When trying to figure out what it will cost you to open a new pizzeria, it’s important to remember that your menu offerings will determine your equipment needs. Simply put: the more you offer, the more you’ll need. A simple operation, for example, will only need one exhaust system and won’t use a deep fryer. When it comes time to purchase equipment, you’ll need to determine whether to buy new or used. My personal recommendation is to buy a mix of both. If the customer doesn’t see it, I would normally opt for used. If it’s vital refrigeration or a POS system, I prefer new or, at the very least, like new. Ovens are a big unknown. New ovens are not inexpensive. But buying a set of used, beat, tired ovens is a nightmare. After all, all of your signature pizzas will be baked in it. If you decide to go with used, buy them from a reputable equipment company that specializes in rebuilding them. These ovens must have a 90-day warranty.

If I bought any used ovens I’d want the opportunity of test-baking my product in it before purchase. See the sidebar for a typical equipment list/pricing budget.

While it’s easy to get caught up in the big stuff, it’s important to keep in mind that it also takes a plethora of small wares to run a pizzeria. From refrigerator thermometers to lids to fl our racks, the list of what you’ll need nearly reaches 100 items and $7,000 in cost. And this is a conservative estimate of what you’ll need to open. You’ll replace many of these items, such as tongs and spoodles, more often than you’d like! If you’d like to see the complete list I’ve put together, log on to PizzaToday.com to download your own copy. ❖"

Big Dave Ostrander owned a highly successful independent pizzeria before becoming a consultant, speaker and internationally sought-after trainer. He is a monthly contributor to Pizza Today and leads seminars on operational topics for the family of Pizza Expo tradeshows.

Q: I know you can save a lot of money buying in bulk, like pallets of sauce. But then you’re tying up inventory dollars that can be used for operations. So, to what extent should you buy ahead?

A: It all depends on your cash fl ow. Cash is king. When you have it and can buy pallets of sauce or other products that will save you substantially, you’re typically using previous earnings or profits to save on future expenditures. You don’t generally buy a year’s worth of something, however, unless it is a substantial saving and will not expire. Tying up that much inventory can result in the inability to operate effectively in other areas of your business.

There are some items, like cucumbers, that end up going rotten before I use them all. Am I better off just buying a dozen at time in the grocery store so I’m not wasting any?

It depends on the market price. Cucumbers vary from 50 cents to $1 each in the store. If you can get a case of 75 cucumbers for $35, you’re talking 47 cents each. If they’re $1 in the store, you’re better off buying a case even if you only use 40 and waste 35. If that’s the case, create a cucumber salad recipe and give a two-ounce soufflé cup with every sandwich instead of a pickle. That will also set you apart from your competition!

How do I choose the right candidate through the interview process?

I have implemented an observation day. After interviewing someone that I think is a great candidate, I have them come in for a paid observation day. I explain that it is not simply to stand back and watch, but it really is like the first day of training. Tell them you want them to show you what they are capable of. It’s their chance to observe your business and determine if they want to work for you — and your chance to see if they have what it takes to make it. If they stand around like a bump on a log, get rid of them, do a payout for the couple of hours they were there and save the headache of all the paperwork and training.

How do I fire someone who performs poorly and avoid having to let them collect unemployment?

It bothers me so much to see employers keep staff who consistently perform below standard. You need to use performance-counseling slips.You need to warn the employee in writing what they are doing wrong or what they need to change to meet the company standard. Let them know, in writing, that continued poor performance will lead to termination. Make two copies. Have them sign a copy and put it in their file. When you fire them and they try to collect, that will be your safeguard. ❖

Jeffrey Freehof, owner of The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia, is Pizza Today’s resident expert. Send your questions to: Ask Chef Jeff, c/o Pizza Today, 908 South Eighth Street, Suite 200, Louisville, Kentucky, 40203

Molten lava cake –– you gotta love the name. But to shower even more love on that name, put the word “chocolate” in front of it. This beauty of a cake has been kicking around for a while, but it hasn’t lost any of its appeal. How could it? The very idea of chocolate on chocolate is hard to resist.

I am going to offer two recipes for your consideration. Both are quite easy to make, and both can be made well ahead. You will note that the first recipe makes eight individual servings. Should it happen that you don’t use all of them the day they are made, simply put those left in an airtight container in the cooler. Then simply reheat and garnish as needed — but I wouldn’t push the shelf life past three days. Also, in the first recipe I give you a shortcut — instead of making the cake batter the long way, I use a boxed cake mix. One box (consumer sized at 18.25 ounces) is sufficient to make eight individual molten lava cakes.

Equipment needs are minimal. You will need eight 4-ounce porcelain ramekins. These ramekins are readily available and are very inexpensive (around a buck or less each). A hand mixer helps speed things along, but most of the time I use a whisk or a heavy spoon to beat the cake batter. Then it’s simply a two-step process, and both steps can be done ahead if necessary.

Having said that, and knowing how delicious these cakes are, it is now up to you and your wait staff to romance the goods. By romancing I mean bringing this decadent dessert to the attention of the customer and noting –– through table cards or menu highlights –– that the chocolate molten lava cakes are made in house. Add “made fresh daily” (if that’s the case).

When it comes to presentation, place a cake on a dessert plate (top up). Dust the top of the cake with powdered sugar or cocoa powder. Add some sliced strawberries or a fresh raspberry or two, even whipped cream to gild this tasty lily a touch more.

Once you taste the ganache used in the first recipe, you will want to double the batch and drop a dollop on top of each cake just before serving. Or warm the ganache enough to allow some casual drips of the ganache over and around the plate. Yes, more romance, but it’s just these kind of extra touches that you will need to up your check average (especially as customers continue to pull back from spending). ❖

Chocolate Molten Lava Cake
Makes 8 servings

Ganache Filling
1⁄3 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped (or use chocolate morsels)

Combine the whipping cream and the corn syrup in a saucepan set over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring to combine. Put the chocolate in a stainless steel bowl. Pour the simmering cream mixture over the chocolate and stir to combine and smooth out. Let sit for 5 minutes. Place the bowl in the freezer for 25 minutes (stir occasionally) until the ganache is firm and can be scooped with a spoon.

Butter and fl our (shake out the excess) eight 4-ounce ramekins. Set the ramekins on a sheet pan. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Make the cake batter. Follow the package instruction (you will need vegetable oil, eggs, water) on the chosen cake mix box.

To assemble: Fill each ramekin with about 3 tablespoons of the cake batter. Make a well in the center by pushing the batter up the sides (the bottom of the ramekin should not be visible however).

Scoop 1 tablespoon of the ganache into the center of the batter of each ramekin.

Spoon another 2 tablespoons (about) of the cake batter on top of the ganache, the point being to “seal” the ganache between two layers of the cake batter. The batter should come up to about ¼-inch from the top of the ramekin.

Bake the cakes in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until tested clean or the cakes spring back lightly to the touch. Let cool for a minute or two.

You can serve at once by removing the cake from the ramekin (run a knife around the edges to loosen) and then plating and garnishing it. Or leave the cakes in the ramekin for later use (you will need to reheat the cakes a bit before serving). Unmold and garnish as needed.



Molten Lava Cakes

This recipe does not use a ganache center, so the “molten” aspect is not as impressive. On the other hand, the serving portion is slightly larger. These cakes will not hold as long as in the previous recipe, so I would advise making them the same day of service. Makes 6 servings

8 1-ounce squares semisweet chocolate
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
½ cup all-purpose fl our
1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar
3 large eggs
3 egg yolks

Butter and fl our six 6-ounce ramekins or custard cups. Preheat the oven to 425 F.

Melt the chocolate with the butter over low heat or in a microwave. Add the fl our and the sugar to the chocolate mixture. Combine the eggs and egg yolks and add to the chocolate mixture. Beat until smooth.

Put the custard cups on a baking sheet. Divide the batter evenly among the custard cups. Bake for about 15 minutes. The edges should be firm and the center just a bit runny.

To serve, run a knife around the edges to loosen the cake. Invert onto a dessert plate dusted with powdered sugar or cocoa powder. Garnish with whipped cream or fresh fruit.

Pat Bruno is Pizza Today’s resident chef and a regular contributor. He is the former owner and operator of a prominent Italian cooking school in Chicago and is a food critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.

After 20 years of being voted “best of the best” of pizzerias in Tucson, Magpies Gourmet Pizza is expressing its gratitude to the voters. The award was bestowed by an independent newspaper, the Tucson Weekly.

Local diners, rather than restaurant critics, journalists or industry insiders, polled their taste buds to make the decision. They cast the crucial ballots that named the pizzeria best over about a dozen others in the city.

Mike Acedo, vice president of Magpies, which has five locations in Tucson, said the award is more than just a nice compliment. It is a well-known mark of excellence that diners in Tucson recognize. “It’s very meaningful,” Acedo said. “It’s gotten to the point where everybody votes on it. You get some status from it. And that issue (of the Tucson Weekly) is probably their most sought issue of the year.”

While Magpies has never pursued awards, other pizzeria owners do. Some operators believe it is better to receive an award voted on by consumers. Others insist a national industry award that recognizes culinary excellence has more credibility. An award means little, however, until a pizzeria capitalizes on it in their advertising, operators agreed.

Take Magpies as an example. Being named Tucson’s best of the best of pizzerias is a focal point of their advertising. “It’s the basis of a lot we do,” Acedo said. “Mostly we do print and direct mail. We also put it on our Web site, on our boxes and our flyers.”

Recently, the award became an even bigger part of the campaign when the company decided it needed to step up its marketing efforts. For the first time, they are expanding their advertising to run ads on local television. “We need to advertise. We’ve seen a dip in sales because of the economy,” Acedo said.

“Our campaign (which launched in January) is going to thank the people who, for the last 20 years, have voted us the best of the best of Tucson.”

Capitalizing on awards is especially important for independent operators and smaller chains who need to stand out from big chains, said George Hadjis, president of Oggi’s Pizza & Brewing Company which has 20 stores in southern California and Arizona.



“In the pizza industry, there is a lot of competition,” he said. “We gravitate toward any way we can differentiate ourselves. Branding yourself with awards really works.” His company has won numerous awards for both their pizza and their beer. Some have been consumer-based, such as one of his stores that won best pizza in Huntington Beach, California, and others have been industry awards. “I know we value both sorts of awards as bragging rights. That’s why we go after them,” he says. One competition he is particularly proud of winning was the Brewers Association’s 2004 World Beer Cup — which recognized the chain from thousands of others as the best small brewery. That award and others have been part of the company’s advertising on television, radio, in newspapers and on their Web site. The campaign also features LaDamien Thomlinson, a star football player for the San Diego Chargers.

“When you have someone of that stature pushing championship beer and award-winning pizza and beer, it all connects,” Hadjis said. Another frequent competitor for awards is Dave Smith II, owner of Smith’s Pizza Palace Plus in Emporium, Pennsylvania. He enters about six national competitions a year. These culinary contests are offered at events like the International Pizza Expo, which is held annually in Las Vegas. Smith acknowledges that few of his diners know the significance of the Pizza Expo or would recognize other industry organizations that bestow awards. Despite that lack of name recognition, he insists such awards are viewed by diners as seals of approval.

“If they see that you’re doing well in the eyes of the pizza industry, then they know that your pizza must be good,” Smith said. When he wins an award, he places the plaque in his restaurant and sends a news release about it to the local newspaper. “That’s the beauty of it,” Smith said. “It’s free publicity. The newspapers eat it up.”

Both Hajdis and Smith said they see sales increase after an award is announced. “Besides the pride, we get better sales,” Hadjis said. “I know our sales spike at all of our stores. I know our sales stats and there is an increase of about 20 percent.” Like Smith, he also makes sure plaques won at competitions are hung on the walls of all of his company’s stores. The awards also build camaraderie and pride among franchise owners who look forward to competitions.

“All of our franchisees wait every year to hear if we won an award,” Hadjis said. Pizzeria owners who worry about returning from a competition without a first place and a shiny plaque to put on their walls should not be concerned, Smith and Hadjis agreed. They say that operators can choose to publicize their awards or not.

Letting the world know about your achievements is the beauty of winning an award. In a market where consumers have so many choices, Hadjis says it gives a pizzeria instant credibility. “Pizza is a very subjective thing,” Hadjis says. “There are so many pizza restaurants and styles. How can you argue that your pizza is best unless you’ve won an award? Branding yourself with awards really works.”

With entrance fees, airfare and hotels, Smith estimates he spends at least $600 or $700 for each industry based culinary competition he enters. He says the free publicity he gains when he lets local newspapers know about an award he has received makes the cash outlay worth it.

“It’s about what you’d spend if you put an ad in the newspaper,” he says. Independent pizzerias like Smith’s need to find creative ways to market their businesses and awards are one way to do it, says Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic Inc., a Chicagobased restaurant consulting firm.

“I think it’s always going to be a positive. The negatives are minor,” Tristano said. Awards are even more important as technology offers new and different ways to advertise, he says. “I think awards are becoming more important because we’re seeing a shift to on-line for people to find out about places,” Tristano says.

Text messages are another way that pizzerias may get the word out about an award to diners. Tristano said the only negative to a pizzeria winning an award could be for loyal customers who have a hard time getting a table after one is announced. “If some loyal customers have to wait or can’t get their favorite table, that could be a downside,” Tristano said. “As the trendiness wears off, you’re going to want to keep those loyal customers.” ❖

Annemarie Mannion is a freelance journalist based in Willowbrook, Illinois.

These days, there are more ways to communicate than ever before. I don’t necessarily think that means we communicate better, but we at least communicate more — and there’s something to be said for that.

With that in mind, Pizza Today recently launched accounts on Facebook and Twitter, two of today’s most popular and powerful social networking sites. Not that we think you care what we had for lunch or what music we’re listening to, but we do think you’ll enjoy the ability to easily and quickly communicate with us on a variety of issues. So, do us a favor and join us the next time you log on to Facebook or Twitter.

While we’re on the subject of the World Wide Web, don’t forget about our growing presence there. PizzaToday.com is a vast resource for pizzeria owners. Our Bulletin Boards have more than 20,500 pages of information — and we add to that daily. If you have a question, our boards are the absolute best place in this industry to find an answer. So bookmark our Bulletin Boards and visit them as often as you can. You can find them by visiting PizzaToday.com and then clicking on the News & Views heading.

Don’t forget to check our editor’s blog frequently as well. There, the staff of Pizza Today ask pertinent questions and offer our insight/ thoughts on a variety of topics. I won’t tell you it’s earth-shattering, but it is often thought provoking.

Lastly, we captured tons — and I mean tons — of video footage at last month’s International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. Throughout the rest of this year, you’ll see some of that popping up in our Video Spot from time to time (top right corner of the PizzaToday.com home page). If you weren’t there, take a look at what you missed! See you in the cyber world.

Best,
Jeremy White, editor-in-chief
jwhite@pizzatoday.com

For some of us, achieving a crispy crust pizza is like chasing down that legendary Golden Fleece, but it really doesn’t have to be such a massive undertaking. Below are some tips to get you on your way:

Tip No. 1: The protein content of the fl our can influence the potential crispiness of the finished crust. We have found that fl our with a protein content of at least 12 percent is necessary to achieve maximum crispiness. Since most “pizza fl ours” contain anywhere from 12 to 14 percent protein content, most of us should be okay in this regard. But, if you happen to be using an all-purpose or H&R type fl our, the lack of protein in the fl our might be limiting the potential crispiness of your crust.

Tip No. 2: Fermentation has a great influence on crispiness due to the softening effect that it has on the dough. The softer, more relaxed, dough consistency allows for improved expansion properties of the dough during baking, resulting in a more open, porous internal structure within the crust. This open structure effectively inhibits heat transfer through the crust, allowing the surface of the crust to reach a higher temperature during baking, thus creating a crispier finished crust.

Tip No. 3: The amount of water added to the dough can have a significant effect on the crispiness of the finished crust, but not in the way you might think. It’s actually the addition of more water to the dough that helps to create the conditions for a crispier finished crust. The water will make the dough somewhat softer, allowing it to more freely expand during those critical first few seconds of baking. This creates the desirable, open crumb structure that effectively blocks some of the heat transfer through the dough and allows for a better bottom bake (ultimately leading to a crispier finished crust).

Tip No. 4: Incorrectly finished dough temperature can wreak havoc on your efforts. If the dough temperature is too high, we may find that the dough exhibits a pronounced tendency to “blow” during storage.

Tip No. 5: Incorrect dough management procedures can also affect crust crispiness for reasons similar to those cited in Tip No. 4 above. For example, if the dough is allowed to ferment at room temperature for any significant amount of time prior to taking it to the cooler after mixing, the dough will begin to ferment, making it less dense, more open and porous. In essence, the dough becomes more difficult to cool down in the cooler, leading to over-proofed dough balls in the box.



A similar problem can develop if we bypass the important cross-stacking step when putting the dough up in the cooler. The cross stacking of the dough boxes allows heat to freely escape from the dough, resulting in effective and consistent cooling of the dough. If the dough boxes are not cross-stacked, the heat is trapped within the dough boxes. Since yeast is a living organism, it produces heat (heat of metabolism) as it metabolizes nutrients and ferments. This, too, will result in dough balls that are either grown together, blown or just wet and sticky on the following days. Assuming we’re baking in the right type of oven, on the right type and color of pan or disk (if used), and the baking time and temperature are within reason, these tips might provide just the ticket to getting the crispy crust we’ve been looking for. You might note that many of the tips seem to have a common denominator — that is to allow the dough to rise slightly (oven spring) during the first few seconds of baking, which helps to establish an open, porous crumb structure within the dough/crust, thus preventing excessive heat transfer through the dough. This allows for more of the bottom bake to go into baking and drying the bottom of the dough, ultimately resulting in a crispier finished crust. Don’t worry about the top of the pizza not getting sufficiently done when you block some of the heat from the bottom of the oven. The top heat of the oven will handle the top of the pizza just fine. But if you should find a problem, it is easily corrected by either increasing the oven temperature or extending the baking time slightly. ❖

Tom Lehmann is a director at the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kansas.

This year, International Pizza Expo™ celebrated its 25th anniversary. Although the final numbers aren’t in, I’m sure it was another huge success with nearly 1,000 booths and 400 plus exhibiting companies. Year after year, we continue to produce and deliver one of the premier events in the entire trade show industry. In fact, the one thing that really separates International Pizza Expo™ from all of the other general foodservice shows is our industry specific educational component. There’s not another food show around where you’ll find 60-plus seminars and demonstrations devoted to a single industry.

At Pizza Expo™ you’ll find the leading industry experts and analysts, as well as nationally recognized business and marketing consultants who are all willing to share new ideas and insight on how to adapt to the ever-changing economy and industry. At next year’s show, you’ll find new speakers and new topics dealing with the rapidly changing economy, including the commodities market, latest trends, financing and how and when to react to supplier price increases. In fact, since we’ve already started making plans for next year’s show, I would like to hear what suggestions you have with regards to new speakers, topics and/or demonstrations that you would like to see added to our educational program.

I like to think our pizza-focused seminars and demonstrations alone are worth the price of admission. In fact, if you don’t come away from International Pizza Expo™ with new cost-saving or profit-boosting ideas, I’ll refund your registration fee. All you have to do is put it writing to me and I’ll send you a prompt refund. What other show gives you a money back guarantee? I’ll tell you — no one!

The bottom line is, there will always be winners and losers, but only those pizzeria owners and operators that arm themselves with industry knowledge and are willing to take action towards positive change will have the ability to position their business for future growth and success. If you want to increase your ability to compete and win, you should make plans now to attend International Pizza Expo™ 2010, March 2-4.

It’s all pizza and it’s all for YOU!

Best regards,
Bill Oakley
Executive VP

Some customers, when they need to cut their spending, order either an appetizer or dessert with their entrée, but not both. Brett Corrieri, corporate chef of MAFIAoZA’s in Nashville, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, prefers that customers order appetizers. “Desserts have a lower margin,” he says. “For most desserts, the food costs run 50 to 60 percent, whereas appetizers run 15 to 25 percent.”

Besides, if you can get guests to order an appetizer, they will still order an entrée no matter how filling the appetizer was. If they skip the appetizer and order an entrée, they might feel satiated with that. That means they will opt out of dessert, keeping your check average low. So, how do you get people to order appetizers? Operators say they market appetizers through a combination of suggestive selling and careful menu planning.

Corrieri says one tactic is to remind hungry diners they will begin eating sooner if they order an appetizer. “You greet the table, take the drink orders, and put down beverage napkins to show the manager you have been there. Then you mention, ‘If you’d like to order an appetizer we can get that started in the kitchen right now.’”

Another tactic is to suggest a specific appetizer. “One server sold seven orders of the spinach lasagna rolls the other day at dinner, just by mentioning that particular appetizer,” says Billy Lee, owner of Carlo’s Pizza Oven Restaurant in Holbrook, New York.

Don’t train servers to simply recommend the most expensive appetizer. Customers might perceive that as the server’s attempt to increase the check total and, subsequently, their tip. Instead, train servers to figure out what items customers seem to be considering, or which items might match what they are thinking. “We encourage our servers to watch people’s eyes, or look over their shoulders and see what they’re looking at on the menu,” Corrieri says. If they are looking at a certain wine, for example, the server can recommend an appetizer that matches that wine’s price point.

Jonathan Fox, chef proprietor of the wood-oven pizza restaurant La Madia in Chicago, says customers use certain words that can clue the server as to what they could order. There are times when a customer wants to splurge, and there are times when the customer tries to watch their budget.

If they say, ‘We want to order some of your most popular appetizers,’ or, ‘We are celebrating, what do you recommend?’ that’s your opportunity to recommend the $9 appetizer,” Fox says. “If someone says, ‘I want a little snack, I want something casual, we are going to split a pizza,’ then I don’t want them to sell the $9 appetizer.” Instead, the server might talk up a $4 to $7 appetizer.

Another factor is menu planning. It’s important to have a variety of appetizers in a wide price range. Lee, from Carlo’s, says his menu contains 18 different appetizers, including many seafood items that are popular on Long Island. The prices range from $1 garlic rolls to the $14.95 antipasto for two.

According to the National Restaurant Association’s “What’s Hot” survey, chefs said appetizer combos/ platters are among the top five trends in appetizers. The other trends were mini burgers, amuse bouche (a single bite-size piece), edamame (soybeans), and appetizer salads.

Corrieri has noticed an increase in orders for larger, shared appetizers. He adds that MAFIAoZA’s appetizers always have an odd number of items. “If there are two people, somebody has to have the last one. Then they are more likely to order another,” he says.

Lee says as people cut back spending, they order more takeout so they won’t have to pay for drinks or a tip. The challenge is getting those customers to order appetizers. Staffers who take the phone orders have a limited amount of time to suggest appetizers. So instead, Lee makes sure to hand menus to customers picking up their takeout orders, hoping they will order appetizers next time. “I am a big proponent of pushing menus on everyone,” he says. “If I do not recognize a face, I offer them a menu.”

Table tents might work too, depending on how you want your tabletop to look. “They have to be concept appropriate,” Fox says. He explains that restaurants such as La Madia, which he describes as “casual plus,” and fine dining restaurants don’t use table tents because they expect their servers to spend more time with their tables. In casual dining, a server might work a station of six tables, and they don’t have time to describe every appetizer. “In fine dining, you might have three table stations and a service team behind that,” he says.

Pushing the expensive appetizer might be a good way to boost one day’s sales, but Fox says it’s better to think long term. You want customers to return. “They walk away from the experience, and they will feel good about it or not, based on a number of things. One of the things is value, which is not just what they spend, but the idea of, ‘Was it good enough for what I spent?’ If we drove the check average up, they will say, ‘I expected not to spend a lot of money,’ ” he explains. ❖

Book It



A themed happy hour can boost appetizer sales. Rick Stein, owner of Alba Osteria in Boulder, Colorado, has about 100 books about Italian travel, wine and cooking. He lets people read them during the restaurant’s daily Library Hour, from 5:30 to 6:30 pm.

“A lot of times if you are planning a trip to Italy you go to the library,” he says. “We’d rather people come here and order a glass of wine and a few bites to eat.”

The most popular appetizers are large shared ones such as antipasto misto, or meats and cheeses, and fritto misto di mare (fried mixed seafood). Individual appetizers such as vegetable crostini and small pizzas also sell well.

Some Library Hour attendees aren’t necessarily traveling to Italy. They simply want to eat out but can’t justify spending a lot on a dinner these days.

Stein says he has not had any trouble with people stealing books, as far as he can tell. “One customer told me some book she had been looking at wasn’t here any more, but the book she described didn’t sound familiar to me.”

Nora Caley is a freelance writer specializing in food and business topics. She lives in Denver, Colorado

Jim Frye is founder of the Italian Oven Café, a spin-off of sorts from his original Italian Oven concept. The Italian Oven went public in the 1990s, but floundered shortly thereafter. Now Frye is resurrecting the concept in an abbreviated form, following the lead of concepts like Starbucks and Panera Bread. Currently, there are two Italian Oven Café stores in operation: one in Pittsburgh and one in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the company is newly based.



PT: What served as inspiration for bringing back and tweaking the Italian Oven concept?

JF: Back in 2001, I was watching with great interest what Starbucks and Panera Bread were doing. They were offering an affordable alternative to casual dining that was a little nicer than fast food and a little more casual than full-service dining. I had been plotting my comeback with The Italian Oven and started fleshing out the idea of turning The Italian Oven restaurant into a fast casual restaurant.



PT: What specifically appealed to you in terms of offering a smaller restaurant in this type of business model?

JF: I could see where we could build a smaller store that was less costly to build and less expensive to run in terms of having no table service and having a smaller staff. But we’ve still kept a wood-fired oven as the centerpiece of the menu.



PT: What are your growth plans?

JF: The idea was to create a brand that we could take on the road and grow and sell franchises. We’ve had in excess of 100 franchise inquiries since we opened our store in West Palm Beach. Some of those are just people coming in to kick the tires, but probably 10-15 percent of those have a very serious interest in building an Italian Oven Café someplace. That’s one of the reasons we chose West Palm Beach for this prototype store — people visit here from all over the world, particularly during the peak season.



PT: Speed of service is crucial in this type of concept. How are you doing in that regard so far?

JF: Within seven to nine minutes, people get their food. That’s the average transaction time, including the amount of time it takes them to place their order. A food runner brings the food out to them at the table. We put a good meal in front of them very quickly, and we use nicer napkins and dinnerware and nicer materials. Since there is no table service, there’s no tipping. People appreciate it a great deal. We get great frequency from our key constituents.

PT: What’s your average guest check?

JF: It’s just a little over $10.

Walk into any store, and you’ll probably spot a cause-related marketing campaign –– from a red dress symbol on a carton of yogurt to symbolize the fight against heart disease in women to a smile logo on a tube of toothpaste that shows support for dental care for children.

Pizzerias are getting in on cause related marketing, too –– from the huge chains that have paired up with big national charities to little momand- pop pizzerias that help out in the local community. Whether you’re big or small, using philanthropy as a marketing tool can help not only your chosen charity, but your bottom line, too.

“It’s a win-win situation,” said Matthew Ptasienski, owner of the Windy City Pizzeria in Louisville, Kentucky. Ptasienski picks a day each month to donate 10 percent of proceeds to charity –– usually a local Catholic group that provides direct financial help to area families struggling to pay a mortgage or keep the lights or heat on. “I’ve always thought it was the responsible thing to do as a business owner, and I know my business is a little bit better on those days, and the whole reputation serves me really well.”

If you’re interested in starting your own charity partnership program, it’s a good idea to be strategic. So, here are some tips from marketing experts and pizzeria owners who have done it .

For starters, it’s important to choose the right charity. If there’s a rule of causerelated marketing, it’s this: customers should be able to draw a logical connection between the cause you sponsor and your business.

“In the past that meant if you were a hair salon, you picked a charity like Locks of Love that provides wigs to children, or if you were a restaurant you picked some kind of hunger charity,” said Paul Jones (owner of the boutique marketing firm Alden Keene), who blogs at causerelatedmarketing.blogspot.com. “It’s not as true today –– research demonstrates that people just have to understand the relationship.” So, for example, if you’re a pizzeria owner and want to support a breast cancer charity because one of your loved ones is a survivor of the disease, that’s fine –– but tell your story.

Once you know what cause you want to support, then choose a specific charity. A national chain should choose a national charity and a local restaurant should choose a community organization, recommends David Hessekiel, president of the Cause Marketing Forum, which offers tips and advice at causemarketingforum.com.

Before signing on with your chosen charity, be sure to check them out by doing an online news search –– you want to avoid any groups with scandals or questionable reputations, of course –– and looking at their ratings on Web sites such as Guidestar.org or Charitynavigator. org, Jones recommends. Also, he suggests choosing a group that’s been around for at least five years: “A group that’s been around that long has been vetted by time.”

Next, craft the campaign. There are almost as many ways to approach a cause related marketing campaign as there are good causes. Two big things to consider are: what kind of campaign would work well with your business, and how could you best help the charity?

The most common type of cause-related marketing campaign is transactional cause marketing, Jones said: “You might say ‘Buy today’s special dessert and the restaurant will make a donation to some cause.’” Studies have shown, he said, that the larger donation you promise to make, the more likely the customer is to buy the item you’re trying to move.

At Galactic Pizza in Minneapolis, Minnesota –– which bills itself as a socially responsible business — the menu advertises that $1 will be donated to Second Harvest Heartland, a hunger relief organization, for each order of the Roma-tomato-and-basil Second Harvest Heartland pizza. “I just wrote a check for $1,439 –– we sold that many last year,” said owner Pete Bonahoom. “And they can purchase something like $9 worth of food for each dollar.”

But a straight donation of money isn’t the only way to go. At Hello Pizza in El Paso, Texas, chef and owner Larry Gold each summer holds a pizza making party for kids who attend a camp run by Gold’s wife, a special education teacher. It costs Gold about $500 to put on, but it’s worth it. “It really puts a smile on the kids’ faces,” Gold says.

Getting the word out about your campaign can be pretty simple. If you’re donating a portion of sales from a specific item, simply put a note on your menu and on your Web site –– and give your servers an incentive to mention it. “If you don’t incentivize it, only the most outgoing servers will mention it,” Jones said. “Try holding daily contests in which the waitperson who does best gets a song download or a few bucks of gas money.”

It’s also important to tell your customers exactly how the charity benefits. “Operators should avoid, at all costs, weasely language like: ‘A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Cancer Society.’ Instead, be transparent: ‘For each lava cake you buy with your meal, we’ll donate $1 to the Cancer Society,’” Jones said. “Cause marketing trades on trust. You can show your trustworthiness by being transparent. You’ll get better results, too.”

One bonus of cause-related marketing is that it really lends itself to public relations efforts. For example, Galactic Pizza gets a lot of media coverage. Its socially responsible stance — and the fact that its delivery workers dress as superheroes — draws attention and the charity partnership is almost always mentioned in articles. “We’ve been all over the place –– local, national and international,” Bonahoom said. “Somebody even brought in an article from Iraq which was in the military publication. I’m not sure how we ended up in there.” Bonahoom said the cause related marketing helps give customers a connection to his business: “What we try to do is establish a relationship with the customer on a meaningful level rather than trying to hit the lowest price point.” ❖

Allie Johnson is a freelance writer based in Kansas City.

W hen Riverfront Pizzeria opened in Milwaukee’s historic Third Ward a couple of years ago, its contemporary but gritty design reflected the character of its neighborhood. Its owners wanted the bar to reflect the restaurant’s character, too. That included the barstools — the most intimate connection that customers have to any bar. So it isn’t an accident that the stools at Riverfront Pizzeria’s bar mirror the space’s aesthetic: With elegant wooden seats and backs supported by legs made from black powder-coated steel, they’re both sleek and vaguely industrial.

If that sounds complicated, that’s because finding the right barstools can make your head hurt. There’s the cost: The majority of barstools are priced between $60 and $130, and domestically manufactured stools are often more expensive; custom built barstools go higher still. But even if you know how much you want to spend, the questions keep coming: What material? Do you need a back? Or a foot rest?

Here’s what you definitely need: Before you buy any barstool, make sure it was built for commercial use. A hip barstool designed for a home kitchen will fall apart in a restaurant. Commercial barstools won’t. “They’re made to take a lot of abuse,” says Diane Pipitone, a consultant at online furniture retailer Seating Expert. Commercial stools also have waterproof fabrics and stain-proof seals on wood.

“Metal barstools are going to hold up longer than wooden ones will,” says Brad Pelletto, the owner of Vision 360, a hospitality consulting fi rm. That said, wooden barstools are easier to repair: “You can always put on a little Guerilla Glue.” Metal barstools, on the other hand, may not be worth the trouble. “If you bought a $75 barstool and its seams are cracking, you might as well buy a new barstool,” Pelletto says. “By the time you take it to a welder, it’ll be the same amount of money.”

Metal bar stools are most often made from powder-coated steel. Wooden stools are typically beech wood. Harder woods are too precious, says Pelletto; they’d be unaffordable as a barstool. Many people think barstools should be metal, but wood is still a very popular choice, industry consultants say. Elegant and clean designs like the Biedermeier barstool, which has gentle curves and a rectangular back, have never gone away.

That said, they may be too fancy for a family pizzeria. “If a lot of children come to you, you might want to go with vinyl,” says Pipitone. That doesn’t mean settling for a cheap-looking covering. The top vinyl can now almost pass for leather. “I used to hate vinyl,” Pelletto says, “and now it’s just stunning.” Vinyl’s graded for its durability: Buy a grade that’s thick enough to withstand repeated wear.

For upper-end pizzerias, there’s actual leather, of course. But make it distinctive. At Frasca Pizzeria and Wine Bar in Chicago, the bar seating doesn’t come cheap: Frasca’s owner, Josh Rutherford, estimates the barstools cost $320 each. But the red oxblood leather cushions, set in a wooden frame, are striking. And they tie Frasca’s bar to the rest of the restaurant: Its booths were bought from a defunct Chicago restaurant and Rutherford liked the red leather so much he had the barstools built to match.

Frasca’s barstools were made domestically. In today’s industry, that’s the exception. “The majority of people who claim to be manufacturers (in the United States) aren’t,” says Pelletto. “They’re importers.” Not surprisingly, the vast majority of barstools come from China, and although Chinese-made restaurant furniture often lives down to its cheaper price tag, there are high-quality Chinese made chairs, too. “I buy a lot of chairs manufactured in China and they’re great, but you can’t get any chair manufactured in China,” Pelletto says. Stains can be wrong, he says, or the chairs chip too easily. An American-made barstool will almost always be more durable, but you’ll pay for the privilege. Nevertheless, if you need a simple metal reinforcement for a wobbly barstool, it’ll be easier to obtain for a domestically made brand.

If the ideal barstool should be elegant, durable, and affordable, that still leaves a big question: How comfortable should it be? This isn’t as obvious as it might seem. A pizzeria with an eat-and-run business model wants high turnover: It doesn’t want its barstools to be so comfortable that customers won’t leave. Conversely, a pizzeria that relies on its bar business wants customers to settle in for an hour.

Riverfront Pizzeria’s Brenda Regenfelder, an owner of the restaurant, understands this. Regenfelder has sat at her share of uncomfortable bars, she says, so she wanted the opposite for her pizzeria’s bar. That’s why she paid attention to the design and the seat: Wide with a slight indent. “I think they’re quite comfortable,” she says. In other words, like many seemingly small interior design decisions, choosing barstools sends a message to your customers: Make sure your barstools are sending the right one. ❖



❖ Weight: Barstools typically weigh between 8 and 25 pounds, and the high end of that range can be cumbersome. If you want something light and easy to rearrange, consider the new aluminum models.
❖ Height: A barstool is approximately 31 inches high, roughly a foot shorter than the bar. Counter stools — think diner counters — are much shorter. Don’t mix and match.
❖ Spacing: Space barstools 18 inches apart. If you have 20 feet of bar space, you should be able to seat 11.
❖ Feet: If there’s no foot rail beneath your bar, consider adding a foot rest onto the chair, which can usually be done for an extra few dollars.
❖ Replacements: Unless you have extra space, there’s no need to buy replacement barstools. Retailers will ship any new stools on short notice. But confirm that the chair will stay in stock: You don’t want to be stuck with an ugly duckling stool.
❖ The Action: Swivel stools are cool. But they’re also unnecessary: No one will complain about a stationary barstool. And they’ll cost more and require more maintenance: After all, a swivel mechanism is just another part that can break down.

Nicholas Day is a freelance writer who covers food and drink for a variety of publications. He resides in New Haven, Connecticut.

Jalapeños bring heat to pizza while keeping the flavor profile of the pie firmly rooted in the Western Hemisphere. That still leaves an open ethnic range to play in — from Mexican to the broader Latin and from Southwest to Cajun. Although chipotles (dried and smoked jalapeños) may be hogging most of the media limelight, jalapeños still have a coveted place on pizzeria menus nationwide. They’re available fresh and canned, and carry anywhere from medium to high heat (between 2,500 and 5,000 Scoville heat units). Favored by prep cooks for their ease of deseeding, jalapeños are used in a myriad of applications — including the quick add-on as a topping when a customer wants to spice up their order. But Pizza Today wanted to look at how operators are using this pepper on pizza — beyond a singular topping. The findings? Hot.

Jalapeños are on at least six of The Wedge Pizzeria’s 32 specialty pies, which offers by-the-slice and whole pizzas at its two locations in the college town of Iowa City, Iowa. The Wedge favors fresh jalapeños over canned. “The fresh has more spice and a better vegetable flavor,” says manager Luther Nash, who sources them from farmers’ markets and employees’ gardens in the summer and distributors in the cooler months.

On the Chicken Fajita Pizza, jalapeños show up in both the sauce and the topping. Black-bean salsa, studded with jalapeños, is spread over the dough. Cubed chicken breast, white cheddar and Monterey Jack are sprinkled over the salsa. Fajita peppers (cooked green and red pepper, yellow onion, garlic, olive oil, lime juice, jalapeños and proprietary spices) are spread over the pizza, which is then finished with more Monterey Jack cheese and garlic. Housemade salsa, also sporting jalapeños, accompanies the pizza.

“This one is among our top-fi ve best selling specialty pizzas,” says Nash. “Cooking the jalapeños mellows the flavor a bit, but you still get that great, fresh heat that you’re looking for with the pepper.”

In the Western Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza, jalapeño adds to the decidedly all-American profile. Housemade tomato sauce covers the dough. Mozzarella and white cheddar are sprinkled atop, then bacon, ground beef, red onions and jalapeños are added. The pizza is finished with a crisscross of a local smokehouse’s BBQ sauce.

Jalapeños jazz up the veggie pizza in the cleverly named Wedgetable Garden Pizza, which sports tomato sauce, mozzarella, red onion, broccoli, green olives, tomato, mushrooms and garlic. For contrasting flavor that brings depth to the pizza, pineapple and jalapeños are added. “The hot and sweet are a pretty tasty combination,” says Nash. “But we do get requests to take them off the pizza once in a while. Some folks just like the traditional, but for those that appreciate the flavor depth — they love it.”

At Flying Pie Pizzaria in Boise, Idaho, fresh jalapeños make their way onto several different pizzas on the once-a-week Gourmet Night menu. Canned are used on the regular menu’s specialty pizza, the Zambini. “Fresh adds a certain zing that we can’t get from canned,” says Lesley Juel, marketing director of this two-unit concept. “On Gourmet Night, we try to feature the freshest ingredients, offering premium when we can.”

But canned jalapeños work well on the Zambini, she says, because they lend the pizza a suitably more mellow heat level. The sourdough is spread with pesto, then topped with mozzarella and provolone, Roma tomatoes, jalapeños, white onion, fresh Italian sausage and garlic.

The Southwest Chicken Pizza starts with a green sauce as the base (blended green-chili peppers, cumin, cornmeal, salt and cayenne). It’s topped with mozzarella and cheddar, black beans, yellow onion, fresh jalapeño, tomato, cilantro and chili-powder dusted chicken.

Flying Pie rotates six out of its 60 gourmet pies on any given Gourmet Night, and this particular pizza is “always one of the more popular chicken ones,” says Juel.

The restaurant’s riff on that deep-fried appetizer darling, jalapeño poppers, is the Jalapeño Popper Pizza. Thin-crust dough is brushed with olive oil, then dusted with cornmeal. Cheddar, black olives, fresh jalapeño and dollops of cream cheese top the pie. “You get these wonderful bites of hot cream cheese that cool down the palate after you bite into a jalapeño,” she says.

Victoria’s New York Pizzeria in San Francisco prefers the flavor of canned jalapeños on its pizzas. “They’ve got a nice, medium heat to them,” says Antoine Nacouzi, owner. “If customers want super-hot, then I pull out the habañero! For most though, the jalapeño offers just the right amount.”

Jalapeños are featured on three of its specialty pies, including La Pizza, which sports Mexican chorizo, yellow onion, green pepper, Italian sausage and jalapeños. “This one sells really well, particularly to my Latino customers. They seem to like the combination of chorizo and jalapeño,” says Nacouzi. 



Southwest Pie

Pizza dough, rolled to ½-inch thickness
Proprietary tomato sauce with 1 teaspoon cumin added
1 tablespoon fresh jalapeño pepper, deseeded and chopped
2 red onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
2 tablespoons Asiago cheese, shredded
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 avocado, pitted, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons chopped, fresh cilantro
Sour cream as accompaniment

Ladle tomato sauce over pizza dough, then top with jalapeño peppers, red onion and garlic. Sprinkle with cheeses; season with salt and pepper to taste. Bake the pizza until golden brown. Top with avocado slices and fresh cilantro. Serve with a side of sour cream.

Katie Ayoub is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Calfornia-based Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too! has one of those storied histories dating back to the 1950s when a Connecticut native moved West and opened a pizza parlor. He was later joined by Frank D’Ambrosio Sr. Fifty years later, D’Ambrosio’s sons, Don, Nick, John and Frank, now man the helm of Fulfillment Systems Inc., the holding company that owns and operates six restaurants throughout California and a sausage company their father founded (taking it from 600 pounds a day to 30-40 tons a day. That same sausage is used in their restaurants as well).



Dig below the surface of the corporate entity, though, and you’ll find that Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too! with three stores under it's umbrella, is more than a slick package. It's an old fashioned Italian dinner house, the kind the brothers most likely grew up in as kids. From the red checkered tablecloths to classic dishes like Veal Scaloppini Marsala and Rigatoni e Spinaci, Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too! is Italian through and through, exactly what its owners want. And given its sales of $15 million a year –– a far cry from its initial $22 first-day sales –– they seem to be doing it successfully. (Fulfillment Systems also owns two units know as Giorgio’s and a fine dining establishment as well.) “The concept is so identical, says John D’Ambrosio, who serves as the company’s CEO. “The only difference is that Frankie & Johnnie’s are in freestanding buildings and Giorgio’s are in in-line shopping centers. Their menus are identical (and) the operations are identical. We always talk as if they were one.”



Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too! offers dine-in and “a tremendous” carryout business, but does not offer delivery, D’Ambrosio says. “We didn’t want the hassle or the liability. Also, I’d rather have people pick up food and then they see the other foods. I think it’s almost a better marketing tool to get them in the stores and see what else we offer.”

D’Ambrosio cites a major point of difference that sets Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too! aside from its competitors –– unlike many other pizzerias, Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too! is a full-service concept. That includes table service and a full bar at each of the stores.



Why full service over a less laborintensive counter service concept? “It just wasn’t our mentality,” D’Ambrosio says. “I just always hated it. It was cold, it was impersonal –– it just wasn’t us.” D’Ambrosio and his brother, Frank, keep a fi rm hand on quality and control, and that has kept the concept initially small (read on to learn more about upcoming expansion plans).

“Some guys don’t care about control. They just care about growth and having an exit strategy,” D’Ambrosio says. “I think this is the key: my brother Frank and I –– and my other brothers, too –– I think have a genuine sense of hospitality and that’s why we couldn’t do the self-service thing. It goes back to when we were kids and you’d invite somebody in with ‘Come in, sit down and I’ll get you a cup of coffee.’ I think with a genuine sense of hospitality and a genuine sense of urgency of getting the job done and making sure things are done right, you move a lot slower. You delegate maybe a little less and when you try to keep your standards high, you don’t grow too fast.”



Like many operators, D’Ambrosio says staff training “is much more difficult today than it was 20 years ago. It takes a lot longer to train staff … you have to educate them on the food, how to sell it and how to serve it. It’s very difficult to find people who view it as a profession.”

In the past, D’Ambrosio has tried sales incentives as a retention tool, but ultimately “you just hire the best attitude we can, we try to train them the best we can, we try to follow through with that training … and then we monitor the best we can.”



The crown jewel of Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too! is its menu. This is no simple pizza and pasta set-up. Instead, diners can enjoy a meal of Calamari Fritti (Semolina herb-crusted squid served with cocktail and tartar sauce at $9.50), Baked Salmon Risotto (oven baked salmon served over risotto with onions, artichoke hearts, red bell peppers, mushrooms, green onions and sun-dried tomatoes at $11.95), oven-baked manicotti (stuffed with herbed ricotta and topped with creamy pesto, béchamel and marinara sauces and served with spinach aglio olio at $9.50) and topped off with tiramisu or cheesecake.

And while those dishes might seem high-brow to many Pizza Today readers, make no mistake: pizza is king here too, with specialty gourmet pizzas like Johnnie’s Favorite (pesto, roasted chicken, roasted red bell pepper, artichoke hearts, black olives, bruschetta tomato, ricotta cheese and mozzarella cheese at $24.95 for a 16-inch large) sitting along side staples like barbecue chicken ($19.95 for a large) and pepperoni ($18.50). Pizzas are baked in a rotary oven which affords more room in the kitchen.



Being a full-service restaurant extends to the full bar, which D’Ambrosio says is an accommodation to his guests, with hard liquor becoming a larger part of the restaurant beginning about 10 years ago.

“Sometimes you might lose a party because you don’t serve cocktails,” D’Ambrosio adds. Still, he says that hard liquor sales are low compared to beer and wine in his establishments. (Alcohol accounts for about 10 percent of sales).



With six stores in all under their belts, is expansion in the company’s future? “We were going to expand in the Central Valley on a 5-year plan to do about 15 stores, but as everything started turning to hell in 2001, 2002, I pulled the reins back in wondering if it was the right time or not and it was a good thing I did,” D’Ambrosio says. “Now is the time to re-implement that plan of expansion.

“Business is like a tomato. You can’t let it ripen because then it rots and falls off the vine. You’ve got to keep it green. We’ve got so many tenured people in our system that we’ve got to keep it moving for them to move up, or we’ll lose them.”

D’Ambrosio says he hopes to open three more stores and is developing a fast food concept that will pair the company’s signature pizza with offerings using the company’s sausage.

Bottom line, the D’Ambrosio family has weathered much in their 50 years in the restaurant industry, and John says there are several factors to that success. First, “it’s a balancing act of putting away money in the good times, because you know there are going to be bad times,” he says. “Another big challenge is keeping up on store maintenance … they wear out. You have to keep them fresh and keep them alive.”

Maintain food quality and keeping the menu fresh to avoid recipe erosion are also critical elements to longevity. “If you have good food and good service at a moderate price in a clean, friendly atmosphere, they will come,” D’Ambrosio says, “and that has not changed since the first restaurant in Ithica 6,000 years ago.”❖

Mandy Wolf Detwiler is managing editor at Pizza Today.

Sunny San Jose, California, is a Mecca for technology and six figure paychecks. But look beyond the corporate entities that dot its landscape and you’ll find a fairly small community of locals who couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Among those are the Salciccia family, who own and operate Tony & Alba’s Pizza & Pasta, a three-unit company that opened in 1982 with just two picnic tables and a brick oven. A carpenter by trade, Tony says he was never a true chef, but he liked to cook and at the prodding of his children began looking for a small operation of his own.



“When he would cook for us, we got excited because we would get something special,” says daughter Diana Vallorz, who serves as the company’s treasurer. Tony’s wife, Alba, used to make pizzas at home, and the family lucked into a small shop in Mountain View, California.

“It was a one-man show,” Tony says. And even though the country was in the midst of a recession, Diana says overhead was low since the whole family pitched in. “They all had boyfriends then, and they’d get to go out with the girls if they came in and worked,” Tony laughs.



In 1990, the family opened its second location in San Jose, and a third location in Santa Cruz opened just a year later. By the mid-1990s, Tony & Alba’s had expanded to seven locations and a commissary with plans to franchise. “We had the idea that we’d take off and do a big chain,” Tony says, “but it never materialized.”

Why? Son Anthony Salciccia says the dot-com bust happened, taking with it the company’s expansion plans. “We grew with it,” he says, “and we downsized with the economy.” Today, Tony & Alba’s has three stores with a combined sales of nearly $3 million. Three generations of Salciccia family members man the helms, and the company now serves the children and grandchildren of its original customers.



“Most of our customers are repeat customers and loyal throughout these 25 years,” says son-in-law Al Vallorz, who married the Salciccias’ daughter, Diana.

The company employs 65 people, including several who have been with the family for nearly 15 years. Delivery is available, and while corporate deliveries aren’t as popular as they used to be given the declining economy, Diana says they have a fair number of hospitals to make up for the local decline in technology companies.

“A lot of the electronic companies put in their own cafeterias,” Anthony says, “but they still call us for our pizza.” Some of those include Yahoo!, Microsoft, Netscape and eBay. At lunch, corporate catering can comprise as much as 50 to 60 percent of sales depending on location.

With three stores, Tony & Alba’s sees a rather diverse crowd –– you’re likely to see construction workers on their lunch break next to a table of corporate office staff with plenty of young families at night. Beer and wine are available, but Al says the company chooses to be more family-oriented. “We’re not 50 beers on the wall, everybody screaming and yelling,” he says. “Obviously, a lot of the sports bars are still doing well –– people sitting around drinking beer (and watching the television). We’re just more family-oriented.”



“We have people who brought their children in here when they were little,” Alba says, “and now they’re older themselves and they all come in here now.” For example, the family says a loyal patron passed on and the company catered the funeral. Weeks later, the family dined in one of the restaurants to pay tribute to their loved one. That level of familiarity –– such as one customer who lost his wife and now dines at one location every night –– has endeared Tony & Alba’s to its patrons.

“We have customers that if we don’t see them, we get worried,” Diana says.

The family’s menu is extensive, ranging from appetizers and soups to salads, a large pasta and pizza menu and a number of sandwiches. Pizza comprises approximately 60 percent of sales, and the company is especially proud of its dough: it is raised twice for crispness and served three days after it is mixed. Most everything is made in-house, including sauce made from Alba’s family recipes in Italy and using tomatoes sourced from the San Joaquin Valley.

The company’s signature dressing –– made with extra-virgin olive oil, red wine vinaigrette, Italian herbs and spices and garlic –– is so popular that the company began bottling and selling it in-house. “We’re famous for our salad dressing,” Tony says. “People come from all over just for our salads.”

Al says that many customers are loyal to their personal favorites, and adds that it can be diffi cult to get those people to try other menu items. “We have really good pasta,” he says, “but everybody knows us (for our) pizza. They come in and it’s ‘pizza, pizza, pizza!’ ” To tackle that, they began passing out samples of their pasta offerings, and saw sales of those menu items rise. “We do good with our lunch specials with pastas and sandwiches. Our pasta is as good as any fancy restaurant,” Anthony adds. The company offers four pre-fixed lunch specials from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. priced at $7.25 with a drink.

When it comes to marketing, Tony & Alba’s takes a straightforward approach using Val-Pak, money mailers and box-top promotions. Recently, they added a V.I.P. (Very Important Paesano) club that has yielded 3,000 members and offers the company the ability to e-mail personalized gift certificates and coupon rebates in the form of percentages back and special offers. Personalized mailers have been a successful marketing tool for them as well.

“There are three ways to increase your sales,” Al says. “New people, get people to come in more often (which the mailers do) and get people to spend more.” Direct mail drives in customers, and the company then in turn gets those diners to sign up for the V.I.P. loyalty program. It has been successful, Anthony says. “We were paying a lot of money for Yellow Pages and it wasn’t really generating that much.”

Another successful ploy, Diana says, was trading pizza to feed local university ballplayers in return for acknowledgement during games.

Tony and Alba’s emphasis on “Good Food, Great Friends, Great Times!” has proved that their three restaurants are capable of withstanding at least two recessions. They don’t have any plans to open any more stores in the near future. Instead, they’re going to retail their salad dressings and are working on selling their dough balls in a local store as soon as they obtain a barcode.

The Mountain View location has been successful offering take-and-bake pizzas, with people coming in and getting three or four at a time. Each location serves a unique clientele and for now, no two stores are the same. Regulars, it seems, are the bread-and- butter for Tony & Alba’s.

“Our regulars, we know what they eat and where they sit,” Diana says. Adds Anthony: “You do get some people who go to one store for lunch and they’ll go to another store for dinner.” ❖

Mandy Wolf Detwiler is managing editor at Pizza Today.

Saturday morning, February 7th, 2009: I paused from an early morning jog. The earth was rotating into position and I had to be ready. Then, right on schedule at 6:47 a.m. Honolulu time as the sun peaked over Diamond head, I turned 50.

The only glitch in this picture perfect day was that the restaurant for which I had dinner reservations closed their doors three days earlier, a victim of the sudden drop in tourism.

Nick’s Fish Market had been a Waikiki “tourist favorite” landmark for 41 years. Their food and table service was second-to-none. But, when the steady stream of fully loaded jumbo jets with cash-carrying tourists dried up, the $250,000 a month overhead quickly became unsustainable. So the owner locked the door for the last time with nothing but a few paintings under his arm and a handful of memories.

Nick’s biggest problem was that its success was predicated on people coming to it from all parts of the globe. You have no such problem. Your customers are sitting in your own backyard, and a little tap on the shoulder from time to time will keep them loyal to you. Here’s three ways you can keep the wind at your back during these troubled times.

1. Save money — It is your own customers who are most likely to spend money with you (as opposed to some stranger who’s never even heard of you). So, the first step to keeping precious dollars in your bank account is to stop wasting money advertising to people who will not likely spend money with you. Think about it: with a dismal two percent average response rate, generic mass-marketing has a built-in 98 percent waste factor. You pay to reach 98 people who won’t buy from you, just to reach the two who will. Why not just target those two? A customer loyalty database enables you to eliminate wasteful spending.
2. Make money — Okay, now think about this: If you have a customer ordering twice a month, and spending $15 each time, that’s $30 a month for you. What if you could generate one extra visit? Now that customer is spending $45 with you — a 50 percent increase. These extra visits are easy to generate, too. Just staying in touch from time to time keeps you “top of mind.” Understand that every day at 4 p.m., $167 million is transferred from open wallets to restaurant cash registers. Staying on your customer’s “short list” keeps a bigger pile of that cash heading your way. An automated customer loyalty system does this for you.
3. Make MORE money — Now that you’ve slashed your marketing budget and have your regulars coming in more often, it’s time to target your competitors’ customers with laser-like precision. Instead of dropping big discount offers to entire neighborhoods, you can now send non-customers offers that will bring them in for a first-time visit (without putting those same offers in front of regulars). This is a simple procedure when you have a customer database. You simply purge regular customers from “new-customer” mailings.

Warren Buffet says this economic decline “will be long and deep.” Advertising efficiency and customer loyalty will keep you in the game. ❖

Kamron Karington owned a highly successful independent pizzeria before becoming a consultant, speaker and author of The Black Book: Your Complete Guide to Creating Staggering Profits in Your Pizza Business. He is a monthly contributor to Pizza Today.

I have dabbled with gnocchi for years, but I keep coming back to this one as my favorite. I prefer a gnocchi (called cavatelli more often than not in my family) with a chewy texture, one that “argues with the teeth” just a bit after cooking. Gnocchi made with potato will not deliver that good chew (and are difficult to make). However, this gnocchi (N’YOHkee), made with a combination of fl our and ricotta cheese, will.

This recipe will make just over two pounds of gnocchi dough, but you will need only 20 ounces for this sauce recipe. The small nubbins of gnocchi freeze nicely. Place the unused, formed gnocchi on a lightly floured sheet pan. Freeze the gnocchi for about one hour. Transfer to a plastic freezer bag or other container and return to the freezer. The gnocchi will keep for two months.

To cook the frozen gnocchi, take them right from the freezer and drop them in boiling, salted water (do not thaw). The cooking time will be 6-8 minutes. 

GNOCCHI
1 pound ricotta cheese, drained of excess water
2 extra-large eggs
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
¼ teaspoon salt
3½ -4 cups all-purpose flour

GORGONZOLA CREAM SAUCE
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 carton (half-pint) whipping cream
2 ounces (½ cup) Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

To make the gnocchi, put the ricotta, eggs, Parmesan and salt in a food processor. Process for about 30 seconds to combine.

Add 3½ cups fl our and turn on the machine to combine. With the machine running, add more fl our, ¼ cup at a time until a dough forms a ball and pulls away from the side of the bowl. Put the dough ball on a lightly floured surface and knead for a minute.

Cut off a piece of dough about the size of a golf ball. Roll it between the palms of your hand to form a rope about ¼-inch in diameter. Cut the rope into pieces about ½-inch long. Press your thumb firmly into the center of each piece. Cover with a clean towel and set aside (or freeze for later use).

In a large sauté pan set over medium heat, melt the butter (do not brown). Add the whipping cream and raise the heat to medium-high. Add the Gorgonzola and bring the sauce to a simmer. Reduce slightly, creaming the crumbles of cheese. Remove the pan from the heat.

Cook the gnocchi in a large pot of boiling, salted water. They will be done about 30 seconds after they rise to the surface of the boiling water. Drain.

Set the sauté pan with the sauce over medium heat. Transfer the gnocchi to the sauté pan. Toss the gnocchi to coat with the sauce. Add the Parmesan and toss again. Serve at once.

Cook’ Note: You can scale up the gnocchi recipe in direct proportion and make a batch to use that day or freeze for later use. In service, you can boil the gnocchi ahead if necessary and hold. Finish off each portion in the prepared cream sauce.

Pat Bruno is Pizza Today’s resident chef and a regular contributor. He is the former owner and operator of a prominent Italian cooking school in Chicago and is a food critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Bacon is back. In the past few months I have come across no fewer than seven food articles in which bacon played either a main role or a supporting role in various dishes. Talk about pigging out. Did you know that there was a “Bacon of the Month Club?” Now you do. And have you heard about the “Bacon Explosion?” Two pounds of bacon get woven through and around two pounds of Italian sausage, the whole of which is slathered in barbecue sauce. Talk about going whole hog!

Bacon is loaded with fl avor (“everything tastes better with bacon” is pushing the envelope, but there is some truth there), so it does have a place in many dishes and styles of food. And to expand the possibilities, consider using pancetta. The Italian version of bacon, pancetta is a cured — but not smoked — pork product that should be considered when working up dishes where the idea of pork has merit. One example would be a PLT, or pancetta, lettuce and tomato panini. Buy baby pancetta (it is sold rolled and has the shape of, say, capicolla or salami). Slice it thin, crisp it in a sauté pan and use the whole round slices to make a great panini.

I am also in favor of using bacon (or pancetta) in pasta dishes. For example, one of the tastiest pasta dishes around is spaghetti carbonara. Spaghetti carbonara uses just a few ingredients — cooked bacon (or pancetta), grated Parmesan, eggs, black pepper — that when tossed with the cooked pasta makes quite an amazing and delicious dish. And don’t forget that bacon can be used quite effectively in a salad. For example, combine fresh spinach with crisp bacon, tomatoes, and slices of hard-boiled eggs. A balsamic vinaigrette dressing completes this delicious salad.

Cooking bacon is a no-brainer, but the simplest and easiest method is to microwave it. You can prep a whole lot of bacon in a short amount of time this way. If you do that, be sure to keep the cooked bacon in the cooler or prep table (covered). Even though it is cooked, bacon can go over the hill fast, so I recommend you not cook more than you need for, say, four days.

On the other hand, if you need the fat that is rendered from the cooking of the bacon, use a sauté pan and fry away. Or lay the bacon on a sheet pan and cook it in the deck oven (conveyor oven works too, but the grease splatters really do a number on the oven). There is also the possibility of deep-frying the bacon, should you want it extra crisp to use, say, as crumbles on a salad. The deep-frying does take most of the fat out, which you can take two ways: healthier, but with a loss of flavor.

So there’s an idea, thinking about that “Pork Explosion.” What about the possibility of using bacon and Italian sausage together as a pizza topping. Got a name for it? No? I do. “Pork Pie.”



Pork (Pizza) Pie

I have to admit right up front that this pizza is not low on calories or fat, but when it comes to flavor, there is nothing quite like it.

Makes one 14-inch pizza (scale up in direct proportion)

1 14-inch pizza shell
8 ounces shredded mozzarella
10 ounces ground pork
2 teaspoons ground fennel
1 teaspoon each salt and pepper
6 strips bacon, cooked until crispy, then chopped into ½-inch pieces
8 ounces ground tomatoes or tomato puree
2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese

Spread the mozzarella over the crust up to ½-inch of the edge.

Mix the ground pork with the fennel, salt, pepper and press into a patty that is about 12-inches in diameter (in other words, very thin). Put the pork patty on top of the cheese.

Sprinkle the cooked and chopped bacon over the pork. Ladle on the tomatoes. Sprinkle the Romano cheese evenly over the tomatoes. Bake.

Bacon and Spinach Pizza

You will note that in this recipe I use the half-and-half cheese method — half the cheese directly on the crust, then add the toppings and finish with the remaining cheese. No tomatoes are used on this pizza. This method gives the pizza a lot more eye appeal since the toppings are visible. This pizza falls into the “Signature” category of pizzas. In other words, because it is made with premium ingredients, you can charge a bit more. Your customers will agree, once they have had a slice or two, that this pizza is worth an extra buck or two.

Makes one 12-inch pizza (scale up in direct proportion)

1 12-inch pizza shell
¼ pound bacon, cooked until crisp and broken into pieces
8 ounces 50/50 blend mozzarella and provolone
½ pound (about) fresh plum or Roma tomatoes, sliced
10-12 ounces fresh baby spinach leaves, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh garlic
¼ cup toasted pine nuts

Spread half the cheese blend over the rolled out crust. Sprinkle the cooked bacon over the cheese.

Lay the sliced fresh tomatoes evenly over the cheese.

Spread the spinach leaves evenly over the bacon and tomatoes.

Drizzle the olive oil over the spinach, followed by the chopped fresh garlic.

Sprinkle on the remaining 4 ounces of cheese, followed by the toasted pine nuts. Bake. 

Pat Bruno is Pizza Today’s resident chef and a regular contributor. He is the former owner and operator of a prominent Italian cooking school in Chicago and is a food critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Well Seasoned

Did you recently get some new pizza pans or screens that need to be seasoned? Start by washing them in warm water and mild soap to remove any manufacturing lubricant or dirt. Rinse right away and towel dry. Then pass the screens through the oven to heat and further dry. Now, you’re ready to season. First, wipe the screens or pans with a towel that has been saturated with salad oil. Put them in a 425 F oven for 15 minutes. Stack them after they are finished. Next, crank the oven up to your normal baking temperature and put the screens and pans back in for another 15 minutes. They’re ready to go!

Remember, don’t wash your seasoned pans and screens. Instead, clean them by placing them in the oven at the end of the day and sanitizing them with the heat. If you have to wash them, don’t soak — this will cause the seasoning to peel off. The more you use your seasoned screens or pans, the darker they’ll become. That’s a good thing. As they blacken, you’ll likely find that the bake time can be decreased slightly to compensate for the faster heat absorption.

Don’t Cry

You may be considering using onion to enhance the flavor of your tomato sauce. Keep in mind, however, that onion can add either sweetness or bitterness to a sauce, so proceed with caution. Fresh onions that have been chopped and sautéed with a pinch of sugar until very soft will add sweetness to a tomato-based sauce. Onions that are put in a sauce raw will cause a sauce to taste bitter. Best to avoid that

Power Savers

Looking to cut your energy usage/bill? Who isn’t? Here are some quick tips:
❖ Closing air vents in unoccupied rooms, such as a party room, can save 10 percent on cooling costs.
❖ Raising the thermostat by one degree can save 2 percent on cooling costs.
❖ A breeze created by a ceiling fan can make a customer feel just as comfortable at a temperature 6 F warmer.
❖ Using a dehumidifier can make customers feel more comfortable at a warmer temperature.

Give it Away

As a business owner, your first inclination certainly isn’t to give away free food. After all, you don’t pay your bills if you don’t make money. That said, keep in mind that there’s no marketing buzzword more powerful than “free.” If you are doing a direct mailing, scrap the usual “10 percent off” offer — it trains your customers to expect a discount every time. Before long, your customers are conditioned to only buy from you when they have a coupon. Instead, offer a free order of breadsticks or garlic knots with the purchase of a large pizza. You’ll still make a profit and your customers won’t expect a freebie every time.