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At the beginning of this year, quietly but clearly, franchise fever climbed up a notch in Ottawa.

In Westboro, workers at the brand new Pi Co. stretched dough balls to make Neapolitan pizzas, then slid pies with their customer-chosen toppings into a sleek white ceramic pizza oven for a 90-second spin in 715 F heat.

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“I decided to venture into something new. I wanted to make people happy on the spot,” says Pi Co.’s owner-operator Chris McCrudden, explaining his switch from working in retail to opening a restaurant.

The 37-year-old already plans to open a second location downtown, at Metcalfe and Nepean streets, this spring, and has larger dreams of expanding into the suburbs. “The plan is to scale across the city,” McCrudden says.

He adds: “Everyone likes pizza and nobody’s doing this. You can’t find pizza like this anywhere.” That is, except in Toronto, where Pi Co. has opened 16 locations since 2016.