A pretzel couple, an open oven and a long name.

Blaze Pizza was founded by Elise and Rick Wetzel. A company release of August 2015 names the couple as its founders and describes Rick Wetzel as a co-founder of Wetzel’s Pretzels. Wikipedia gives the founding as Pasadena, California, in 2011, and ABC7 Los Angeles, reporting in June 2024, also dated the founding in California to 2011; the Los Angeles Business Journal, writing in July 2017, said Blaze was founded in 2012. The company says its original restaurant opened in Irvine, California, on 6 August 2012, and Wikipedia records a second restaurant, which it calls the flagship, opening in Pasadena that October.

The chain’s longer trading name puts the oven into the brand. Restaurant Business, reporting in July 2017, called the company Blaze Fast-Fire’d Pizza, and the company’s own releases of the period use the same form. Wikipedia describes the format as made-to-order pizzas with a choice of sauces and toppings, cooked in a high-temperature, open-flame oven, and says the cooking in each restaurant is done in that single oven.

The early company also drew attention for its backers. The 2015 release listed investors including the basketball player LeBron James, the journalist Maria Shriver, the Boston Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner and the film producer John Davis. The release was issued for the chain’s third anniversary and gave its press contact as Josh Levitt, who was still the company’s spokesman in 2017.

Outside investors, then a move east.

Ownership has been shared with outside investors. Restaurant Business reported on 14 July 2017 that the Los Angeles private-equity firm Brentwood Associates had announced a “significant, non-controlling investment” in the chain, alongside an investment by the restaurant executive Greg Dollarhyde, and that the company then planned to open in the Middle East. The Los Angeles Business Journal reported the same week, citing the company’s spokesman Joshua Levitt, that Brentwood had taken a minority stake and that Rick and Elise Wetzel and the original investor Bill Phelps still held a majority stake. At that time Jim Mizes was chief executive. The Journal noted Brentwood’s other restaurant investments, which then included Veggie Grill and Lazy Dog Restaurants. Wikipedia records expansion into Canada from 2015 and openings in the Middle East from 2018 in partnership with Alshaya.

The company’s base has since moved. Restaurant Dive reported on 5 June 2024 that Blaze Pizza would relocate its headquarters from Pasadena to Atlanta by early September, and ABC7 Los Angeles reported on 7 June 2024 the company’s statement that Atlanta would serve as the headquarters for its operations, business development, marketing, finance and human-resources functions. Restaurant Dive described the move as part of the chain’s next phase of growth, with Atlanta giving it an East Coast headquarters. Beto Guajardo, then chief executive, said in a statement to Restaurant Dive that California was where the brand was born more than a decade earlier and that the company had “tremendous heart” for communities across the state.

Leadership changed again at the start of 2026. Restaurant Dive reported on 6 January 2026 that John Owen, previously chief operating officer of Scooter’s Coffee, had become chief executive with effect from 5 January, succeeding Guajardo, who had led the chain since January 2023, and that the company had announced the appointment in an emailed press release. Restaurant Dive said Owen was tasked with improving the chain’s menu and operations. Wikipedia adds that Owen had earlier run Subway’s business in Russia and spent three decades at McDonald’s.

Signs, boxes and the counter.

A pizza or pasta chain meets its customers in a handful of physical places before anyone opens a menu: the sign above the door, the box or bag that leaves the shop, the counter where an order is placed and the board that lists what can be ordered. Each of those surfaces carries the name and the colours, and each has to work at a different distance, from a fascia read across a car park to a box lid read at a kitchen table.

Some restaurant formats put the kitchen in view, with an assembly line or an oven behind the counter, so the preparation area becomes part of the interior design and the menu board doubles as an ordering guide. Other formats keep the kitchen out of sight and lean on the dining room, the drive-through lane or the delivery packaging instead.

Each guide in this group looks at the brand rather than the food: who started it and where, who has owned it since, and how its name, logo, signage and restaurant interiors are documented in dated, independent sources, with anything the company says about itself marked as its own account.

A name built around an oven.

The Blaze identity starts with its words. The short name is Blaze; the longer trading name, Blaze Fast-Fire’d Pizza, appears in the company’s release of August 2015 and in Restaurant Business coverage of July 2017. The 2015 release prints the short name as Blaze Pizza®, with the registered-trademark sign, in its company boilerplate.

The format puts the oven in view. Wikipedia describes each restaurant as cooking its pizzas in a single high-temperature, open-flame oven, with each pizza made to order from a choice of sauces and toppings. When ABC7 Los Angeles reported the headquarters move in June 2024, the company said that most of its corporate staff would remain remote workers, with a few offered relocation to Atlanta.

The people behind the brand have been part of its public story. The founders came to it from a pretzel business; the 2015 release named investors from sport, journalism and film; and the 2017 coverage in Restaurant Business and the Los Angeles Business Journal shows a founding family that still held a majority while bringing in private equity. In 2024 the company moved its headquarters from Pasadena, where Wikipedia places its founding, to Atlanta, and in January 2026 it named John Owen as chief executive.

For a design guide, Blaze Pizza shows how a name can carry a cooking method, and how a spelling choice inside that name — a single apostrophe — can become a recognisable part of the identity. Compare it with MOD Pizza, another build-your-own pizza counter, and with Domino’s, a pizza brand with a long-established delivery identity. The palette here takes its cue from the brand’s fire vocabulary, in our own interpretation: a charcoal for type, an ember orange for accents and an ash grey for secondary text, set against an oven white. For this guide we use charcoal, ember orange and ash grey with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Blaze Pizza’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.