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When the Vancouver, Wash.-based Papa Murphy's take-and-bake pizza chain company asked Kim and John Allen to open a store in the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Great Bend, Kan., the couple had questions.
Would Wal-Mart allow a Papa Murphy's sign outside the store?
The answer was "No."
Would Wal-Mart dedicate parking near the entrance to Papa Murphy's customers?
Again, the answer was "No."
The Allens - and Papa Murphy's - were undeterred. The growing pizza chain, which added nearly 100 new sites last year and has plans for even more this year, wanted some of its new stores to be inside the well-visited shopping environment of a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
The nation's seventh-largest pizza chain with reported sales of $332 million in 2002, Papa Murphy's has 821 stores in 23 states. Until now, most have been in shopping centers next to grocery and video stores. Wal-Mart offered a new approach.
"It intrigued us, looking at it from the business end," said John Allen, who along with his wife went ahead and opened the pizza store. Their store was the third Papa Murphy's franchise to open in a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the past year.
Two and a half months after opening his first Papa Murphy's, Allen says WalMart was a great place to start.
"We...