INC. Magazine & Zachary's Chicago Pizza

Inc. Magazine December 2005
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Zachary's Chicago Pizza is in the feature story inside the December 2005 issue of Inc. Magazine:

The Ultimate Employee Buy-in
By John Case
(excerpts from the article)

"SELL THE COMPANY TO YOUR EMPLOYEES? IT'S A GREAT IDEA—BOTH FOR YOU AND FOR THE BUSINESS YOU'RE LEAVING BEHIND."

"One of the great ironies of entrepreneurship is that many people spend years building their companies, only to undo all of that work at the very end by deciding to sell the business to the wrong person. Decisions like that don't have to be made, especially today. Employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs, have become a mainstream alternative for business owners who wish to sell their business but want it to remain largely intact."

See entire Inc. Magazine article
See related ESOP Facts article in Inc. Magazine
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Inc. Magazine December 2005 Zachary's Pizza employee-owners.

"Zach Zachowski and Barbara Gabel ... The husband and wife team are founders of Zachary's Chicago Pizza, a two-restaurant, 110-employee purveyor of gourmet pizza in the San Francisco Bay area. They have run the business for 22 years and intend to maintain control for a while--but they recently sold 35% of the shares to an ESOP and plan to sell another big chunck in the near future. Their goal: 'exiting this thing gracefully in a way that we could leave a legacy behind us,' says Zachowski."

Inc.com, the website for Inc. magazine, delivers advice, tools, and services, to help business owners and CEOs start, run, and grow their businesses more successfully. You'll find information and advice covering virtually every business and management task, including marketing, sales, finding capital, managing people, and much, much more. Inc.com also includes the Inc. magazine archives, an exclusive area dedicated to the Inc. 500, and detailed information on Inc-sponsored events.

Contributing editor John Case is co-author, with Corey Rosen and Martin Staubus, of the book Equity: Why Employee Ownership Is Good for Business (Harvard Business School Press).