Bossier pub is branching out through franchising

Bossier City. Natchitoches. West Monroe.

With a location in each town, Flying Heart Brewing & Pub is a well-known, successful brand.

Now, the company wants to expand that brand.

Flying Heart ownership is spreading the word — near and far — that their company is available to be franchised.

“We’ve talked with people as local as the Shreveport-Bossier area, and as far off as Greenville, S.C., and Florida,” said Ben Pattillo, one of Flying Heart’s three owners and the company’s chief executive officer.

“For us to grow the brand, we need to start relying on outside resources,” Pattillo said.

Ben Patillo and Ben Hart are co-owners of Flying Heart Brewing & Pub.

“People in the industry who want to bring their own flair to the brand and embrace the culture we’ve created. That moved us into the franchising direction.”

What began in 2015 as a tasting room open two nights a week in the current Bossier location with Pattillo, co-owner Ben Hart and “a couple of volunteer bartenders slinging beer,” has grown into a 150-employee operation. In addition to craft beers, cocktails and desserts, Flying Heart has a menu full of food options, highlighted by a variety of pizzas.

“To this point, the development of those (items) has relied on the three owners,” Pattillo said. “What we are looking for are new ideas. New blood, to where instead of us coming up with all the pizza recipes, the cocktails, the desserts and the beers, we have other people who come in and say, ‘Hey, have you thought about a gumbo pizza or a different seasonal beer style we could experiment with?’”

Flying Heart has a menu full of food options.

For example, when Flying Heart opened in Natchitoches, it introduced a meat pie pizza.

Pattillo speaks proudly of Flying Heart’s culture, which he and his partners have created and nurtured — a culture where workers are more than employees.

“We’re family oriented. We take care of our staff. We encourage our staff to grow themselves. Our turnover compared to the normal restaurant industry is fairly low. We like to see our staff turn into extensions of our family and better themselves when they leave us, or continue to grow with us. We’ve created a company that people can have careers with and continue to grow.”

Speaking of growing, Flying Heart added Jeff Judge as its third owner a few years ago. Judge is responsible for Flying Heart expanding its offerings to include pizzas.

Flying Heart’s partners have created and nurtured a dining mecca in Bossier City.

“At the time, he and his wife owned The Wooden Spoon,” Pattillo said. “He made some killer sandwiches. We sat him down one evening and said, ‘We’re thinking about converting to a pub that would be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.’ He said, ‘I think sandwiches would go great with your beer.’ We said, ‘Well, that may be so, but we want to do pizza.’ He laughed and said, ‘I don’t know anything about pizza, so why are y’all talking to me?’ We said, ‘Well, we’ll give you six months to figure it out. What do you think?’” Judge accepted the challenge. “I’ve never been status quo. Ever,” Judge said. “To take an opportunity like that in a market that really, Bossier-Shreveport was untouched. To take that and turn it into almost an institution — how many restaurants have their emblem tattooed on people so those people can get a free beer every day? It’s almost like a cult, and not in a bad way. I never would have imagined it’s done what it’s done.”

Judge recently moved to Florida and is busy experimenting with pizza recipes. Franchising Flying Heart will give him an opportunity to come up with creations for other parts of the state or country.

“I have a good catalogue of pizzas that I’ve come up with, and they’re all ingredient-out,” Judge said. “They’re costed-out. They’re ready to rock. They’re just not ready to rock in our area. Maybe something like that could put us on the map.”

What that map looks like, Pattillo doesn’t know.

“It would be nice to see our brand grow across the state and across the U.S. Nothing crazy. I don’t want to see thousands of units pop up which are difficult to control, because we want to continue to grow our culture that we’ve been able to duplicate at our current locations.”

In almost 10 years, Flying Heart has come a long way from a few friends brewing and sipping beer in a garage. Making the company available for franchising is just another step in its growth.

“It’s been a wild ride, and it’s still going,” Pattillo said. “We’ve been blessed by having communities in each of those locations that support us and want to see locals succeed.”

To learn more about Flying Heart’s franchising opportunity, visit flyingheartbrewing.com and click “franchise.”