I’m a volunteer firefighter. My department consists of 28 men and two women. We make around 150 runs a year. We’re on duty 24/7/365 through central dispatch via a belt pager. I’ve done this a long time, and my experience has taught me that there is no typical run. Each call varies between structure, aircraft, industrial, wildfire, vehicle and hazmat incidents. We are also highly effective in extricating victims from vehicle crashes and RV accidents in the forest and waterways. We are the only department in our county that has a certified underwater dive/rescue squad. We protect 44 miles of Lake Huron shoreline, dozens of lakes and 50 miles of the AuSable River. Over half of our members are EMT’s.

Every department in the country is rated by ISO. This agency assigns an annual numeric grade based on insurance loss ratios, response times, training, and equipment inspections. We have the highest rating possible Well for a department of our size and scope. This reflects on how much premium is charged by insurance companies. We consistently outperform full-time major metropolitan departments.

How can this be? I believe it comes down to dedication and service mentality. We put community above personal agendas.

As such, together we form a well oiled machine. When we arrive on scene, we click. We have a preset command and control protocol and size up and attack the most pressing challenge within seconds. We have a training meeting every Thursday at 7 p.m. and conduct special training on weekends.

Recently we had an ice-dive day where we used a chainsaw to cut a triangle of ice out of the water. We used the hole to insert divers, who swam in the water below ice to search for and rescue victims and property. As you can imagine, in this type of exercise there isn’t any margin for error. It’s high-risk and requires a total team effort to pull it off.

The moral to this story? I’d like to express to you this month that training your staff on how to prepare for out-of-the-box scenarios is priceless. Whether it’s a particularly irate customer or a large catering order gone wrong, things won’t always be smooth. When a problem arises, your staff should be prepared to handle it. Begin by thinking about the number of things that can go wrong in your operation, the points where a failure is most likely to occur. Then address them with your staff and teach them how to handle each respective situation should a meltdown occur in your absence. ❖

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: We sell a lot of subs and sandwiches. We use sub rolls, whole-wheat sub rolls, wraps and Ciabatta bread for panini. We really want to add a hamburger to the menu but don’t really want to add another bread like a hamburger roll. Is there anything we can do with what we already have!



A: My simple solution for you is to offer hamburger subs. You can use two 2-ounce burgers on a small sub, three on a medium and four on a large.

We switched from using sheet pans and plastic wrap to stackable dough trays. Every aspect of storing dough this way is better, but the dough seems to start rising in the dough trays and is causing them to grow into each other. Do we need to cut down our yeast?

If your pizza dough formula works well, then don’t lower your yeast — that will change your end product. The problem is air circulation in the sealed dough tray. Here’s what I used to do to eliminate the dough from growing. Fist of all, I would make my dough with cold water using instant dry yeast. As soon as the dough was mixed, I would ball and tray it up. Then I would crisscross the trays in the cooler for about 30 to 40 minutes. At that point the dough will be cold enough to stack the trays and seal them. This step will eliminate the dough from expanding on you. This is also a cold fermentation process where you don’t use that dough until the next day. You should have a good three-day shelf life on that dough. Make sure you rotate your dough every day, putting the new dough on the bottom.

We’re thinking of adding international pizza to our menu, incorporating other cultural foods baked on a pizza. Is this even possible?

It’s definitely possible, but you need to be careful about how you utilize your sauce and cheese. You’ll obviously use a different sauce and need to make sure that you don’t over-sauce your pizza; otherwise it will be too sloppy. I created an Amazing Bangkok pizza that is fantastic. It features a coconut curry sauce and other wonderful toppings. The cheese was a creative blend, but I only used about half of what I normally used on a cheese pizza. Go for it, get creative, and test them out on your customers first to get their feedback.

I have an employee who is really good most of the time, but seems to stretch or break our rules and policies. I hate to fire him. Is there any way to get him to conform?

I understand your frustration. Here are some options: a demotion with a decrease in pay until consistently better performance occurs, or a one- or two-week suspension without pay. Everyone has a certain threshold of learning. Sometimes sit-downs and write-ups with threats aren’t enough. If they don’t get it after that, it’s definitely time for them to go. ❖

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.

Oh, what a wonderful addition broccoli can be to our pizza and pasta menu. Over the years, the vegetable hasn’t gotten the accolades it deserves for a variety of reasons. But, when handled and cooked properly, broccoli can add great vibrance, texture and flavor to any dish.

I like to cut most of the stem off during prep, leaving the florets to be cut into small pieces for both my pizza and pasta dishes. I then blanch the florets by dipping them into salted, boiling water for about 60 seconds — then I plunge them into an ice bath or quickly rinse under cold water to immediately stop the cooking process. The salt serves two purposes: it enhances the natural flavor and, more importantly, preserves the broccoli’s bright green color.

Don’t panic about being wasteful in regards to cutting off the stem. You can buy broccoli crowns where the stems have already been removed, though they generally cost a little bit more. If you buy the whole broccoli, you can shred the stems up to make broccoli slaw (use them to replace the cabbage) to be used as a side dish with your sandwiches.

There is an alternative to cutting, blanching and cooling fresh broccoli, and this is to buy frozen broccoli florets. If you thaw them under refrigeration, they are ready to be used on both pizza and in your pasta dishes. It’s especially important to squeeze any excess water out of the broccoli before you use it on pizza.

Now that we’ve got the preparation down and our broccoli ready to use, let me give you a few ideas on how to implement it on your menu. Let’s start with pizza! Simply adding it as a vegetable topping is a great start, but creating a “Chicken Broccoli Alfredo Pizza” is exciting and different for your guests. If you already have Alfredo sauce made and in a steam table for pasta, I’d advise you to use that on your pizza along with broccoli, diced chicken and your pizza cheese. It’s very simple, yet it’s a fantastic pizza that brings a gourmet fl air to the menu. If you are not using Alfredo or keep it cold, no problem. Applying it to your dough cold is just the same as regular pizza sauce.

Now think about what people love with their broccoli, and bring those items to life on your pizza. We all know how kids love their broccoli — drenched with cheddar cheese. So why not create a broccoli and cheddar pizza pie? Oh, sure, you can add your other favorite toppings to it or let your customers choose. I love the idea of topping a pizza like that with some of those crispy fried onions that you use on a green bean casserole once the pizza comes out of the oven.

But let’s get back to Alfredo. If you’re going to add it to the menu for pizza, why not make it a sauce option for pasta dishes as well? When I bought Jeffrey’s Pizza back in 1998, I boasted a “Jeffrey’s has gone gourmet” campaign. And by simply adding Alfredo sauce as an option, I was able to create a few new pizzas and pasta dishes. Broccoli and a nice creamy Alfredo sauce just go hand in hand so well. Broccoli and chicken Alfredo make a perfect pasta dish, and by adding some other nice garden veggies like zucchini, spinach, tomatoes and olives, you’ve got a nice creamy primavera dish.

As you can tell, I love my broccoli in a creamy concoction like many others. It can certainly hold its own in a nice zesty tomato sauce, or chopped and tossed with a fresh pesto sauce.

If you cook your broccoli in some veggie stock with cream, garlic and black pepper, and then thicken it with a little roux and mix in some cheddar cheese, you’ll have created a wonderful broccoli cheddar soup that may sell out before the end of a busy lunch. Try the recipe below –– I’m sure it will be a great success! ❖



Mediterranean Broccoli Pesto Pie

12-inch pizza dough 3 ounces pesto (without pine nuts)
6 ounces blanched broccoli florets
2 ounces sun-dried tomatoes, cut into strips
2 ounces Kalamata olives
3 ounces marinated artichoke hearts
1 ounce chopped fresh garlic
3 ounces Feta cheese, crumbled
6 ounces shredded mozzarella

Spread the pesto over the dough and layer all the ingredients, then bake as you do any other pizza. Not only is this pizza super delicious, it’s also visually gorgeous as well!

Jeffrey Freehof, owner of The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia, is Pizza Today’s resident expert and a frequent speaker at the family of Pizza Expo tradeshows.

This particular issue of Pizza Today has a marketing focus. Not that we neglect the subject otherwise, but we wanted to cram as many marketing tips and techniques as possible in this edition to keep our readers at the top of their game. In this economy — a phrase I’ve grown tired of writing, quite frankly — you, as a pizzeria owner, need every competitive advantage you can get.

Here’s the rub with marketing, the thing precious few independent restaurant owners truly understand: you can’t do it sporadically. You either commit to it, or you don’t. If you’re only going to advertise once in a while, when you feel like it or when there’s a big event, such as the Super Bowl, you’re pretty much wasting your time and money. Marketing doesn’t have to be non-stop, but it has to be consistent and frequent if it’s going to produce long-term results instead of one-and-done sales spikes.

I understand the typical operator’s reluctance to get serious about marketing. It costs money, sometimes lots of it. It takes time. It is difficult to measure the results. But good marketing — and there’s more than enough bad marketing out there, believe me — is not an expense. It’s an investment.

Not all investments pay off. But if you are well diversified and spend wisely, then you’ll come out ahead in the long run –– way ahead, if your message is on target.

The key is to experiment and find what works for you — then ride that horse until it’s dead.

I’d like to introduce you now to George Philbrook, owner of two-store Nonni’s Pizza in Revere and Malden, Massachusetts. When Philbrook took over a failed restaurant location recently, he wanted to get the word out about his new store opening. He says he “broke the place in” with a grand opening at the end of January. Prior to the grand opening, Philbrook mailed 45,000 fliers for a free large cheese pizza, carryout only. The free pizza could be redeemed from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, January 23.

Says Philbrook: “We ended up making 1,900 pizzas in nine hours, with an average wait time of 7-15 minutes.”

New customers piled in three-deep rows filled Nonni’s modest lobby. The goodwill he generated that day can’t be measured, but I assure you it runs deep. As for the exposure: Nonni’s successfully managed to get 1,900 customers to try its pizza in one day.

That’s a response rate of 4.2 percent, by the way. And while it seems sickly sad that an offer of a free large pizza would only tempt 4.2 percent of the marketing base, the fact of the matter is that the typical direct-mail campaign has a response rate of just one percent. A two-percent response is considered “successful” — and Philbrook more than doubled that.

And that’s why your marketing needs to be consistent in its frequency. One campaign isn’t going to change your business forever. But a successive attack of them will make a big difference provided your message is on target and your offer is compelling.

Best,

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

Q: How can I calculate what the total cost of making my dough is?

A: Many operators simply look at just the ingredient cost when costing their dough formula, but there are more costs involved in making our dough: ingredient cost; inventory cost; overhead and labor cost, just to name a few. It’s difficult to calculate the cost associated with each of these when costing a dough. But, fortunately, there is a rule that we can follow that gives us a realistic idea of just what these costs all add up to. Let’s work a dough formula to find the actual cost to produce the dough:



Note: Ingredient costs are for example purposes only, and do not reflect actual ingredient costs. The projected Formula Cost values have been rounded to the nearest whole cent.

The rule for finding the actual cost to produce dough is to multiply the ingredient cost by 2.5. In this example, the total ingredient cost is $4.35, so we will multiply that by 2.5 to get $10.85. This is the actual cost to make the dough. If you were going to sell the dough from your store, you would add your profit margin on to this price for your total selling price. Or, if you want to compare your cost against the cost of purchasing ready-made dough, you might divide the actual dough cost by the total number of pounds of dough weight to get the cost per pound of dough. In this case, we would divide $10.85 by 32.425 to get a dough cost of $0.3346 (call it $0.33) per pound. When you look at it this way, you can see why the cost of ready-made dough can run anywhere from $0.50 to as much as a dollar per pound when you add on the costs associated with distribution, handling, and shipping, not to mention middleman profits.

Our carryout and delivery pizzas are very tough and chewy. Can we mix some cake fl our with our pizza fl our to make a more tender eating pizza?

In all probability, no, because most cake-type fl ours are made from a different type of wheat than our regular pizza fl ours. Cake fl ours are typically made from soft wheat varieties; additionally, you may also get a chlorinated/hi-ratio cake fl our. These are specialized fl ours designed specifically for making hi-ratio cakes (the type you buy from the major supermarkets), and they do not play well at all with bread fl our when it comes to making pizza crust. Instead, I would suggest that you simply change over to a lower-protein-content, bread-type fl our. While most pizza type fl ours contain 13- to 14-percent protein content, bread fl ours will generally contain from 11- to 12.5-percent protein content. This lower protein content should help to reduce the toughness/chewiness in your finished crusts. However, be advised that at the same time, the potential for crispiness of your crust may also be reduced slightly. This is not a problem with delivered or carryout pizzas, as their crispiness is greatly diminished or non-existent. But if the pizzas will be served as dine-in, they may not be quite as crispy as they were with the higher protein content fl our.

What do you see as some of the new trends in pizza?

I think a lot of the new trends are being driven by consumer desire to eat healthier, or at least feel that they are. I see a preference towards thin crust varieties, probably driven from a leftover attempt to reduce carbs by eating less of the crust portion of the pizza.

There is also a significant move towards reducing sodium content in pizzas. Aside from reducing the salt content in the dough, you’ve also got to look at the sauce and toppings, especially the cheese, to bring about a significant sodium reduction. But with a little work, it is easily within our grasp to achieve a 25 percent-plus total sodium reduction in our pizzas without losing our product identity.

And then there are probiotics. This is a word that may be new to some of you, but this stuff is making a big splash in the food industry. We are seeing more foods being formulated with probiotics (healthy bacteria) to help improve gut health. While this is new, it is something that we might add to our dough/crust to help improve consumer appeal. ❖

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

I want to personally thank all the pizza professionals that attended this year’s International Pizza Expo®. The show was undoubtedly one of the biggest and best industry events ever held, with a show floor the size of 4½ football fields, 415 exhibiting companies and 900-plus booths all devoted to America’s favorite food. Pizzeria operators from all over the world packed the exhibit hall and seminar rooms in search of new products and information.

You could feel the excitement and electricity coming from our contest and demonstration areas, where the World Pizza Games® and International Pizza Challenge™ were being held. This year, we had a record nine world titles up for grabs. Throw in the $20,000 Mega Bucks Giveaway and the New Exhibitor Treasure Hunt, and we had nearly $60,000 in total prize money up for grabs this year. If you couldn’t attend this year’s show and were wondering who walked away with the hardware, cash and bragging rights, please make sure to read the Expo wrap-up article in the May issue of Pizza Today.

The great thing about Pizza Expo is no matter how many times you’ve attended past shows, there’s always something new you can learn or implement that will help improve your pizzeria. In fact, I know it seems a long way off right now, but it’s never too early to start making plans to attend next year’s Expo, which will be held March 1-3 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. There’s no telling what we’ll come up with to top this year’s show, but I’m sure we’ll come up with something special for 2011. In fact, if you have any ideas or suggestions on how we can improve the show, I would like to hear from you.

As always, we want you to know that we are committed to improving and increasing the number and quality of exhibits, demonstrations, events and seminars at our trade shows. You’ll see this commitment now more than ever through the pages of Pizza Today, NAPO and our e-newsletters.

When deciding on which trade show to attend, remember that general foodservice shows are precisely that … general (even if they claim to have a pizza pavilion, contests and a few pizza exhibitors). Remember, if you’re looking for new pizza products, suppliers, networking opportunities or just a few ideas on how to improve your pizzeria, then International Pizza Expo® is the ONLY show for you!

For more information on Pizza Expo, give us a call at (800) 489-8324.

It’s all PIZZA and it’s all for YOU!

Kind regards,
Bill Oakley
Executive Vice President

Brian Behrens bought Pizzarelli’s Pizzeria in 2007. The store had an existing customer base built over 10 years and a solid dough recipe. He added two additional dough styles and sales have been rising steadily.

Q. St. Louis is known for having its own style of pizza, but your dough hails from Chicago and New York with thin and crispy, hand-tossed and deep dish. Why offer so many styles?

A. We don’t even mess with the St. Louis style at all –– for one, it’s a style I’m not familiar with, and two, I personally don’t care for it a whole lot. The New York-style, the previous owners had, and we bought the recipe from them. … The Chicago-style, I’m more familiar with because my brother owns a place up in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago, so we brought his recipes in for our Chicago-style Thin & Crispy and the Chicago-style deep dish. We don’t get people who are in love with the St. Louis-style. We get people who are from out of town or want mozzarella cheese and fresh ingredients.

Q. Your business model is labor intensive, with sauce and dough made in-house, vegetables cut and meats prepped daily and even grinding your own cheese. Have you considered reducing your labor costs in any way?

A. We don’t cut corners at all. When we first bought the place and I was making our Thin & Crispy dough, I was calling suppliers in the area to make sure we got the right fl our that we wanted. A lot of them said, “Well, a lot of people just buy our pre-made crusts. We sell them all over St. Louis.” I said, “Well, we’re not doing it. … Absolutely not. That’s something we’ll never do.” One of the things we really stress is our fresh ingredients and our dough made daily. People enjoy coming in and seeing us throw the dough. People get a kick out of that.

Q. What types of marketing are you planning to do this year?

A: One of the things we’ve learned in two-and-a-half years is that direct mail is the way to go. We do some database marketing. We try to send out postcards every month or six weeks to our current customer database. We really try to take care of our current customers, and then they spread the word. Occasionally, we’ll run an ad page, but the one thing I’ve learned with that is that you’re busy for the weekend, and then it dies down. It’s a little more expensive than what you’re looking at.

Q. You offer a rewards program –– how well does that work for you?

A. We send out one to two e-mails a month. We’ve got an outside company that takes care of that for us. … We tiptoed into it at the end of last summer. We went at it kind of hard that first month, and it went well for us. For some reason, we didn’t push it very hard after that. For the last month, we came up with the idea to collect information right there in the store without pushing too hard. We ask for an e-mail, a name and the phone number. In turn, we use those for promos and rewards. People really like it.

Q. Any plans for growth in the future?

A. Hopefully at some point. One thing we have to look at is can we do it cost effectively? If we open another store, are we taking too much away from one store and putting in the other one? We wouldn’t want to lose quality, and talking to our customers who go to other places who have expanded, sometimes the (second) store isn’t quite as good as the first. We’d have to make sure we had the right people and it financially makes sense.

“Like moths to the flame.” That’s how Britt Taylor, owner of Bright Neon Signs in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, describes the effect that neon pizza signs have on potential customers. Hungry consumers see a slice of their favorite pie all lit up in neon, and suddenly, there’s nothing they want more than to pull into your parking lot and have a meal.

“Pizza was one of the first neons ever to be made, and it’s one of the most successful,” he says. “I think it’s the glow. Since most pizza restaurants tend to be in reds, yellows and greens, neon’s reddish glow is a perfect fit.”

Frank Marro, owner of Marro’s Restaurant in Saugatuck, Michigan, is one of those who can vouch for the popularity of neon signs. Marro’s has boasted the same neon sign since the company opened back in the ‘50s. In fact, the sign has been there so long that it’s been grandfathered into town laws, making it the only outdoor neon sign in Saugatuck.

“Everybody loves our sign,” Marro says. “So many people take pictures of it, and all of our customers talk about it.” The sign has been so popular that it has become part of Marro’s logo, and they’re adding it to their pizza boxes and T-shirts.

Neon signs aren’t anything new: they’ve been promoting businesses for a long while. “People started making neon in the early 1900s,” says Matthew Severson, owner of Fire House Neon in Stockbridge, Michigan. “So as a profession, it’s been tried and tested for over a hundred years. The only older professional is the unmentionable one.”

In their simplest sense, the signs are made of glass tubes filled with neon gas. While neon is colorless and odorless in its natural form, once you heat it inside glass discharge tubes, it takes on a gorgeous reddish-orange glow. To get additional colors, some signs are made with colored glass while others use other gases, such as argon, which gives off a purple hue.

Neon signs are pretty and popular, but they can be a big upfront investment, running from a few hundred dollars up to the thousands. So why bother?

For one thing, neon signs give a lot of bang for their buck. “If you take care of a neon sign, it will last you forever,” says Taylor. Maintenance is fairly minimal; every five to seven years, you might need a new transformer, which costs anywhere from $50 to $80 for an indoor sign, and up to $150 for an outdoor, waterproof sign. “You figure, if you only have to spend 70 bucks every five or seven years, that’s still a great investment,” he adds.

Despite their brightness, neon signs are surprisingly power-efficient. “Most neon signs take less than one-quarter of a watt to run,” says Severson. “That’s about two to ten cents per day.” He says most people would be surprised to realize they spend far more money and electricity on other things, such as outdoor parking lights.

Neon signs aren’t as popular these days as they once were. New technologies, such as LED lights, are replacing the good ole neon glow. But there are big benefits for companies that keep the old while they usher in the new. “Having both neon and LED signs is like giving a one-two punch,” says Severson. “LED lights are more flexible, so you can inform about tomorrow’s special while neons are vibrant, they add life, they entertain and grab your attention.”

If you’re considering purchasing a neon sign, there are a number of things to take into account before you plunk your money down. First, choose your display wisely. A clear, uncluttered sign that features your business name, logo and any specialties is always a good bet.

Ideally, buy from someone you know and trust. While mass-manufactured neon signs from overseas can be cheap to purchase, they often end up costing more in the long run.



Materials matter as well. The thicker, the better when it comes to glass tubing. Thicker tubing is harder to bend, but is less prone to breakage, and uses less electricity. In addition, a nine- or twelve-volt transformer will give a great glow without draining your energy budget.

Neon signs might seem like a thing of the past, but they’re a great way to brand your business for the future. And they draw loyal customers like no other type of sign. There is even a whole segment of customer that will come to your establishment just because of your neon sign –– and best yet, they might even do your advertising for you.

“Our sign is a huge draw for customers,” says Donald Bishop, manager of two Pizza King restaurants in Marion, Indiana, about the company’s 50-yearold rooftop sign, which measures 25 feet by four feet. “There are people that go around and take pictures of neon signs and they post the pictures online. It’s great for us.”

Turns out, that gorgeous red glow really does draw customers to your business like moths to the flame. Now all you have to do is keep them there. ❖



The Care & Feeding of Neon Signs

Outdoor signs can be taken down during the winter, but it’s not necessary. One thing to be aware of, however: the colder the weather, the dimmer the neon glow. If it gets really, really cold, the neon might not spark at all.

Dust happens. Especially in pizza places. “Pizza restaurants have a combination of high humidity, fl our and moisture that can gum up neon signs,” says Matthew Severson, owner of Fire House Neon in Stockbridge, Michigan. “It basically creates a big baseball mitt that captures dust and critters.” Get enough of it and the sign could develop ‘hot spots’, or points where it burns out. Use a swiffer-type duster once a month to keep down static electricity and build-up.

If you break a tube, you have two options: throw it away or take it to a neon sign shop and see how much it will cost to repair. Some tubes, especially clear ones, are easier to repair, and thus cheaper, while colored tubes are more complicated and may have to be thrown away.

Shanna Germain is a freelance writer based in Houston, Texas. She loves to write about both food and drink, and her articles have appeared in Cheers, Delicious Living, Imbibe and Oregon Home.

Herbs and spices, when used correctly, will give a flavor kick to any style of pizza, pasta dish or salad. When using fresh herbs in a pasta sauce, add them near the end of the cooking time — just long enough for their flavor to “bloom.” Conversely, if you are using dried herbs in the sauce, put them in at the very beginning. Dried herbs need time (and heat) to re-hydrate and round out their flavor. And, please, do not use dried herbs that are over the hill. They have no real flavor left. You might as well throw in dried weeds.

Generally, you will need to add three times as much fresh herbs as dried herbs in a recipe. When using dried herbs, crush or rub them between your thumb and forefinger as you add them to the sauce. This releases the essential, inner flavor of the herb.

Without further adieu, here are the 10 herbs and spices every pizzeria should have on hand at all times for use on pizza or in a variety of pasta dishes: 

Oregano and basil. These are two of the most important herbs used in a tomato-based sauce. Both are aromatics. Oregano adds a piquant flavor, while basil adds a fragrance and sweetness to the sauce. In combination, they are the ideal tomato sauce –– pizza or pasta –– enhancer. 

Marjoram. This is a sweet-scented herb that is quite important in Mediterranean cooking. Sweet marjoram has a decidedly delicate flavor. Often, chefs will use oregano and marjoram interchangeably. 

Garlic. This is another great sauce enhancer. Whether used fresh, sautéed, crushed or chopped, garlic adds its own unique flavor interest. Once again, though, use only garlic that is firm, not soft or going bad (if you see a green shoot in the middle of the clove, it means that the garlic is starting to age, but you can still use it, just remove that sliver of green first.) I rarely use garlic powder; it imparts a bitter, heavy aftertaste to a sauce. 

Bay leaf. This works well with tomatoes but should be used with considerable care because of its intense flavor. Too much bay leaf may overpower the other flavors in the sauce. 

Parsley. This is definitely an unsung herb, but it must be the fl at-leaf or Italian type. Curly parsley is fi ne as a garnish, but that’s about as far as it goes in my flavor book. 

Red pepper flakes (crushed chilies). This is the sauce enhancer to use when a spicy heat effect is desired. Use according to taste to spice up a pizza or pasta sauce (linguine with clam sauce, for example). 

Black pepper. Here again it’s all about freshness. Ground black pepper that has been sitting in a can for months and months is, well, black — but it’s not pepper (a lot of what it did have for flavor went south). Grinding peppercorns into a sauce or on a salad is the right way to go. 

Capers. Capers packed in brine are the best kind to use, but rinse them under cold water before adding them to a sauce or dish of any kind. Capers are practically indispensable to a spicy red sauce. 

Thyme. This is an interesting all purpose herb. It has a strong, pungent flavor, so use with restraint (a little goes a long way). I find that thyme adds a lot of interest to certain pasta dishes like linguine with clam sauce (red or white). Also, if you are doing a clam pizza, try using thyme to round out the flavor profile. 

The Sauce is Boss
I adapted this sauce from the basic flavor toppings used in the making of a classic Margherita sauce. The end result is an eminently flavorful pasta dish that also just happens to sport the colors –– green, white, and red –– of the Italian fl ag. This sauce works great with a shorter cut of pasta — penne, rigatoni, farfalle –– and is enough for about 6 servings.

Margherita Sauce

1 large clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 cups canned plum tomatoes
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup torn fresh basil leaves
1 pound fresh mozzarella, chopped coarse
Enough cooked pasta for 6 servings (figuring 2-3 ounces uncooked per serving)

In a large heavy sauté pan, sauté the garlic in the oil over moderate heat for two minutes. Put the tomatoes and their juices into a mixing bowl and crush them with your hands. Add the tomatoes to the saucepan. Add salt and pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook the sauce at a steady simmer, stirring occasionally for 20-25 minutes (keep crushing the tomatoes with a fork or heavy spoon to form pulp) or until the sauce has reduced to about 2½ cups.

Add the basil to the sauce and stir to combine. Divide the pasta among heated pasta serving bowls. Ladle some of the sauce over each serving. Sprinkle an equal amount of fresh mozzarella over the sauce. Serve at once. Pass grated Parmesan cheese separately for additional flavor.

The Secret Weapon

If I have any secret sauce ingredient to speak of, it would be olive oil. I like to swirl a tablespoon or two into a sauce about 10 minutes before the sauce is ready to come off the heat. Extra-virgin is always my fi rst choice, as it adds a fruitiness to the sauce that is very appealing. Ditto for a drizzle of olive oil over a pizza (especially if the pizza is topped with arugula or other greens).

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.

Though he was born in Los Angeles, Antonio D. Giner grew up in Argentina, traveled through Europe and lived in Mexico before settling down in El Paso, Texas. His travels exposed him to a variety of foods, but his love of fi ne fare and drink centers on Italian-style wood-fired pizza, something El Paso lacked before Giner opened Sunset Brewery & Pizzeria there in 2002.



“Originally, we had a brewery, too,” Giner explains, adding that it closed a couple of years ago as it simply wasn’t profitable. “We were a concept similar to Il Vicino in New Mexico. We really liked the idea of brewing and pairing our own beer with wood-fired pizzas.”

El Paso isn’t the most progressive city, and Giner’s brews weren’t fully appreciated by an audience that clamors for mass produced domestics like Bud Light and Miller. Still, he has stuck to his guns on premium beers by keeping his offerings limited to products like Stella Artois.



“People come in and want a cheap beer,” says Giner. “They ask for it, but I’m like, ‘Try something different. You might like it.’ You go in the grocery store and it’s 60 percent Bud or Coors products. This just isn’t the town for a brewery.”

For El Paso, the pizza at Sunset is also markedly different than the status quo. While major chains reign supreme in the city, Sunset’s pies (though they don’t adhere to all the rules set forth to qualify a pizza as Neapolitan) are made in the Neapolitan vein.

“It’s really the original Neapolitan pizza that inspired my pizza here,” says Giner. “It’s not strictly Neapolitan, but it’s modeled after the Neapolitan style.

“I wanted to bring something really different to the city. El Paso is so isolated. No one here was doing a wood-fired pizza, so that my favor because that was the niche I was after." Early on, Giner had to educate the customer base about his product. Increasingly, that is becoming the case less and less as time goes on.



“All of our pizzas are 10 inches,” (in diameter) he says. “That’s the only size we do.”

Prices for said pizzas are remarkably low — $7.95 for most of them. While Sunset’s premium product would sell for more in other cities, Giner explains it this way: “You have to adapt to the market. The cost of living here is very low.”

Sunset Pizzeria is located in an upper-middle-class area near the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP). And though his pricing is inexpensive, Giner says he doesn’t cater to many students. “We get more faculty members,” he says. “UTEP is mostly a commuter campus. It really doesn’t have a resident student population. Pretty much the only students that live on campus are the athletes.”

Nearby Fort Bliss, a major U.S. Army base, provides plenty of customers as well.

“We see lots of soldiers coming in,” Giner says. “El Paso is very spread out. There are 600,000 people here, but they’re all spread out. So it makes it hard to target different demographics. So, really, we focus on word of mouth to get people in. We just focus on the community as a whole. We focus on what we do, do it well, and take it easy.”



The philosophy is serving Sunset well. It allows Giner to do what he wants: concentrate on artisan pizza with proven methods and the best available ingredients. And though he was always infatuated with pizza, it may not have been his first choice for a restaurant concept had he not met Pizza Today “Dough Doctor” Tom Lehmann.

“I had a small restaurant in Mexico before,” says Giner. “We made Argentine food. But then I took a course with Tom Lehmann and it got me really interested in dough. I worked on our dough for months before I ever got this building.”

That said, Giner admits his dough “is no mystery. It has high-protein fl our, water, instant dry yeast, oil and salt.”



As for other prime ingredients, Sunset customizes a premium canned tomato sauce to meet its needs, uses whole-milk mozzarella and ricotta, and makes its own sausage by grinding and spicing Boston butt.

“It’s just another interest of mine,” Giner says of the labor it takes to make sausage. “I add a lot of spice to it to make it really flavorful. I also shred the mozzarella daily and grate the Parmesan wheels. It takes a lot of work to get the prep done before we ever open, but it’s worth it because it provides us with a point of difference from what’s out there — and our cusotmers like it.”

The aforementioned sausage is featured on the spicy three-meat pizza along with pepperoni, capicolla and cherry peppers. It’s one of Sunset’s top-selling pizzas, along with the Rustica, which contains mozzarella, prosciutto di Parma, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and kalamata olives.

“Of course, just like everywhere else, our best seller is a pepperoni pizza,” Giner says. “But our Chicken Chipotle is a good seller, along with our Bianca Alla Verdura white pizza.”



The Bianca Alla Verdura offers mozzarella and feta cheeses, grilled eggplant, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and marinated peppers.

Giner is the lone full-time employee at Sunset Pizzeria. “We have a lot of UTEP students here working,” he says. “And some of the guys in our kitchen work here in the morning and at another restaurant in the evening.”

Keeping all employees on part-time schedules helps control costs, an important consideration for Giner’s small operation.

“In the beginning I was just focused on keeping it going,” he says. “In the beginning, you can’t set your expectations too high. This business will burn you out tremendously fast if you do that. I started out basically working for pizza and beer and gas money. I worked it day-to-day to keep it going.”

While it’s a stressful way to go, it had its advantages for Giner in terms of not taking on loads of debt.

“Since we opened I’ve never had to put money into it, so that’s been nice,” he says. In this economy, that comes as a surprise to many. But Giner says El Paso’s isolation has worked in its favor in regards to the economic climate.

“The DEA, FBI ... every acronym you can think of is here,” he says. “So with the economy, we’ve been very lucky because we benefit from the presence of the federal government.” ❖

Jeremy White is editor-in-chief of Pizza Today.

The trick with fan favorites is delivering on the promise of taste memory while thrilling with twists and signature takes — as long as those twists work. Lasagna is a potluck regular, a secret recipe held tightly by grandma–– and an opportunity for operators. It’s a comfort-food all star, but needs a bit of reinvention to add menu distinction.

When executed well, lasagna is more than the sum of its parts. At its core, it’s a layered dish with pasta, sauce and cheese. Traditionally, it’s a Bolognese sauce, ricottamixture and cheeses. But really, the term lasagna can be loosely assigned to any layered pasta dish, or even one that borrows the ingredients and puts them on a pizza. Just ask the operators featured here.

At 43-seat La Piazza al Forno in Glendale, Arizona, the Chicken Pesto Lasagna outsells its classic Baked Meat Lasagna. “It’s something different, and it’s really, really good,” says its owner, Rachel Piazza. Created by her father-in-law and a menu staple since the restaurant opened in 2007, it’s a four-layered lasagna starring chicken and pesto. Traditional lasagna sheets are topped with a mixture of chicken breast, pesto, ricotta and mozzarella. After four layers, the lasagna is topped with mozzarella and baked. La Piazza prebakes the pans of lasagna, then slices for service. For a 12-ounce portion, diners pay $10. The food cost runs at 30 percent.

Fratello’s Italian Grille, with three units throughout New Hampshire, offers a traditional lasagna, but adds a layer of pepperoni, making it signature with just the simplest of twists. It also menus a seafood lasagna, starring lobster, shrimp and scallops.

“Our seafood lasagna is really popular. It’s been on our menu for nine years, so it’s a regular feature on here,” says kitchen manager Robert Clifford. Although not as stellar a performer as traditional lasagna, the seafood lasagna earns its rightful place on the menu. “The price point is higher because of the seafood, but it’s definitely a unique item on our menu that our diners love,” says Clifford.

Clifford builds the seafood lasagna with a foundation of a lobster cream sauce (sherry wine, shallots, lobster, cream and butter), lasagna noodles, ricotta filling (eggs, herbs, cheeses and ricotta), another layer of noodles, seafood and sauce, shredded mozzarella and another duplicate layer. He finishes the lasagna with shredded mozzarella and prebakes it. He pulls the lasagna out of the oven, portions it for service, then warms up slices per order. Diners pay $21.99 for a portion. The food cost runs at 30 to 35 percent.

“The trick to a successful lasagna is to make sure all of your layers are thin, and that you bind the ricotta mixture with eggs, so it’s not too liquidy,” he says. For Fratello’s traditional lasagna, he starts with a house made Bolognese sauce, layer of noodles, ricotta fi lling (same as one in the seafood lasagna) and a layer of pepperoni. He adds another pasta layer, more ricotta filling, more Bolognese sauce and shredded mozzarella and Parmesan. The lasagna sells for $13.99 and runs a 20-percent food cost.

At Lorenzo’s de Mesilla in Mesilla, New Mexico, owner Lorenzo Liberto adds a local twist to his classic Italian lasagna –– Hatch green chiles. The result? It is the No. 1 selling pasta dish at this Italian restaurant. “My Sicilian grandmother would roll over in her grave if she knew I put green chiles in her recipe, but it works,” says Liberto. “It adds a really fresh taste of chiles that’s not too spicy, but that showcases our local chile.”

He puts the lasagna noodles down fi rst, then adds the ricotta mixture (ricotta, seasoned ground beef, house made sugo and green chile). A layer of mozzarella follows, with a bit of sugo (caramelized onions, garlic, olive oil, tomato, spices and fresh basil), and more ricotta mixture. After four layers, he prebakes it in the oven, portions for service, adds a bit of Pecorino and sugo over top. For a 12-ounce portion, Liberto charges $12.75. The lasagna comes with salad and fresh Sicilian-style flatbread. He runs a food cost for the lasagna of 30 percent.

Brick 3 Pizza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has captured the familiarity and popularity of lasagna and put it on a pizza — a really great selling pizza. “Our Lasagna Pizza is the second or third best seller out of our 32 pizzas,” says Figo Akcay, partner and general manager of this 52-seat shop that specializes in New York-style pizza.

The newly opened restaurant (April 2009) landed on a simple recipe for this best-seller: the pizza is topped with ground beef, cheddar, Parmesan cheese and mozzarella. That’s it. “It tastes great, but it’s really not a complicated pizza,” says Akcay. “People like the novelty of it, I think. They know what a lasagna tastes like, and then you add that to pizza … well, it works.” Diners pay $16.45 for a 14-inch pie. The food cost runs around 20 percent, depending on the cost of ground beef. 

Double-Layered Cajun Lasagna

1 pound andouille sausage, quartered and sliced
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, large diced
2 teaspoons
Cajun seasoning
Olive oil for sautéing
½ cup Vidalia onion, chopped
½ cup celery, chopped
¼ cup green bell pepper, chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic
White Sauce (recipe follows)
10 to 12 uncooked lasagna noodles
1½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

White Sauce
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose fl our Salt and pepper, to taste
2 cups milk
1½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
Pinch of cayenne

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, combine sausage, chicken and Cajun seasoning. Cook chicken through, about 8 minutes. Remove meat from skillet with a slotted spoon; set aside. Sauté in olive oil: onion, celery, bell pepper and garlic until tender. Remove from heat; stir in cooked meat and white sauce. In a greased 9x13-inch hotel pan, cover bottom with four lasagna noodles. Spread with ½ of the meat mixture. Repeat layers; cover with a layer of noodles. Spread remaining White Sauce over top. Top with mozzarella cheese and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake in 325 F oven for 1 hour. Let stand 15 minutes before serving or chilling.

Cook’s Note: Can prebake lasagna, cool, then slice. Reheat slices per order.

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

Promoting your happy hour can cost next to nothing and draw new customers to your pizzeria. Happy hour, which always lasts for more than a single hour, usually falls after people get off work or later in the evening when dinner is no longer served. During those times, drinks can be purchased at a discount and sampler-size food, appetizers or personal pizzas are served.

Even though most pizza restaurant owners strive for the same goal –– to increase patronage during normally slow periods –– each has different methods of marketing their happy hour.

“We wanted to launch (happy hour) softly, so we didn’t do much (marketing) at first,” says R.C. Jennings, general manager of the Westlake location of Tutta Bella in Seattle.

“We used a sandwich board sign at the top of our stairs, notified our e-mail club, and every take-out pizza box had a ‘Tutta Bella happy hour’ sticker on it.” Jennings believes the most effective marketing for his foot traffic was the sandwich board — and for everyone else, word-of-mouth worked best.

At Table 42 in Boca Raton, Florida, owner Gary Rack recently expanded happy hour to include the hours between 11:30 a.m. and 7 p.m., but in the bar area only.

Rack uses inserts in check presenters, table tents, an outside banner, the restaurant’s Web site, his Facebook page and his e-mail database containing several thousand contacts to market his happy hour.

Comprehensive comment cards are given to each patron at Table 42, asking them to rate the food, cleanliness and ambience, but also asking for their e-mail address. With a qualified database, each contact has said they want to be kept abreast of all VIP events, happy hours and other promotions. Rack says that’s the best way he’s found to market internally.

“The concierges at all the local hotels know about our happy hour, too,” says Rack. “We wanted to start the event slowly to make sure we have all our ducks in a row and find out what appetizers are being ordered.”

Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza in Las Vegas has two “happy hours” –– from 5 to 7 p.m. and from 10 p.m. to close. Dominick Marzigliano, general manager, has taken advantage of some local outlets for his marketing.

“We just hooked up with myvegashappyhour. com and will be advertising in Where, the magazine you find in hotels all over the city, plus we’re on Twitter and Facebook,” says Marzigliano.

The days when TV, radio, newspaper and yellow pages advertising helped bring in customers are gone, says restaurant consultant Aaron Allen. Now it should be a footrace for the pizza segment to get on an iPhone app, because the iPhone is the fastest selling product in the history of mankind, Allen says.

A Google search for “iPhone apps for happy hours” should help you find the one most suited to your particular needs. Happy Hour Finder, one of those apps, enables iPhone users to find happy hours anywhere in the United States. Many regional happy hour apps also exist.

Happy hour doesn’t have to be the same everyday, especially now that social media and iPhones let you announce a promotion almost instantly.

“Why not hold a happy hour in the next hour and sell drinks for $1 or even give them away?” asks Allen. “You can ‘tweet’ about it on Twitter and others will ‘retweet’ for you. Even if you offer free drinks for that hour, the cost will either be the same or less than what you’d spend marketing a traditional happy hour combined with the hit you take serving discounted drinks.”

Allen says the traditional happy hour is an outdated 1980s approach and that spending marketing dollars to bring people into your pizzeria, who then order cheap drinks and smaller portions of food, doesn’t work.

“You can actually get more people in by not giving a discount,” says Allen. “Partner with a charitable organization, sell $5 drinks for $7 one day a week and give the proceeds to the charity. That increases your word-of-mouth marketing, and you might just get a mention in the news.”

Announce your charitable happy hour on Facebook and Twitter for free. Your younger staff knows all the ins and outs of digital media and can help you with this.

Instead of trying to improve slow periods, Allen suggests extending your peak periods an hour or so.

“Focus on the peaks where you can expand. Promote those to get customers into dinner earlier and you can turn another table during that time,” says Allen. Whatever you do to be innovative, you need to stick to your guns, says Rack. If you decide to have happy hour from 10 p.m. until you close at 11:30 p.m., even if there’s only one customer in your pizzeria at 11 p.m., you still can’t close early.

“You can’t close when you’ve said you will be open,” Rack says.

A party might show up after 11 p.m., expecting happy hour prices. If you’re still unsure of how to market your happy hour, Marzigliano suggests asking other businesses and pizzerias in your neighborhood what they do.

“Ask them where people look for happy hours,” says Marzigliano, who is new to Las Vegas. That’s how he found out about myvegashappyhour.com. Your city may have something similar.

Don’t be afraid to call your happy hour by another name. Coin something individual just for your brand, Allen suggests. ❖

Ensuring your customers’ safety

Now that you’ve drawn in new customers because of your happy hour promotion, make sure they aren’t over-served. Here are some tips from restaurant consultant Aaron Allen:
❖ Provide every employee with bar safety or responsible alcohol training, and don’t do it yourself.
❖ Give each employee who successfully completes bar safety training written documentation.
❖ Provide taxi service for anyone who shouldn’t be driving. This protects both the customer and you from legal retaliation, should there be an accident.
❖ Have a crisis communications plan in place, so if something happens because a patron had too much to drink, every staff member will know what to do and say.
❖ Tell your employees once how to handle an over-served patron and remind them 1,000 times.

Heather Larson is a freelance writer in Tacoma, Washington, who frequently writes for trade publications.

When some of the nation’s best-known and busiest pizzerias never spend a dime on marketing, it’s hard to convince some operators to spend any dough getting the word out. But even method-minded veteran marketers say budgets and strategic plans go only so far.

“I see it like this: Having a budget doesn’t mean you get the job done, it just means you spent that much,” says Mark Gold, co-owner of Pizza Shuttle in Milwaukee. “We say to each other, ‘What do we need to do, and what do we need to spend to make it work?’ ”

Kamron Karington, a former pizzeria operator turned marketing consultant, agrees that setting an arbitrary budget number means little: “I tested different things, found what worked, spent more on those and less on what didn’t,” he says. “OK, fine, someone tells you to spend five percent of sales on marketing.Why just that? If what you’re spending it on is working, why not spend 5 percent more and jack up sales even more?”

If you’re just opening a shop, then throw all you can afford into marketing, advises Karington. But bear in mind that door hanging and random advertisements won’t generate buzz unless they’re part of a multimedia assault on a predetermined audience. When Eric Lippmann opened E.J.’s Pizzeria in Cyprus, Texas, seven years ago, he similarly dumped a lot into his marketing effort.

“I was very aggressive in that first year, getting in every local paper and newsletter and doing direct mailings for the first three or four months,” he says. “But over the years, I’ve had to take the time to figure out what works and what doesn’t and make changes.”

Last year he invested successfully in marriage mail, but as he saw the success of that program tail off near year’s end, he focused more on his loyalty program. And as his community and cause-marketing efforts drew more interest, he hired a public relations fi rm to recommend even better exposure.

“I don’t budget beforehand how much I’m going to spend on each thing, but I do track closely the effect of each, and then I determine what that’s costing me as a percentage of my sales,” Lippmann says. “If I think something’s costing too much relative to the sales it’s bringing in, then I might back off of that for a while.”

When ZaZa Fine Salads and Wood-Fired Pizza opened 18 months ago in Little Rock, Arkansas, brand manager Amber Hatchett- Brewer was told to spend, well, about nothing.

The owners “had poured every dime they had into just getting the place open, and there literally was nothing left for marketing,” she says. The plan was to do social media blitzes with Facebook and Twitter, and to appear at as many charity-centered functions with their mobile wood-burning pizza oven.

“When you come to ZaZa, you get into the experience of seeing your salads made, your pizza in the flaming oven, and we wanted to carry that experience to the public with the mobile oven,” she says, adding that the wood oven originally was intended for catering. “It worked. It really took off. We’ve found that public outreach is what really works best for us. Plus it doesn’t cost a lot.”

At 200-unit Marco’s Pizza in Toledo, Ohio, not only are franchisees expected to spend a set amount of sales on marketing (the privately held company does not disclose the amount required), the chain’s marketing vice president, Peter Wise, recommends operators spend based on the number of houses in their separate markets.

“Even if you have two stores doing $15,000 a week in sales, if one has 10,000 homes in its area and the other has 14,000 homes, we recommend that operator spend more based on that higher number of homes,” Wise says. “We do that because we want those operators focusing on that very core market near the store. So if he was spending only on the percentage of sales, he’d really not be reaching those customers as effectively as he could be.”

Despite their franchise agreements, Marco’s operators can choose how they want to spend their marketing dollars, Wise adds. “There are some guys out there who are natural marketers, and they don’t need our help. But most of the others use our help to make those decisions. But ultimately, we want them to figure out what works and keep at it.” 

How much to spend? 

Be it time or money, plan to spend a lot of both on marketing. 
Spend as much as you can afford, but spend every penny wisely. 
Analyze the effectiveness of every effort, stick with what works, and abandon what doesn’t. 
Where possible, spend time instead of dollars by targeting efforts that cost nothing, such as social media. 
Connect with the community through giveaways. Your pizza in peoples’ mouths is cheaper and more memorable than any advertisement. 
Over time, as you figure out what efforts work, analyze their costs as a percentage of sales and then budget that amount of money going forward.

Steve Coomes is a freelance writer and former Pizza Today editor. He lives in Goshen, Kentucky.

Guess what? Average per capita consumption of coffee is half of what it was in the 1940s. That’s right. Coffee consumption actually started declining in the middle of the last century in spite of lower and lower prices, and greater and greater availability. As coffee became available everywhere from convenience stores to vending machines, competition fueled plunging prices. Of course, lower prices were a direct result of mass-production and blending in lower quality coffee beans. Once the rush to cheaper coffee was started, it took on a life of its own. Ironically, cheaper prices didn’t inflate demand.

Then a strange thing happened. Coffee consumption began rising again in the mid 1990s. In fact, sales at coffeehouses like Starbucks increased 97 percent from 1998 to 2003. And overall coffee consumption is up 20 percent since 1995 and holding strong.

What this hints at is that just because prices are low, that doesn’t mean you will sell more. People will pay more for something they want. But if the product is inferior, they’ll quit buying it altogether.

Cutting quality in order to cut prices will simply, over time, lower demand for the product. Eventually, you’re making less and less.

Look at Domino’s, for example. Right now they’re stepping up quality in a rather dramatic way. They’re sharing customer complaints online and in their advertising, and showing the steps they’re taking to address these issues and make the pizza tastier.

Driving from warehouse to warehouse hunting for the cheapest ingredients or switching from a quality brand to a generic will eventually catch up to you. Then what? Find even cheaper ingredients?

I wrote the following ad copy for a new pizza concept here in Las Vegas. My aim was to paint a picture of quality ingredients, which connects the dots to great taste without the empty “best pizza in town” boast that even the discount shops use. Look this over with an eye towards your own shop. What aspect of great taste can you own?

“Somewhere between the brick ovens of Italy and the delivery cars of America, something went horribly wrong. Traditional pizza, made with homemade bread, rich, creamy cheese and handpicked tomatoes, is now tricked out with inflated “fast-dough,” skim milk, water-added cheese and sauce from factory-farmed tomatoes. Enough is enough.

“We didn’t set out to make the most expensive pizza, or the cheapest … but to bake a good, honest pizza … hand-made from scratch, baked in an old-fashioned flame-fired oven, and to also guarantee each pizza to be delicious – or your money back. “Here’s what you can expect from Ciao Ciao…”

I then went on in the copy to vividly explain what makes Ciao Ciao’s dough, sauce and cheese better than the competition.

I talked about the dough needing time to develop flavor through the interaction between the sugar and yeast. I talked about the tomatoes Ciao Ciao uses for its sauce being bold in flavor and aromatic. I talked about the cheeses being rich and made from whole milk. By using descriptors that pointed to quality, the copy demonstrated that Ciao Ciao in fact makes a premium pizza.

The ads based on this copy feature photographs of the owner to humanize the business — and they also offer up a money-back guarantee. A few pizzas are featured along with pricing, which is in the ballpark. Not expensive, not cheap.

The place opened last July, and business has been rock-solid so far. If each pizzeria owner put a little thought in “how to make a tastier pizza” and serve it at a fair price, the entire industry would benefit. The race towards the rat-hole of cheaper and cheaper just hurts the pizza brand in the long run. ❖

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 Profi ts in Your Pizza Business. He is a monthly contributor to Pizza Today.

For 23 years, Dana Siller has relied on radio to get the word out about Jerry’s Subs & Pizza, a Washington, D.C.- area group of 66 franchised restaurants. Siller, director of marketing at Jerry’s, created a character, Jerry, who converses regularly with various callers in his ads about his restaurant’s sandwiches and pizzas. His “Jerry” is a voiceover artist –– since there is no Jerry at Jerry’s Subs & Pizza.

To play off the Washington location, most of the callers are impersonators of famous politicians, presidents included, who call the fictional Jerry with questions and comments about the food. “Radio allows us to build personality for our brand,” Siller says. “I can’t really use outdoor. It doesn’t work for what we sell. I’ve run some newspaper ads, but it’s just not as good for image advertising. Radio tilts heavily in our favor.”

Radio advertising can feel decidedly retro. But it can be a great way to reach your audience, particularly if you have a limited budget. Airtime isn’t nearly as expensive, and production costs are much cheaper, says Tim Earnhart, principal and CEO of Nashville, Tennessee-based Werkshop Marketing.

“Production costs are dramatically higher for television,” Earnhart says. “It could be anywhere from 10 to 15 times more expensive to produce TV spots instead of radio. In radio, you can go into a booth and knock out six commercials very quickly. That’s why the messaging can change so often.”

Even with as many opportunities as there are out there to turn to something other than traditional radio, it’s actually still a much-used medium, research shows. “How Adults Use Radio & Other Forms of Audio,” an October 2009 study conducted by the Council for Research Excellence and paid for by The Nielson Company, indicates that 90 percent of adults are exposed to some form of audio media on a daily basis. Some form of broadcast radio reaches adults every day, with 77 percent hearing some form of radio every single day. If satellite radio is included, the average adult listens to two hours per day of radio. Think of those commuters, a captive audience, tuning in every morning and evening: some 74.2 percent of car listening time is with radio.

Siller, of Jerry’s Subs & Pizza, relies on that car time, which can easily top two hours each way in the congested Washington, D.C. area. His restaurants mainly attract a lunch crowd, so he advertises heavily between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m. He doesn’t buy when sales are typically slow, such as August, when consumers turn away from hot food and Congress, the main driver of D.C. activity, is out of session. “When you’re on, be on,” Siller says. “I don’t believe in trying to take the budget and spread the money over 52 weeks. There are some companies that can afford to run all the time, but we have to make sacrifices.”

There are some clever ways to stretch that advertising budget that will take your ads further along, says Rich Lobel, executive vice president of CBS Radio, one of the nation’s largest radio station groups. He recommends that a pizza restaurant take some of its food to the station, particularly for the on-air personnel. The ultimate endorsement is if they recommend it to listeners. Earnhart notes that some stations will offer packages that include such endorsements, and it’s a great bonus to get.

Lobel also suggests that pizza restaurants consider buying a lunchtime ad that just airs on the station’s online streaming listeners, and perhaps couple that with an ad on the station’s Web site. “Think of a radio station as a vault,” Lobel said. “You can find so many opportunities sitting there that you want to activate.”

Radio stations can create ads for you. That’s what Lobel recommends. But Earnhart believes the work will be better quality if handled by a professional marketing team. “What makes a great spot is having a true ad agency take the strategic plan and messaging to develop the script,” Earnhart says. “Then, in my opinion, it’s not having the local radio station write the script and produce the spot. It blends in if you use the local station talent, versus standing out.”

Siller writes his ads himself with a writing partner, changing the message every two weeks. The ads are topical and fresh. Earnhart does it much the same –– though his ads push what’s seasonal and also change frequently. ❖

Making a great ad that sticks with consumers is tricky. Here’s some tips from several people we interviewed for this story:

Rich Lobel of CBS Radio recommends that the restaurant owner keep an eye out for loyal customers who may be willing to record a spot. Many times, they can be paid in pizza, and they’ll love being a celebrity for the day. “Talk to your customers and find out what they love about the restaurant and bring that to life,” Lobel encourages.

Dana Siller of Jerry’s Subs & Pizza recommends playing off of top-of-mind current events. But do it well. “If we’re going to parody someone or a TV show, we have to do a good job so that people follow along,” Siller says.

Tim Earnhart of Werkshop Marketing creates ads for a franchise of Godfather’s Pizza. His advice is hit the customer with irresistible deals, right about the time they’re wondering what they’re going to do for dinner. “The pizza market in general is very price-driven,” Earnhart says.

Robyn Davis Sekula is a freelance writer living in New Albany, Indiana

Constructing a pizza with four cheeses is as easy as, well, selecting the four cheeses to use. However, because we have such a great wealth of cheeses at our disposal, it now becomes a matter of making sure that the cheeses that do go on that four-cheese pizza are not stepping all over each other’s flavors. In other words, we’re seeking balance. We would not, for example, want three of those four cheeses to be strong or too assertive.

The classic four-cheese blend would be mozzarella, provolone, Parmesan and Romano. In this scenario, the mozzarella and provolone would play a leading role, while the Parmesan and Romano would play supporting roles.

But we can easily tinker with that arrangement by replacing the Romano with Asiago. We could further develop the fl avor profile by using fresh mozzarella (fi or di latte) instead of basic mozzarella. Then add a few small dollops of ricotta, over which I would sprinkle a blend of grated Parmesan and Romano (3 parts Parmesan to 1 part Romano).



Another four-cheese arrangement –– and this one falls quite nicely into that “gourmet pizza” category –– I like includes mozzarella, Asiago, fontina, and a gentle sprinkling of crumbles of Gorgonzola. (Go light on the Gorgonzola, because it has a strong flavor profile.)

For this particular column, I am leaving out other styles of cheeses –– goat, Mexican cheeses, cheddar, feta, Swiss, etc. –– any of which would work, but I will save that for another time.

Four Cheese Pesto and Chicken Pizza

This is an incredibly delicious pizza. Keep in mind that Parmesan cheese is part of the pesto sauce, so we count that as one of the cheeses.

Yield: One 14-inch pizza (scale up in direct proportion)

1 14-inch pizza shell
4 ounces prepared pesto sauce
½ cup grated Romano cheese
6 ounces cooked chicken strips or chunks
6 ounces blend mozzarella and provolone

Paint the pesto sauce over the crust leaving about ½-inch border (crust edge). Sprinkle on the Romano cheese. Sprinkle the chicken evenly over the crust. Do the same with the mozzarella and provolone blend. Bake.

Classic Four-Cheese Pizza
This is probably the easiest, but still the tastiest four-cheese pizza around. In every way a pizza for cheese lovers.

Yield: One 14-inch pizza (scale up in direct proportion)

1 14-inch pizza shell
6 ounces pizza sauce or all-purpose ground tomatoes
2 teaspoons dried oregano
3 tablespoons grated
Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese
4 ounces shredded mozzarella
4 ounces shredded provolone (or use a 50/50 mozzarella/provolone blend)

Paint the shell with the tomatoes up to the border of the crust. Sprinkle the oregano over the tomatoes. In a mixing bowl, toss the four cheese to blend. Sprinkle the four cheeses over the tomatoes. 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.

Weights and measurements

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: if you aren’t weighing and measuring your ingredients, you’re doing your business a grave disservice. Most of the big chains measure down to the dough ball, and with good reason – allowing your employees free reign wastes product and encourages inconsistency. A return customer will notice if ingredients aren’t applied with a heavy hand this time. Take a day and record all your ingredients. Put it in writing and put it to work by training your employees to standardize production. You should see food costs level off quickly.

Vodka sauce

Vodka sauce isn’t just a blend of your red and white sauces; instead, the flavors of heavy cream, vodka, basil, tomato and garlic create a complex sauce that transcends the ordinary. Start with chopped sweet onion and garlic. Cook until translucent in extra-virgin olive oil, but do not brown. Add two large (28-ounce) cans of crushed tomatoes and 1½ cups of vodka. Simmer about 35 minutes and then add two cups of heavy cream and three tablespoons of chopped fresh basil. Add a small can of tomato paste. Simmer again about a half hour and serve with pasta. Consider topping the dish with pancetta or crispy chopped bacon.



Herb-infused oils

White pizzas, technically speaking, don’t just include a slather of Alfredo sauce. While olive oil is generally used, you don’t have to stop there. Why not create your own herb-infused olive oils for added kicks? The opportunities are endless: basil, garlic, hot peppers, sage, rosemary, etc. Gather the herbs you want to use and wash thoroughly. Blanch for about three minutes, then plunge into ice water to stop cooking. Pat dry and allow to dry overnight. If using larger herbs, chop coarsely. Place the herbs in a plastic container and fill with extra-virgin olive oil. You can use immediately, but the longer it is stored, the more flavor the oil will take on. Use within one month.

Summer staffing

Even though it is April, it’s time to think about summer staffing. With summer such a short season, you can’t waste valuable time on training during critical production time. Hiring in the spring allows high school students to train during shorter work weeks while school is still in session. By the time school lets out and they’re ready to take on more hours, they are already fully trained and ready to go!

Dark dining, a trend where you eat in complete darkness, was introduced both in the United States and abroad about three years ago, but it never caught on. That’s because the right lighting enhances the dining experience, helps the staff, creates a sense of security, makes the pizza and other dishes look their best and creates a pizzeria where people keep coming back. Poor or bad lighting can drive customers away. But no lighting at all just doesn’t work.

“You can have the best reputation in town, but if the light levels are inappropriate, it doesn’t matter,” says Mark Hershman, director of lighting design at Impact Illumination in Lenexa, Kansas. “People won’t come back.”

That’s why when customers, at Sy’s New York Pizza in Eugene, Oregon, complained about the bright lighting in one of his locations, owner Mark Fischer took immediate action. He had just completed a rebate program with his local utility company and installed low-energy fluorescent fixtures throughout the building. These fixtures each contained two tubes, so Fischer removed one tube from each fixture, which dimmed the lights enough so customers stopped objecting.

Before Fischer took ownership of Sy’sin 2006 and used the utility’s rebate program, he said the lighting in his original location was a hodgepodge of thrift–store fixtures, which just didn’t work. Fischer found out that paying attention to just one aspect of his lighting – the energy efficiency – improved his bottom line by earning him a 15 percent savings on his electric bills.

Whether you’re installing lighting in a new pizzeria or changing what you already have, if you’re not already working with a designer, you’ll want to ask yourself the same questions a lighting expert would before you begin. What market are you going after? Is it high-end or not? How do you want your customers to feel in your pizzeria? How long do your customers usually stay? Is it mostly sit down or carry out business?

Higher light levels tend to get people in and out quickly, so that’s what fast food chains have. Hershman says the brighter lights lead to a higher pulse rate and a desire to move so they aren’t conducive to sitting, talking, enjoying your meal and lingering like lower light levels are.

“If you want a more elegant establishment that’s associated with higher priced pizza, the lighting should be more subdued,” says Hershman.

The first order of business when considering lighting is to make sure people can find you. Ron Harwood, president and creative director for Illuminating Concepts in Farmington Hills, Michigan, says lighting begins with the roadside experience.

“You want your façade to look cool and make people want to stop,” says Harwood. Onesto Pizza and Trattoria in St. Louis, Missouri, managed to spotlight their pizzeria with white “twinkle” lights surrounding the awnings, large picture windows, the landscaping around the patio and lights shining on the brick wall displaying their signage.

Because the restaurant is located in a neighborhood that is nothing but homes, Michele Racanelli, co-owner, says people often think they are lost until they see the “lights.” “We truly stand out with our outside lighting,” says Racanelli, who also did the decorating for Onesto. “It makes us pop.”

Make sure your outside lighting makes customers and staff feel secure walking from the parking area to the door of your restaurant. If you have a parking lot, developers or your local utility company usually take responsibility for the lighting. Know who to notify if any of the lighting outside isn’t working or seems too dim to provide security.

“Half of our (eight) locations have parking lots,” says Dan Black, president of Zeeks Pizza in the Seattle area. “Those have flood lights that are handled by the property manager or the building owner.”

You’re going to need to find a focal point. Racanelli decided to use track lighting and other larger lights to illuminate her pizza station.

“Because we only have 60 tables, people often have to wait for a table — so we provide a show at our pizza stations,” Racanelli says. “Our chefs not only throw dough, but they’ve mastered synchronized dough tossing.” Aim lights at your photographs or paintings on the wall. Shadowy mixed with brighter light levels works the best to keep the visual experience exciting, Harwood says.

Tables need to be lit so customers can at least read the menus. Instead of wax candles, consider LED batterydriven candles for your dining tables. They produce the same amount of light as a regular candle and are safer, says Harwood.

“You can use a row of MR16 downlights (low voltage recessed lights) to highlight the top surfaces of the tables and make the food look better,” says Harwood.

Because pizza, for the most part, uses “warm” tone foods like red tomatoes, yellow-orange cheeses, red pepperoni and wheat-colored crust, the light that shines on the pizzas should be in the 2,800-3000 degree Kelvin temperature range (your electrician or lighting supply store can help with this) to render these colors the best, according to Hershman. The warmer light source also make mushrooms, green peppers and onions look more appetizing.

And don’t forget your register area. Mistakes made at the cash register almost certainly affect your bottom line. This is one place where people need to be able to read and you don’t want dim lights. Harwood recommends two 50-watt lights three or four feet above the register area with the lights pointing down. Harwood says you don’t want your restaurant to look like your home, so shy away from the light fixtures you’d have at home. “This is a third place experience, not a home experience. The lighting should be eye candy,” says Harwood. ❖

Energy-Efficient Lighting

Here are some suggestions on how to be more “green” with your lighting:
❖ Use lamps that use less than normal wattage.
❖ Incandescent and Light-Emitting Diode (LED) lights are disposable and environmentally-friendly.
❖ Install lights that allow you to manipulate the levels by raising or lowering them.
❖ Don’t light every square inch of your restaurant –– just place lights where needed.
❖ Contact your local utility to see what programs it offers to help you with lighting.
❖ See if you qualify for the tax benefit offered by The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT), which lets you deduct the cost of new lighting systems completed before January 1, 2014, in a single tax year instead of amortizing them over a period of years. (Visit www.lightingtaxdeduction.org to learn more.)
❖ Buy your lighting supplies locally.

Heather Larson is a freelance writer in Tacoma, Washington, who frequently writes for trade publications.