innovation can drive trial and repeat visits during the critical fall football-season daypart. The pie builds on a cheddar cheese base loaded with seasoned beef, diced onions, pickles, bacon and mozzarella, finished with a Thousand Island drizzle — a direct riff on QSR burger flavor profiles that has become a reliable LTO template across the fast-casual pizza segment.
CEO John Stetson framed the launch as a brand-voice play as much as a product one. "The Cheeseburger Pizza is exactly that — bold, craveable and made for sharing on game day," he said, pointing to the chain's approach of filtering familiar consumer flavor cues through its own creative lens. The game-day angle matters operationally: pizza brands with strong off-premise and delivery mixes have leaned heavily into sports-occasion marketing to sustain weekend dinner daypart volume.
Pickle Pizza Stays
The chain is also extending its Pickle Pizza — a summer fan favorite — through the end of October, giving the brand two specialty pies running simultaneously. That dual-LTO approach is increasingly common among emerging pizza franchises competing for share against larger players: stacking limited-time items widens the consideration set without requiring a permanent menu overhaul or supply-chain retooling. For a 55-unit operator still in unit-growth mode, keeping a proven item on the board while debuting a new one helps sustain ticket attachment and rewards-program engagement.
Loyalty & Development Context
Stoner's Rewards members will receive exclusive offers tied to three September food holidays — National Cheese Pizza Day (September 5), National Cheeseburger Day (September 18) and National Pepperoni Pizza Day (September 20). Loyalty-gated promotions serve a dual purpose for a growing regional chain: they accelerate rewards enrollment while generating first-party transaction data that informs future LTO timing and daypart targeting, a capability that larger chains like Domino's and Papa Johns have operationalized at scale.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Stoner's has expanded to more than 55 locations across the Southeast, Texas, the Midwest and Colorado, with additional units in development. The brand competes in the fast-casual and delivery pizza segment on a scratch-forward platform — fresh in-house dough, house sauces and proprietary cheese blends — differentiating from both national QSR pizza chains and the growing field of independent fast-casual concepts pushing similar artisan-adjacent positioning. For context on how regional pizza franchises are structuring area development agreements and unit-economics models in the current environment, see our recent coverage of pizza segment franchise trends.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
