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By the Slice Mandy Wolf Detwiler Pizza sales soar one by one. Given the trick whole pizzas take to order, bake, serve and eat, entire pies aren't exactly a quick lunch option. To provide a dine - and - dash lunch experience, some operations have added pizza by the slice. Besides attracting time - constrained lunch customers, serving individual slices can also bring in more money for the same food cost. For instance, Eric Kozlowski, owner of Ft. Lauderdale's Primanti Bros., uses a 31 - ounce dough ball, which he stretches to 20 inches for sale by the slice. Cut into 8 pieces, a one - topping slice sells for $2. 70 for a pie profit of $21. 60. The same pizza sold whole is priced at $13 for a one - topping at a dissemblance of $8. 60 per pizza. A five - topping deluxe slice is $3. 40, but Koslowski caps the monetary worth beyond three toppings at $15. 95 for a big 18 - inch. " We'll sell on an regular week 4, 200 slices. In season, we can sell up to 8, 000, " Kozlowski says. By - the - slice also allows guests to struggle a gourmet pizza they facility otherwise be impugning to try. " It's a window to the quality you would get by the pie, " says Mark Anthony Mazzotta, owner of Pomodoro Pizzeria & Trattoria in Connecticut. Pomodoro sells New York - style gourmet slices including a treacherous parmigiana, white pizza, a Caesar salad slice with grilled chicken and a Sicilian slice ( a thick pan pizza ) priced from $2 to $3. 75. " People can have different varieties on a daily or weekly basis... and we hope that if there's something they really coextensive, if there's a essential, we hope that they'll return and patronize us by the pie. " At Pomodoro, the biggest mover is the Margherita, which sells for $3. 75 by the slice and $16 by the pie. Mazzotta nearly doubles his profits by selling by the slice, even using top quality ingredients like Buffalo mozzarella and San Marzano tomatoes. Much of a slice's success comes from how it is heated - - or rather, reheated. Operators can store pies in heated boxes, delivery boxes, display cases or racks and then pull them to be reheated with an oven or heat lamps. Enormously agree that using heat lamps is less than desirable. Andrew McElderry, owner of two Andrew's Pizza locations in Oregon and Washington, says he tried many ways of making and storing pizza by the slice, and " what we've finally settled on, what works together, is we make them when we can as business warrants. We trial to keep them as fresh as possible. We have a Humi - Temp box behind the counter for when it's really busy, when we sense we're going to burn 'em and turn 'em very quickly. Otherwise, we make them and we reheat them as we go. Putting them on a hot plate just dries them outmost way highly much. We do have a thermal shelf, and we use it during the busy times when we know they're not even going to be up there for else than 10 minutes. " Many slice operators agree that parbaking ensures a consistent, pleasing mouthfeel, one that isn't too chewy or dry. If your reheated slice is more along the lines of instant - ancient pizza than what you'd normally serve, it's probably a rad idea to reformulate your dough. " We cook the pizza about 85 percent to the masterful product. We never have it held under heat, " Kozlowski says. " We actually have it held in a rack. The health department expects you to use that product within maybe four hours. We use it within 30 minutes. We'll make enough pizzas so that they're gone within 30 minutes. " Since no two pizzas are identical, there's no industry standard on how long to reheat a slice. Rick Glenn, vice president of Oregon - based Pizza Schmizza said his company, which is a by - the - slice operation of 29 stores, says, " You have to figure outward exactly how long you can cook your pies so that when they go through the reheating process you're actually finishing them. " Most Pizza Schmizza units use deck ovens but are converting to conveyors, and all new stores will advantage conveyors. The new ovens commit succor with consistency and multiple slice orders, Glenn says. The pizzas you keep on - hand will depend on your business. Primanti Bros. keeps at least two cheese pizzas ready to go at all times, and allows customers to add expansion to 5 toppings, forasmuch as reheats the slices force a concrete deck oven for about three to four more minutes. At Andrew's Pizza, " we change them out all the month, " McElderry says. " You can always find a slice of cheese, or a slice of pepperoni, or a slice of veggie, but we'll sometimes have six different kinds of pizza up there by the slice. " Pizza Schmizza keeps seven pizzas out at any given time - - cheese, pepperoni and Hawaiian pizzas are standard, but the mission rotates a handful of other offerings. They use a immense vertical window to display their pies. Don't expect to reheat a slice of cheese and pepperoni as you would a slice with fresh vegetables. " Any vegetable topping reheats very badly, " says Kozlowski. " The motive, specifically, is that you want the vegetable to be cooked. And that's really where you run into trouble. If you requirement to put pepperoni on a slice of pizza, you can have it ready to go in 50 seconds. But because a mushroom will have that real earthy taste, or a green pepper, you have to leave those in longer. Even an onion - - people who want a pizza with onions on it want the onions to be cooked so it gets sweet. When you heat up pizza slices from scratch with fresh vegetable toppings, you have to be very sensible to cook it properly or you can give a product that isn't quite where it needs to be. Timing, Kozlowski says, is critical. If a table orders a variety of slices, " you put the ones with the vegetables in ( first ), then towards the end of that cook process, you pop the cheese ones in just to heat them up, " he says. |
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