AUGUSTA — Anthony Allen and Mike Keon, the pair behind Otto Pizza and its string of restaurants that stretches from Yarmouth to Cambridge, Massachusetts, seem to have defied conventional wisdom from the moment they decided to open a pizza shop in a tiny space in Portland in 2009, right around the time the U.S. economy hit bottom.

Allen and Keon were in Augusta Tuesday, delivering the keynote address at the Mainebiz Momentum Convention 2015 at the Augusta Civic Center. The theme of this year’s business-to-business networking and educational event was managing growth, something that Allen and Keon understand.

Otto Pizza co-founders Anthony Allen, left, and Mike Keon describe how they built their business despite bucking industry trends, on Tuesday during the Mainebiz Momentum Convention at the Augusta Civic Center. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

From their modest beginning six years ago, Allen and Keon have meshed their interests in food and restaurants and produced a business that now encompasses 10 restaurants and 325 employees.

“None of it was planned,” Keon said. “It was just the two of us trying to keep the lights on.”

But they did it in a way that went against industry trends. For instance, most pizza places are filled with televisions. Allen said it was a deliberate choice not to do that because they wanted to inspire conversation in their places.

Also, conventional wisdom dictates that success lies in a lot of menu selections. But the pair is sticking with pizza at Otto Pizza, and exploring burritos at Ocho Burrito.

“We are focused on one product and we do well enough,” Allen said. “We put a lot of attention into the ingredients we use. If we use mushrooms, we’re sautéing the mushrooms, we’re not opening a can.”

“We thought mashed potatoes would be good,” Keon said of the restaurant’s novel pizza topping. “We put it out there, and people got almost angry. We said if you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay for it, and evidently people bought into it.”

A year later, the Food Network came knocking and proclaimed that pizza – with mashed potatoes, scallions and bacon – one of the best pizzas in America.

Allen and Keon don’t have a formal business partnership, but they do have chemistry that works. They are generous in crediting their staff with helping them achieve their vision, in some cases by defying conventional wisdom in whom they choose to hire.

“There are some good stories there. We’ve made a positive impact on some people and have given chances to people no one else would,” Allen said,

The entrepreneurs offered three pieces of advice to the attendees:

• Plan carefully and recheck the plan, and accept that things will not always go according to plan;

• Start small and stay that way until you are ready to grow; and

• Stay true to your dream, even when distractions pull at you from all directions.

That second piece of advice carries some weight for the company founders. Fresh from an event at Yelp in San Francisco where Otto Pizza was named one of the 100 Top-Rated Businesses in America, they say 2016 will be year of slowing down and focusing on what they have built so far.

As for the future, the pair said they weren’t sure about expanding Otto further, although they may consider locations farther north than their Yarmouth restaurant that opened in June.

Jessica Lowell can be contacted at 621-5632 or jlowell@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @JLowellKJ

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