Maria Shriver, the former First Lady of California and estranged wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is moving on to pizzeria business by investing in to Blaze Pizza, a U.S. chain of build-your-own pies.
Giving boost to the fast food business and investing in a healthy pizza place in California, Shriver has started her own business along with her son Patrick Schwarzenegger. “We love pizza,” Shriver said. “My son and I are really excited to be in the pizza business. We love this concept.” Patrick Schwarzenegger tweeted excitement in Twitter about his new investment and replied with, "I have equal share as her, but nice try" to a follower who tweeted about taking the credit of his mother's investment.
Blaze Pizza is a new fast-casual pizza chain that quickly cooks up your own Neapolitan-style pies with toppings ranging from bacon or Italian sausage to sautéed onion. This segment is one of the fastest growing chains among restaurants in US with few of them publicly traded for investors to put money into. Chipotle and Panera are very good examples to this showing how Blaze got so much interest of investors moving in.
At present, there are two outlets of Blaze Pizza in Irvine and Pasadena, California. However, Blaze Pizza is expecting new expansion into pizza-centric regions with three more outlets that will be soon started in Milwaukee, New York and Connecticut.
Besides Shriver and her son Patrick, other investors includes Tom Werner, John Davis, and Andrew Cherng.