Eureka Pizza

Eureka is a word that expresses the excitement of finding a special treasure. Rolf Wilkin of Fayetteville found his business treasure when he purchased a local pizza parlor for $8,500.

Wilkin had gone a local pizzeria to sell advertising to its owner, Nathan Combs, when he learned how the business was slipping. Two weeks after the store closed in February 1992, Wilkin purchased the once-popular 1,200-SF King Pizza.

“There was still some cheese in the cooler,” Wilkin said.

A name change and a new strategy have turned the business around. Wilkin scrapped the idea of a sit-down restaurant. Thanks to a “buy one, get two free” campaign reserved for carry-out orders, 10 percent of Eureka Pizza’s customers order take-out pizzas – saving Wilkin the cost of delivery – while the remainder want it brought to their doors.

When Wilkin first advertised his new campaign by placing fliers in the residence halls on the University of Arkansas campus, he was so loaded with orders that he delivered the pizzas to students in the back of a pickup truck. While handing them out, he saw a delivery driver for a national competitor bring one small pizza to the dorm.

“That was the first moment where I said, ‘Wow!'” he remembers. “It was the ah-ha moment.”

Business immediately tripled from $100 to $300 a night that first year. And it’s still a favorite in the ultimate college town.

In 2002, Eureka Pizza brought in about $9 million in revenue, Wilkin said. There are now 16 Eureka Pizza locations in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kentucky, all providing pizza as rewards and incentives at local schools.

In 2001, Eureka Pizza was voted “Best Pizza” in the Northwest Arkansas Times Readers Choice awards.