A pizza chain created by a former Starbucks exec should worry Pizza Hut and Domino’s

Melia Robinson/Business Insider

About one in eight Americans eats pizza on any given day. And an increasing number of them are ditching legacy brands like Domino’s and Pizza Hut for innovative fast-casual chains.

MOD Pizza is one of them. Founded by a former Starbucks executive in 2008, the chain more than doubled in size over the past year. In 2015, Technomic named MOD the fastest growing chain in the restaurant business,with its sales increasing a whopping 220% during the year.

Like competitors Blaze Pizza and Pieology, MOD prepares and bakes personal pizzas on a Chipotle-like assembly line, where customers can pick from dozens of toppings.

We recently visited a MOD location in Daly City, California, to see if it’s worth the hype.