Being a lifelong Chicagoan, Tim McEnery knows a thing or two about pizza. But the CEO and founder of Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants had never had anything quite like the pies served at Piccolo Buco.
The small restaurant, located in the touristy area around Rome’s Trevi Fountain, offers a thin, Neapolitan-style pizza with a fat, pillowy crust. McEnery first visited the restaurant in 2020 while on vacation with his wife, who had made it a point to go there. He was blown away.
“It’s just the most craveable pizza I’ve ever had in my life,” McEnery said.
That day, he told Piccolo’s owner, Luca Issa (who was also the waiter and the cashier), that he should bring the concept to the U.S. Issa balked, citing the costs and infrastructure it would require. McEnery handed him his business card anyway.
The next day, McEnery got a long email from Issa, who had done some research on Cooper’s Hawk. “I knew when I met you, it was fate,” he wrote.
Ten days later, Issa flew to Chicago. He stayed at McEnery’s house and visited some Cooper’s Hawk locations. At the end of the trip, the two made a handshake deal to bring Piccolo Buco to the U.S.
The first location opened in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook in June 2021. It is more upscale than the Roman original, whose name literally translates to “hole in the wall.” Cooper’s Hawk expanded the menu with appetizers, pasta and other entrees and added a selection of its signature wine. But the pizza, widely considered among the best in Italy, remains true to the original. Servers slice it tableside with scissors to preserve the integrity of the delicate crust, which McEnery said is as good as the pizza itself.
Piccolo Buco offers about a dozen pizzas as well as apps, pasta and entrees.
While the addition of Piccolo Buco technically makes Cooper’s Hawk a multiconcept operator, that was not the primary reason it imported the brand. Rather, McEnery had been on the lookout for a concept that could add more value for members of Cooper’s Hawk’s wine club, which now has nearly 800,000 people.
“We think of the wine club membership as the center of our universe,” McEnery said. “The idea with Piccolo was to give them another experiential place as part of their membership.”
Wine club members can use benefits such as loyalty points and discounts at Piccolo Buco and can pick up their wine of the month there.
So far, member visits to Piccolo have been incremental to their overall usage of Cooper’s Hawk, McEnery said, a sign that the strategy is working. About 40% of Piccolo’s customers are wine club members, similar to the ratio at Cooper’s Hawk.
Now the Downers Grove, Illinois-based company is getting ready to grow the concept, with a second location set to open in nearby Naperville next month. A third will follow in Tampa in October, and the company has four more leases signed.
These locations will be slightly more rustic than the Oak Brook flagship, McEnery said, and the Naperville outlet will have a small wine-tasting bar where it can host events for members.
Piccolo Buco in Oak Brook.
As it grows, Piccolo will go to markets where there is already an established wine club member base. And it will allow Cooper’s Hawk to fill in gaps between existing locations. The first Piccolo, for instance, sits between two Cooper’s Hawks. A third would not have been viable there, McEnery said, but a Piccolo could set up shop without cannibalizing sales.
That restaurant, in a prime location in the Oakbrook Center mall, has been a big success, averaging 10% to15% annual sales growth since it opened four years ago. Cooper’s Hawk believes that success can translate elsewhere. Its modeling indicates that there is room for up to 100 Piccolo Bucos in the U.S. But the company is in no hurry to get there.
“We’re not growing it at the pace that we’re growing Cooper’s Hawk,” McEnery said. “Just nice and easy and see how it goes.”
Cooper’s Hawk has been one of the fastest-growing U.S. full-service chains in recent years, going from 41 locations to 66 since 2019, with overall sales growth of nearly 80% during that time.
McEnery said that his entrepreneurial drive is always on and, given the promising start for Piccolo, more concepts could be on the horizon for Cooper's Hawk.
“Are there other restaurant concepts either to be created, acquired or merged with? For sure,” he said. “We’re just taking our time and making sure we do it at the right pace.”
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