The hours before opening — while sometimes hectic — are the few times in a busy pizzeria’s day when customers are not continually walking in and the phone is not ringing like crazy. It’s the perfect opportunity to lead the day in a positive and profitable direction. Paul Gainor, owner of Pizza Zone with two locations in Spring, Texas, uses the time to get ready for the day’s rush — making sure the prep table is stocked, turning on the ovens and vent hoods, checking voicemail and the fax machine (which prints the shop’s online orders), pulling dough out of the refrigerator, heating the pizza sauce, counting the safe, bringing all of the washed utensils (pizza cutters, cheese cups, scale, etc.) to their stations, checking inventory and ordering food.

Dough is also made before opening at Pizza Zone. Gainor says mornings are the best time for dough production because there are limited distractions during the delicate process.

It’s the most obvious — but vital — things, he says, that most frequently get overlooked, such as turning on the “Open” sign and remembering to unlock the front door.

That’s where a trusty checklist comes in handy. “The most important thing is that people follow the checklist,” Gainor says. “Otherwise things get forgotten. Give some incentive to your employees that they better use the checklist or they will be in trouble.” He verbally reprimands employees for ignoring items on the sheet. Habitual offenders can even lose out on raises.

Carmelo Lamotta of LaMotta’s Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria, Fort Myers, Florida, says there is no excuse for missing a task that is on the checklist. Having his employees initial each item leaves little room for rebuttal. The sheet is broken down into daily tasks as well as the schedule for weekly and monthly duties.

Lamotta handles many of the kitchen opening duties with one helper. “It saves on labor and it saves on waste and food cost because I control the food cost.”

In addition to kitchen prep, Lamotta brings a server in 30 minutes prior to opening to prepare the dining room. “Hygiene is No.1 for me,” he says. The server is responsible for making sure tables and chairs are sanitized, the floor is swept, menus and special inserts are wiped down, windows are cleaned and everything is stocked in the counter and service areas.

Morning is also a good time to take advantage of the quiet to hold meetings and training sessions. Run through the numbers of the previous day, highlighting the positives and negatives and things like recognizing employees for exceptional service.

Have a new menu item? Use mornings to introduce the new dish to your lunch staff so they can more effectively promote it. The tasting also gives the kitchen crew practice, without having to focus on other entrées.

With a small staff, Jason Petro, owner of The Red Star Pizza Company in Seymour, Indiana, handles opening differently. While Petro focuses on closing duties, his wife, Nicole, opens the restaurant. Petro relies on his evening and closing staff to tackle many of the tasks that some operators would consider opening duties.

The goal, Petro says, is to get everything ready for the next morning so that Nicole can come in one hour prior to open to turn on the ovens and then make a bank run or other errands that need to be completed. Occasionally, he leaves Nicole tasks written on their large checklist wipe boards in the kitchen to be completed before opening.

The Petros also make use of their midday lull to prepare for Red Star’s dinner rush instead of prepping for the entire day prior to open.

There are a number of approaches to take to make daily operations run smoothly. Make a game plan, be ready and execute.



Check, Check

Checklists not only give you a reminder of all of the tasks that need to be completed, it also provides you with accountability when staff members initial each item that is finished. Common tasks on an opening checklist include:

• Check the exterior for security breaches and litter.
• Unlock doors for staff, disarm alarm and lock doors upon entering. u Conduct an interior security walk-through.
• Turn on ovens.
• Double check food orders and inventory levels to be sure the pizzeria is ready for the day’s business.
• Check manager’s log from previous night. Make sure employees clocked out appropriately and review labor hours.
• Check voicemails, e-mails and faxes for advanced orders and employee schedule conflicts.
• Scan the labor schedule to be sure you have enough employees scheduled for each shift.
• Inspect freezer and refrigerator units for proper temperature readings.
• Check appearance of kitchen and dining room, cross-checking with nightly checklist.
• Make appropriate amount of dough and verify prepped dough has been rotated for use.
• Set up steam table and make line and start prep work.
• Count the safe and assign drawers.
• Check deposit slips.
• Verify there is enough cash and change for the day’s operation.
• Go to the bank to make last night’s deposit and get change.
• Review specials and be sure they are displayed in the store.
• Check the restaurant calendar for large parties and/or catering.
• Be sure the dining room temperature is comfortable.
• Turn on lights, fans and television and sound systems.
• Take out the trash and pick up litter.
• Conduct an opening meeting with instructions, training and motivation.
• Do final walk-through of dining room and verify opening checklist.
• Turn on open sign and unlock doors for customers.

Denise Greer is associate editor of Pizza Today.

The performance kitchen at Cane Rosso takes center stage. Built around a wood-fired oven, the workspace is home to leading man Dino Santonicola, the Naples-born master pizzaiolo hired by owner Jay Jerrier to put his restaurant on the map. And he’s not alone –– more attention than ever has been placed on hiring as a marketing ploy. Bring in a big name (even for a limited-time engagement), garner attention and bam! Instant fame. But is a chef –– one with street cred, a degree and/or acclamations –– really needed over a cook who worked his or her way up in an organization?

“A chef brings a lot of the ‘business’ side of the restaurant to the table,” Jerrier says. “He handles all of our unit costing, ordering, scheduling/staffing, quality control, vendor management, documentation, cleaning routines, etc. A cook is there just to execute the menu. I don’t want to rely on an hourly employee to have to deal with the big picture items.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 100,000 people were employed as a chef (or head cook) in 2010 (the last year surveyed) with a median pay of $40,630 per year. Most had one to five years of work-related experience, but many chefs received more formal training at a college or technical school.

“Most people who have culinary degrees will call themselves cooks,” says Chad Pritchard, a chef instructor at the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Dallas, Texas. “Just GOING PRO MOONEY FARMS because they’ve graduated from culinary school doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a chef.”

Although the two titles are often used interchangeably, G. Allen Akmon, a chef and the culinary arts department chair at Sullivan University in Louisville, Kentucky, says professionally trained chefs and cooks offer their employers experience, a greater focus on the bottom line and an emphasis on quality.

“In the industry, we always focus on how rather than why,” Akmon says. “Experience coupled with education brings mastery and the ability to apply different techniques to different products so with only one of the two components in place an individual is limited in the area of growth potential.

“Proper training is more than just the action and reaction of food products. Many times, the experiences that are learned in the industry are the fundamentals of cooking and when an individual rises from that position, it becomes very difficult to learn about recipe costing, labor and resource maximization, interviewing and management skills without at least a basic understanding. These foundations present another benefit of education that are not always realized immediately after graduation but rather further down the road as positions dictate.”

Pritchard, who has owned three pizzerias and two Italian restaurants in the past, finds that “there are a lot of culinary graduates who are very loyal to those who brought them on,” he says. “People are very afraid of hiring culinary graduates. When I owned my pizzerias, I always hired culinary graduates because there are a lot of graduates out there who don’t have the experience to go to a fine dining restaurant or a higher-end restaurant. Pizzerias and Italian restaurants are great places for these cooks to learn. As they do that, they become very brand loyal and they in turn send their friends and family to you. A lot of times, you’re their first job out of culinary school and they’re very proud of what they do. I think it elevates the craft more to hire those who are classically trained. It elevates us to more than just spaghetti and meatballs.”

This creativity plays a crucial role for some independent restaurants that rely on quickly changing their menus and rotating seasonal ingredients. “I think what you’ll end up finding is that you have more creativity in your kitchen,” Pritchard says. “You’ll end up saying ‘Hey, we need to do a daily special’ and they can get one on the menu.

At Cane Rosso, hiring a more experienced chef, while initially more expensive in terms of benefits and salary, increased quality overall with a more authentic product and employee training. “We also wanted to set a new standard for ‘authenticity’ in Neapolitan pizza,” he says. “There are very few places in the U.S. where you can get a Neapolitan pizza made with dough made in a Neapolitan mixer, cooked in a Neapolitan oven, by an actual Neapolitan from Naples city center...not a suburb!”

But for some companies, consistency is more important than creativity as they grow to multiple units and create more uniform products across their brand.

“We actually prefer to hire (line) cooks,” says Chris Lombardi, a partner at Tommy’s Coal Fired Pizza in New Jersey. “We try to keep our menu simple. We have four locations now and we feel by using simple menus, with less ingredients in the store and constantly turning over product, our employees can do it simple but do it right.”

Like other chains both large and small, they have created a recipe book that is standard as the company adds stores to its brand, and following that to the letter is imperative so that customers get the same product no matter which location they visit. “Chefs try to get creative, and that’s hard when you have more than one location,” Lombardi says. “When you own single restaurants, you can change it up on the fly. But for us we’re trying to keep it the same across all the restaurants. We use proven recipes that we know our customers like time and time again.”

One happy medium? Hiring local culinary students for internships. Most pizzerias are relatively casual, and that provides a good learning experience for many students as opposed to a formal dining establishment with more rigid kitchens. Pi-zzeria, located in Virginia Beach, often hires students from the local Culinary Institute of Virginia, which gives them real-world experience as well as college credits and a paycheck. Although the pizzeria’s parent company owns and operates a number of restaurants, initially, “we probably came out with ‘hey, let’s pay everybody minimum wage –– it’s a pizza place,’” says Darin Zediker, food and beverage manager at Pi-zzeria. “But we found out that … you have to be as skilled in one of these operations as you do one of our full-service seafood restaurants.”

Interns “are people who are working towards finishing up a culinary degree –– whether it’s getting them in to gain that experience or we actually have two or three (employees) who graduated from the institute,” Zediker adds.

In the end, finding the right combination of experience, ability and loyalty is what works for most operators. Training is critical for the days when a chef isn’t on the schedule –– afterall, there are only so many hours in the day and while an employee can work a lot of hours, they can’t work ’round the clock.

“One of Dino’s main tasks is to make sure he trains the pizza makers personally,” Jerrier says. “He is on the hook to make sure the pizza is just as good if he is not personally making it … We are finally to the point where we have a good, reliable team covering all of our shifts. Dino does still cover some of our busier weekend shifts –– but as we look to grow and add additional restaurants he won’t be able to personally work those shifts. His team is ready to rock.”u

Mandy Wolf Detwiler is managing editor at Pizza Today.

Time to sharpen your knife skills? And by skills, we’re talking about back-of-house efficiencies and safety protocols around the most common foodservice tool. Knowing which knives work best for cutting different types of product, how to care for them properly and how to use knives safely can give operators a well-honed edge.

Safety first. “Train your employees how to use the knife properly,” says James P. DeWan, adjunct chefinstructor at Chicago’s Kendall College School of Culinary Arts and co-author of The Zwilling J. A. Henckels Complete Book of Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to Use, Techniques and Care. He recommends the classic French method, which sees the bottom of the blade pinched by the dominant hand’s thumb and first finger with the other fingers wrapping around the handle. The other hand curls into a claw position, which guards the fingertips against the blade, and grips the ingredient being cut. “The side of the knife is flush against your guide fingers,” he says. “That’s the way to cut safely. It takes time to get used to it, so it’s important to practice it. There are tons of videos on YouTube that demonstrate proper technique. Have your kitchen staff watch them and then practice their skills repeatedly.”

And like all well-run professional kitchens, staff training is key. “Our senior cooks teach the newer cooks how to cut properly,” says Jim D’Angelo, COO of Lou Malnati’s, which has 35 pizza shops in the Chicagoland area. For repetitive tasks, such as cutting dough, back-of-house staff must don protective metal mesh gloves. “We implemented the policy about five years ago and we strictly enforce it,” he says. “Knife cuts were making up a huge amount of our back-of-house injuries. We don’t make them wear it on the line, but when they’re doing something repetitive, they have to. It’s reduced accidents significantly.”

To maximize performance and minimize injury, DeWan recommends keeping blades sharp. Lou Malnati’s sends its knives out for sharpening weekly. “We lease our knives from a company and sharpening them is part of that lease,” says D’Angelo. The company takes away the dull knives, replacing them with sharpened ones, sharpens the dull ones and returns them the next week, following the same pattern to always keep Lou Malnati’s flush with sharp tools.

At Fiammé Pizzeria in Naperville, Illinois, a sharpening truck visits about every two weeks, or whenever executive chef Ryan Craig calls them in. “He does them right there on the spot, and it works really well for us,” he says.

DeWan suggests honing the knives with a steel in between sharpening sessions. “The blade of the knife has microscopic teeth that bend with use,” he says. “Running the knife over the steel pushes those teeth back into alignment.”

Of course, pizzerias require specialized tools. When it comes to which knife works best, the answer is as varied as the available types of pizzerias.

For thin crust and Napoletana-style pizzas, the favored choice seems to be the pizza wheel. “Our pizzas are Neapolitan style and our ingredients are delicate, requiring a more precise, delicate touch,” says Craig. “I tried using a rocker knife because it’s more efficient, but I lost a lot of ingredients, which just flew off the pizza with the movement of the big blade.”



On the line, he uses three pizza wheels: one for red, one for white and one for gluten-free pizzas. He also keeps a chef’s knife and paring knife for ingredient prep, as well as a good bread knife for cutting French bread into crostini and bruschetta.

Lou Malnati’s also uses a pizza wheel for its dine-in thin-crust pizza. “It doesn’t drag the cheese and it gives us a nice precise cut,” says D’Angelo.

For dine-in deep-dish, which is the most common pizza ordered at Lou Malnati’s, his prep cooks use a boning knife, which sports a long, narrow, sharp blade. “It allows them to cut through the thick layer of cheese, toppings and crust with some pretty good speed and accuracy,” he says.For carryout and delivery, a mezzaluna, or rocker knife, is the go-to blade. Its handles allow for a sure grip while putting more weight on the knife to cut through the pie with precision and clean edges. “We’d use it for our dine-in deep dish pizzas, too, if we could,” he says. “It’s so fast and efficient.” The mezzaluna can portion a 14-inch pizza with only four cuts. As the restaurant chain cuts and then serves its dine-in deep dish in the pan that the pizza was baked in, the rocker is not an option. “The boning knife works well, but for cutting speed, nothing is better than the rocker,” says D’Angelo.

Why not a pizza wheel for deep dish? “It plows through the toppings and doesn’t give you a clean cut. You have to go over it too many times to cut through, making a mess of the pizza as you do it,” he says. For prep work, his staff uses the traditional eight-inch chef’s knife, also known as a French knife, and smaller (2½-inch) paring knife.

Katie Ayoub is a frequent contributor to Pizza Today. She’s based in Naperville, Illinois.

Running a pair of independent pizzerias in northern Georgia, Ron Kaes knows that one serious workplace injury can spoil the two Paparonni’s pizzerias he’s dedicated himself to over the last 16 years.

“Workplace safety ought to be a concern for any business owner, but especially for the owner-operator who can least afford lost productivity or the potential financial loss associated with medical bills and lawsuits,” Kaes says.

Understanding that they inherit the responsibility of employee and guest safety as well as the financial burden of rising insurance premiums, production inefficiencies, or, worse, costly litigation should a serious injury occur, wise operators embrace workplace safety.

“Either pay attention and be observant or you’ll put yourself at risk in unwanted ways,” warns restaurant consultant Nancy Caldarola of Atlanta based Concept Associates. “You want your employees to have fun, to enjoy the work, but you can’t let them lose sight of safety or you’ll lose sight of money.”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the incidence of reported injuries for cooks and food preparation workers sits “comparatively high compared to all occupations,” even if the job hazards, such as falls, cuts, and burns, are seldom serious. That said, operators must remain mindful, attentive, and on guard.

“The engaged owner-operator will usually notice potential safety issues long before a manager or shift supervisor because of his experience and his financial interest,” Kaes reminds.

Since pizzeria operators face the significant challenge of an employee pool with high turnover and wide-ranging work pedigrees, proper training and supervision become critical to creating a safe workplace.

Kaes, a strong proponent of teen employment, sets his goal as providing a wholesome training environment alongside a realistic culture of accountability. While he inherits the burden of establishing procedures, providing proper training and promoting a culture of professionalism, he demands his staff commit to personal attentiveness, reminding them with signs, placards and safety instructions that procedures exist for everything and safety is paramount. It’s a message championed by others.

“There is a safe way to make pizzas and conduct business, and this needs to be communicated to employees over and over,” says Daniel Hartwig, president of General Health and Safety Services Corp. in Punta Gorda, Florida.

Though falls, cuts, and burns remain the three most common restaurant industry injuries, a few proactive, attentive changes can help minimize risk.

Wet, slippery floors, most often caused by weather or spills, heighten the risk of slips and falls. As a general rule, keep floors dry and clean of debris, including broken or loose tiles, a guideline that not only reduces injury risk but communicates pride of ownership. Proper floor-washing procedures, utilizing the two-bucket system with a deck brush and mop, will further help minimize risk and showcase the restaurant’s cleanliness.

On poor weather days, assign a staff member the duty of clearing excess water and placing down additional rugs, which every operator should have on hand. Also, utilize yellow caution signage as a reminder of the elements.

Other recommended policies include: instituting a simple-to-follow spill rule — when anything hits the floor, clean it up immediately; insisting that employees wear non-skid footwear, a policy that can produce a price break from insurance companies; requiring the use of rolling bus carts for moving all dough trays and bulky items; and finally, establishing a strict “no horseplay” policy.

Improper training, broken equipment and not having the proper cutting gloves are most often the culprits behind cuts. Solutions include replacing or sharpening knives frequently and performing suggested maintenance on key equipment, minor tasks that can save big money. Also, limit knife use only to those who have been trained in handling, policies and procedures.

“Issues most often happen when things get busy and someone picks up a knife to help out, but doesn’t know proper techniques or gets easily distracted,” says Caldarola, who sliced her own finger as a teen restaurant employee. “Reiterate to employees that everything’s in its place and everything has a place.”

Additionally, Hartwig, the father of two pizzeria-working sons, reminds that cuts are not only a work-related issued, but also a sanitary issue. Blood or bandages in food can create sick customers and negative PR.

“Given the nature of the pizzeria business, with employees hustling during those hot hours, someone often doesn’t tend to a cut right away or doesn’t tend to it properly and that’s something operators want to avoid.” In the kitchen, burns happen. It’s as easy to mistakenly touch a hot pan or oven deck as it is for hot grease, a particularly common kitchen inhabitant as pizzerias diversify their menu offerings, to leap onto the skin. Combating burns begins with wearing proper coverage, including gloves, aprons and eyewear, and having a ready supply of working pan grips and mittens available to employees, thereby removing the temptation to remove a hot pan from the oven with a wet towel. Letting the equipment cool down before cleaning should also be stressed, perhaps providing a staging area solely for cooling equipment.

“We can be our own worst enemy when we fail to do the simple, little things that create a safe working environment,” Caldarola says. ❖

The Pizzeria’s First Aid Kit

In spite of an operator’s best efforts to eliminate workplace injuries, cuts and burns, slips and falls are bound to happen wherever and whenever humans are involved. Recognizing this reality, Caldarola suggests operators prepare a first-aid kit stocked with:

❖ Small and large adhesive bandages
❖ Liquid medical soap
❖ Two 40-inch triangular bandages
❖ Cotton applicators
❖ Antiseptic
❖ Ammonia inhalants
❖ Two-inch gauze roller bandage
❖ Stretch roller gauze
❖ Gauze compresses
❖ Large gauze compresses for pressure dressing
❖ One-inch adhesive roll tape
❖ Chemical cold packs
❖ Tongue depressors

To further enhance the environment’s safety, operators might add an OSHA-approved Blood Spill Kit, a law in many states, as well as a CDC and OSHA-approved Vomit Clean-Up Kit. Operators should assume that any blood is contaminated and that any vomit and a 10-foot perimeter are tainted and pose a health hazard.

Chicago-based writer Daniel P. Smith has covered business issues and best practices for a variety of trade publications, newspapers, and magazines.

A neat, clean and organized kitchen is always a happy kitchen. Life in our pizzerias can be hectic. When compared to other restaurants, I think we put out a larger menu with a much smaller space, for the most part. It creates a lot of work and a lot of prep –– all in tight spaces. We want to make sure that we’re also keeping up with board of health regulations. That’s why it’s so important that we are organized in everything we do. Not only does everything need to have its own place, we as leaders need to make sure our staff is aware of it and follows the plan.

The one thing I’ve learned in my 30-plus years of doing this is that even though we may try to find responsible and mature individuals to work with us, we still need to bring our procedures to an elementary level. It’s really the best way to make sure things get done properly and consistently. First and foremost, daily prep lists and checklists are critical to ensure everything gets done properly. Also, closing checklists have saved me from so many headaches. Sure, we can assume that our staff should know what to do by now — but the checklist is king! Have a place for them to initial each item that gets done.

Once we know those tasks are being completed thoroughly, we now want to take a look at the streamlining of our operation. I’ve actually designed menus around equipment that I had at a restaurant that I would take over, and I’ve had the opportunity to move some equipment around to better suit the flow of the operation. Look at your menu mix and the tasks that need to be done during high volume. Do you find yourself running around like a mad man or woman from one end of the kitchen to the other just to complete a dish? Where do you keep your plates or to-go boxes? Are they at your fingertips, or are they around the corner? Here are some ways to streamline your actions:

u Add inexpensive shelving in your work area to put things like plates, to- go boxes, bags, dressing cups and fork kits. This can save hundreds of steps per shift, which increases productivity drastically. When everything is at arm’s length, ticket times speed up. I promise your customers will love getting their food quicker.

I was a chef at a restaurant many years ago where the kitchen was actually way too big for the volume we were doing. On a slow Monday night, I felt like I was running a marathon because things were spread out too far. The most efficient kitchen I ever worked in was a small, tight kitchen where I could practically reach everything with a little side step to the right or left. Whatever your space is, make sure you design your space where everything is stocked and at your fingertips!

u How about your reach-in refrigerators? Are they neat with everything accessible, or do you have to move everything around just to find the anchovies? Having smaller containers for all the ingredients needed for the menu is an excellent choice so that you’re not fumbling around looking for what you need. Obviously, you’ll need large enough containers for the items that you go through more of, like a small container for pineapple and anchovies and a larger space for mozzarella. Set it up so you have enough for the shift. I think it’s better to have to restock for each shift because it allows you to clean your containers and shelves while you’re re-stocking.

u Think of your kitchen set-up in the same way you have your pizza make station set up. You certainly wouldn’t have your pizza makers put the cheese before the sauce. You want a nice, continuous flow. Every aspect should be prepared in the same way from start to finish when making the dishes on your menu. It also helps tremendously when it’s time to have a co-worker step in to help during peak times.

u Once you have figured out where you want everything, make laminated labels. That keeps everyone on the same page.

Now that you’ve created your daily prep lists and check lists and you are ensuring they are getting done daily, and you’ve got your shop neat, clean and organized with everything in its place, there’s just one more philosophy I want you to adopt: “close to open.” As the end of the night approaches, what’s on everyone’s mind is usually, “how quick can I get out of here?” So many times the day crew will come in and have to re-stock everything, along with their prep, and that starts the shift with a less-than- perfect attitude. Once the night crew understands that before they leave the entire store needs to be stocked and ready to open the next day, the faster they’ll get it done. They will learn to stock as they go during their shift, which saves labor dollars. Now, the day crew can focus solely on prep and get off to a very quick and happy start. This can even allow you to bring some morning crew in a little later, saving even more labor dollars.

Hang the NCO –– neat, clean and orderly –– signs up around the restaurant. Make it a priority and make it happen. Then you, as a leader, will be able to focus on other important areas of your operation. u

Jeffrey Freehof owns The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia. He is a frequent speaker at the Pizza Expo family of tradeshows.

We all make mistakes (ever forgot a birthday or anniversary?). Usually we can make amends in some fashion (roses? dinner out?) and life goes on. In the business we are in, mistakes can cause a deeper problem –– like a customer not coming back –– so we strive to get it right the first time and every time.

Here are some common mistakes that I have experienced in my many years of pizza making and instruction. The point, of course, is to examine how to fix those mistakes once and for all.

Mistake: the soggy crust syndrome.

Solution: It probably has to do with too much water in the tomatoes (canned or fresh) or using more tomato than is called for. Don’t treat a pizza shell like a pond. Know your tomatoes. Topping overload can result in a soggy crust. Vegetables with high water content (bell peppers, mushrooms, spinach), if used too aggressively, can result in a soggy crust, too. Oftentimes, less is better.

Mistake: pools of fat on top of the pizza.

Solution: use a sausage or pepperoni with less fat. Or use precooked sausage crumbles. And don’t overload.

Mistake: Underbaked pizza.

Solution: Oven is not hot enough, or pizzas are placed in the wrong part of the oven. Example: the hot zone for a deck oven is toward the back. For conveyor ovens, check the finger location (impinger fingers). In a wood-fired oven, you are probably not rotating the pizzas closer to the fire. In true Neapolitan fashion, the pizzaiola will finish off a pizza in wood-fired ovens this way: Slide the pizza peel under the fully baked pie, then raise the peel and the pie so that the pizza is almost touching the dome of the oven (because that’s where the oven is the hottest). Finito! Perfetto! Know your oven.

Mistake: overbaked pizza (finished product is too dry and crunchy, no flavor).

Solution: I will say it again –– know your oven. Know where to place (or not) pizzas, especially when using a deck or wood-fired oven. Rotation of pizzas is the key to putting out the perfect pie. Too close to the heat is okay, especially with a wood-fired oven where you sometimes want to present a blistered crust that exhibits some charring.

Mistake: crust is dry, no texture, cardboard syndrome.

Solution: Try using a higher ratio of water to flour. For example, generally speaking, the old benchmark was 20 pounds of flour to 10 pounds of water (50 percent). Try this using 10 pounds of flour and 6 pounds of water (60 percent). The dough will be a bit wetter and a little harder to handle, but it’s worth it. Also, in this situation, use a flour that has a protein level of 13 to 14 percent.

Mistake: miserable veggie pizza (soggy, no flavor).

Solution: Sauté the vegetables –– bell peppers, onion, mushrooms, etc. in olive oil and garlic (that’s the prep). Or, in the case of mushrooms, don’t slice fresh mushrooms too thinly. Also, bury some of the mushrooms under the cheese. Mushrooms are almost 100-percent water, so excessive heat will dry them out and turn each slice into a piece of flavorless cardboard.

Mistake: finished pizza is puffy and bland.

Solution: A puffy and bland pizza shell is the result of rising time and temperature. To avoid a puffy crust, do not let the dough rise at room temperature. After mixing and balling the dough, get it into the cooler as soon as possible. Now let it undergo cold fermentation for at least 24 hours. Give the pizza dough a bench proof time (out of the cooler) of one hour before rolling or stretching. And, this method makes it easier to shape and stretch the dough (it will not shrink or get “bucky”).

Mistake: no flavor fresh basil.

Solution: Don’t chop the basil; rather, tear or snip it using scissors. Also, add the fresh basil after the pizza comes out of the oven. Alternatively, put the fresh basil leaves under the cheese. Keep the fragrance. Add some more basil after the pizza comes out of the oven for the perfect presentation.

Mistake: pizza looks sloppy (tomatoes and cheese running together, because too much of both –– tomatoes and cheese –– were used).

Solution: This happens more often than not when using fresh mozzarella. Don’t use more cheese than is necessary to put out a great tasting pie.

Mistake: dried oregano and dried basil with no flavor or fragrance.

Solution: No, I don’t have a problem with dried oregano and basil. What bothers me is when over-the-hill dried herbs are used. Or a poor brand of either is used. In either case there is no flavor. You might as well be throwing dried grass on the pizza. Use top-drawer Greek oregano, and never use any dried herb that has been sitting around the kitchen or pantry for months on end. u 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.

Think of dangerous work environments. Factories might come to mind, but a restaurant can be just as dangerous. With hot ovens, knives and slick floors, your kitchen provides ample probability for minor or even major injuries.
There are nearly 200,000 non-fatal occupational injuries in food service establishments each year, according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Big Dave Ostrander has analyzed kitchen safety as an operator of a successful pizzeria and as an industry consultant and trainer. Often times, Ostrander finds that “we assume that employees are never going to slip on a slippery floor, they are never going to accidentally come in contact with a hot surface or a sharp knife. Thus, you bear your scars and I bear mine.”
Training is the most vital component of kitchen safety. When confronted with hazardous situations, Ostrander says, “If your employees don’t know what to do, shame on you.”
Ostrander elicited the help of fellow operator Michael Shepherd, who owns Michael Angelo’s Pizza with two locations in Kenton and Rushsylvania, Ohio. Each came up with his own strategies and procedures to address kitchen safety specifically.

Shepherd has created a complete training course about each dangerous piece of equipment, proper lifting, knife skills, chemicals and fire extinguishers with manuals, videos and tests. A local company helped transfer everything online a few years ago and assists with testing.


Michael Angelo’s employees spend six to eight hours in front of the computer with company policy, kitchen safety and food safety modules before they are allowed into the kitchen. They also must pass tests in each area with multiple choice, true or false and essay questions.
Ostrander also tested his staff. At Big Dave’s, new employees had 10 weeks to pass his training. He says the employee could take it as many times as it took until the 10th week and they had to score 80 percent or they were let go. By testing, Ostrander says: “They just simply can’t fake it.”
Ostrander says there are three key kitchen injuries to focus your training: cuts, falls and burns.
Let’s examine each injury. Ostrander and Shepherd provide the following preventative tips for cuts, falls and burns:

Cuts. Teach knife skills. “There is a way to rock your knife and you can get a lot of work out of a knife effortlessly and quickly,” says Ostrander, who chopped 25 gallons of onions every day during his first job in the business.
The skills go beyond just using the knife but also handing it to another person. “There is only one way to pass a knife,” Ostrander says. “That’s hand to hand and eye to eye and you have to say ‘thank you.’ It tells the passer that you got it.”
Never place sharp objects into the sink, including knifes and slicer blades. At locations that have a dishwasher, Shepherd instituted a policy that all sharp objects must be washed in the dishwasher.

Michael Shepherd, owner of Michael Angelo’s Pizza in Kenton, Ohio, offers the following approaches to kitchen safety:
You have to idiot-proof everything. Make things simplistic. You cannot underestimate how easily an employee can get hurt.
Build some kind of safety plan or safety training plan, whether it is super simple or really in-depth. It could be as simple as here is my three-page written plan on how I am going to train every employee and then I am going to document that they have been trained and they are going to sign off.
Make sure you provide the necessary tools to do the things safely. You have to provide them what they need and make sure they are using it.

Wash all cutting utensils immediately after use. Regardless of how busy Michael Angelo’s is, the policy stands. Take the tomato slicer, Shepherd says. After a few hours, juice and seeds stick to the blades, requiring someone to hand scrub blades and posing a risk of a cut.
Never compress trash with your hand. Another good tip for trash, Shepherd says, is to use a two- or four-wheel cart to transport trash to the dumpster.
Falls. Make everyone wear anti-slip shoes. “We give a spending allowance of $30 towards the shoes,” Shepherd says. “That has eliminated about 99 percent of all of the slips and falls.”
Put down anti-fatigue mats in main areas, especially splash areas like dishwashing stations and stoves.
In Addition, Ostrander says mats must always be in their designated location. “We never work without them under our feet,” he says. If they need cleaned, choose a time when the kitchen is not in use.
Clean up all spills immediately. “You can never walk around a spill,”
Ostrander says.

Burns. Supply hot pads. Having the right holders in place will help employees resist the temptation to grab a damp rag, which can seriously scold skin.
Communicate when you are passing by the oven. “If someone is passing by the ovens, they have to announce that they are coming through so they don’t get a peel in the face,” Shepherd says.
If a hot object is falling, let it go. There is a natural tendency to grab something that is falling. In the case of a hot pizza or pan, Ostrander says, let it fall. You can always remake the product.

There are other kitchen safety rules to which Ostrander and Shepherd recommend strict adherence. Follow all OSHA and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) guidelines for chemicals.
Ostrander says, when it comes to your equipment, never override safety systems put in by the manufacturer. He sees this happen with mixers. People will remove the safety cage to gain speed. Not only will your insurer not cover the equipment, but also you’ve put your employees at risk.
Many injuries result from employee conduct. Never allow horseplay. Shepherd has a zero-tolerance policy for horseplay at Michael Angelo’s. “It shows really bad judgment,” he says. “If they are willing to do that, what else are they willing to do.”
Kitchen safety boils down to training. “Going through all of the what ifs and training, you are doing your staff a major favor,” Ostrander says. “You are saving yourself a lot of stress down the line because it’s a matter of it’s going to happen sooner or later.” u
Denise Greer is the associate editor of Pizza Today.

WORD OF WISDOM

Michael Shepherd, owner of Michael Angelo’s Pizza in Kenton, Ohio, offers the following approaches to kitchen safety:

You have to idiot- proof everything. Make things sim- plistic. You cannot underestimate how easily an employee can get hurt.
Build some kind of safety plan or safety training plan, whether it is super simple or really in- depth. It could be as simple as here is my three-page written plan on how I am go- ing to train every employee and then I am going to document that they have been trained and they are going to sign off.
Make sure you provide the neces- sary tools to do the things safely. You have to provide them what they need and make sure they are using it.

Denise Greer is the associate editor of Pizza Today.

We all strive for consistency. In sports, you’ll hear players and coaches say all they ask from officials is that they be consistent. The word choice is interesting. They don’t demand accuracy, they demand consistency. In baseball, for example, managers often don’t care if a pitch on the outside corner is called a ball instead of a strike — so long as it’s called a ball all day long and the umpire doesn’t change his tune from inning to inning. Your customers are the same. While perfection is, well, perfect, it isn’t what your customers are looking for. They are looking to get the same product and same service from you every time they visit, regardless of the hour, day, month or year.

If you’re a manager or franchise owner of a store that belongs to a large chain, like Pizza Hut or Little Caesar’s, your customers want the same pizza in Providence as they get in Santa Fe. If you’re a smaller independent, you can’t afford to be inconsistent, either. If you say you open at 11 a.m., you better be open at 11 a.m. every day. Sadly, one of my favorite pizza places is rather inconsistent. At times, the pizza is just the way I want it. I like a lot of sauce, and this place seems to go a little heavier on the sauce than the average Joe. Still, every once in a while I’ll take my first bite only to wonder if they accidentally gave me a white pizza! As a customer, this frustrates me. Maybe there’s a new pizza maker, I tell myself. Maybe they were swamped and had to make this pizza in a hurry. Then, everything I know about the industry comes screaming in my ear: There is no excuse for such inconsistency!

Items as high-tech as sauce applicators and as low-tech as portioning cups allow operators to put the same amount of sauce on every single pizza they make. The same goes for cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, etc. I’m not saying every pizza should be a cookie-cutter product. That would make the pizza world a boring place. Is it too much to ask, though, to expect a pizza ordered at 7:30 on a Friday night to taste and look the same as a pizza ordered at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon? If you answer this question with a yes, you’re in the wrong business. Contrary to popular belief, I do not think today’s customers are overly demanding. Sure, they’re tough at times, but they only want to be treated with respect and get what they pay for in terms of food quality. A smile, a warm hello, and a hot, quality pizza that tastes the same time after time will win you more customers than any amount of marketing or advertising.

A well-placed ad, after all, may get a customer in your door once…but it will never get them back a second time if you don’t live up to your end of the bargain. Here’s to creating consistency!

Question: Should I cook or not cook my pizza sauce?

Answer: Okay, this doesn’t address dough, but it is a common question nevertheless. I can’t tell you not to cook your sauce, but I can give you some reasons why I personally wouldn’t want to cook my sauce.

1) Cooking the sauce does release flavors, but those flavors are released before the pizza is even made, and those flavors are lost to the air (sure makes the kitchen smell good though).

2) Once you heat the sauce to cook it, you’ve got to cool it back down to 40 F or lower for storage. Your local health department will apply the four-hour rule, so clock will begin ticking once the temperature of the cooked sauce drops below 160 F and it won’t stop until it reaches 40 F. This can be problematic with large batches of sauce, and it also puts an additional strain on the cooling capacity of your cooler.


3) Anytime you cook a sauce, you run the possibility of scorching it and ruining the flavor of the whole batch. Once this happens you don’t have many options except to toss it out and make another batch.

It was a hot summer night. I was cruising with my friends. We were a carload of young guys, fresh out of high school, approaching a college campus, looking for a good time. The driver pulled into a drive thru burger place. He said “these burgers are great. I bet you can’t eat two and drink a coke.” I’ll take that bet. I could always eat 2 burgers and drink a Coke. The place was called Burger King. It was on Washtenaw Ave., halfway between University of Michigan and Eastern Mich. Univ.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a road sign proclaiming “The Whopper’s 50th Anniversary.” My mind did a flashback to the ’60s and my first encounter with the Whopper. This burger was like no other. For all of you youngsters, it filled up a 5-inch bun, and it literally took two hands to handle a Whopper that was charbroiled, slathered with condiments and just 45 cents. You got two Whoppers and a large Coke for a buck. I could not finish my second Whopper. My gut was too full for one more bite. I was in burger overload. These days, the Whopper is a one-handed sandwich.

Almost every ‘food for immediate consumption’ I buy has been shrunk down in size in my lifetime, from burgers to candy bars and so on. There are only a couple ways to pass along costs. The first is increase price or reduce size. The last way is reduce quality of toppings. Many years ago, all large pizzas were 16 inches in diameter. Many years ago, most of the chains adopted 14 inches as the new large size. The majority of independent pizzerias call 16 inches their large pie and a few go much bigger than that. With the uncertainty of our ingredients increasing in price and the free-falling dollar on the international money market, it’s a given that you need to change something in your operations to make a profit, and it’s a given that our customers are tired of price increases. They will forgo ordering a pizza when gasoline and all other weekly expenses are at an all time high. Many operators I’ve spoken to have already raised prices when cheese and wages went way up. They feel that their customers wouldn’t tolerate another price raise. They would rather go out of business than raise prices. Pride is an emotion that can take you down.

In 1988, Pizza Today published its first Top 25 List. My manager filled out the required info and mailed the card back to the publisher. A couple of months later, my pizzeria was ranked the 25th busiest place in the country. A couple of months later two of the Big 3 scoped out my town, and I had some serious competition. –– the world’s fastest delivery company and the world’s cheapest pizza. They opened with much fanfare and deep advertising pockets. It seemed like they direct mailed every home, every week, and were focused on burying me.

Prior to them coming to town, I was in my financial comfort zone. After losing some market share, I went on a budget. Time were slower around Big Dave’s. I was going to let them have their openings and then hammer them with some great marketing. They had a huge advantage over me. They both served 14-inch pies and called them larges. If you bought a large at Big Dave’s it was a 16-inch diameter. I assumed my astute customers would take notice and pay the extra money for a much bigger pizza. I wrong. Most customers were confused. When they ordered from the chains they got a 14-inch large and when they ordered from me they got a 16-inch large.

Pizza is made, assembled, portioned and should be priced by the square inch. Unfortunately it’s sold and priced by the diameter. A refresher math class: to determine the square inch of a circle, multiply pi (3.14) time radius (half the diameter) times itself. Step by step, let’s determine the square inches of a 16-inch pie. Pi R2 is 3.14 (pi) x 8 x 8 = 200.96, or 201 square inches rounded off. A 14-inch inch pizza has 154 square inches, 3.14 x 7 x 7 = 154. The difference is a whopping 23 percent. It costs 23 percent less to make a 14-inch rather than a 16-inch pizza. The menu price should reflect a 23 percent difference. A 10-inch pizza only has 78.5 sq. inches. This is pretty close to being exactly half of a 14” pizza. Most pricing models are throwbacks to the ’60s and ’70s when a dollar probably covered the difference between the sizes.

Those days are over. A dollar barely covers the cheese needed to cover both larges. If you are offering a 16-inch large and are making a reasonable profit, stay with it for the time being. If you are offering a 16-inch large and are experiencing profit shrink you need to change something. If your market is price sensitive and you have customer migration to the coupons and specials strategies used by the competition, you might want to consider what Kamron Karington and I did. In order to compete on a level playing field and compare apples to apples the larges should be the same diameter. We both downsized from 16 to 14 (the national average size). Kamron did it over a year, dropping to 15 and then 14 inches. I did it overnight. We had very few complaining customers once we explained that we chose to adopt the national average of 14 inches so the like coupons would be less confusing. This strategy allowed me to accept their coupons and not be humiliated by their pricing.

You have to choose to leave menu pricing the same or not. Either way, your food cost percentage will decrease. By offering bundled meals and multiples your contribution margin will be better than it is per transaction now. Maybe we should take a lesson from the Big Guys and downsize. It’s one way to really boost the bottom line without another menu increase. This was one of the biggest decisions of my career. I tossed and turned on it for weeks. I was old school, and proud of it. After the tenth complaint call, I was ready to go back to the old ways. After the second week was over the, 16-inch large was a memory. Kind of like the two-handed Whopper.

What are the advantages of portion control, or is it best to freehand?

The biggest advantage of portion control is definitely food cost control. This is an area that many foodservice workers miss out on. Over-portioning can account for a large part of high food costs second to food waste. You obviously want to start with portion control on your bigger ticket items such as cheese. Sometimes some lower cost items may take too long to portion sending the labor part of your P& L too high. It really is a balancing act. The other important factor with portion control is that your food will be consistent. This is critical in today’s business environment. Customers want consistency every time. They want to know what they can expect.

• Choose fresh jalapeños with a glossy shine and deep colors.
• Avoid wrinkled or soft ones.
• Store them in a paper bag for one or two weeks in the walk-in.
• Once sliced, use within three days.
• Wear gloves when handling to avoid irritating the eyes from the oils found in the jalapeño’s skin.