Dan DiZio \u201895 will be the keynote speaker for East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania\u2019s winter commencement ceremony on Saturday, December 14, at 9:45 a.m. in Koehler Fieldhouse. DiZio is the CEO and Co-founder of the Philly Pretzel Factory.<\/p>\n
DiZio\u2019s entrepreneurial spirit started at the young age of 11 thanks to a neighbor who owned a bakery in a small town outside of Philadelphia. He would sell the bakery\u2019s pretzels on a street corner in Philadelphia and his neighbor would split the sales for the day. DiZio set up shop every day after school, on weekends, and throughout the summer.<\/p>\n
After graduating from East Stroudsburg University in 1995, DiZio and college roommate Len Lehman \u201994 found themselves frustrated with their post-graduate careers. In 1998, the pair decided to take a chance on opening their own business. Going back to DiZio\u2019s roots selling Philly-style pretzels, they co-founded the Original Philly Pretzel Factory in Northeast Philadelphia. Seeing the large demand for fresh \u201cout of the oven\u201d pretzels, the pair formed Soft Pretzel Franchise Systems, Inc. to extend the \u201cPhilly-style\u201d soft pretzels to more locations and eventually, other parts of the country.<\/p>\n
Today, Philly Pretzel Factory has grown to 200 open and under contract locations in 17 states and the company is listed among the top franchises in Entrepreneur Magazine and Franchise Market Magazine. Additionally, Philly Pretzel Factory products are consistently listed as the Best Soft Pretzel in local publications such as Philly.com, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Philadelphia Magazine.<\/p>\n
In addition to growing the franchise company, DiZio has been featured on Undercover Boss and on the cover of Franchise Times Magazine. He has received the Smart CEO Magazine \u201cCircle of Excellence (in franchising) Award\u201d and was an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist from Ernst & Young. DiZio is currently working to complete his certificate as a Certified Franchise Executive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dan DiZio \u201895 will be the keynote speaker for ESU\u2019s winter commencement ceremony on Saturday, December 114, at 9:45 a.m. in Koehler Fieldhouse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":15447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[143,42,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news-release","category-slider"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19621"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19632,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19621\/revisions\/19632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}