Topics
Employee Management
The Buck Stops Here
How to spot and stop employee theft What if your employees, or at least one of your employees, are ripping you and your business off? It might be as little as a wayward breadstick or an extra-long break, or it could be as blatant as stealing money fr...
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Brand & Marketing
Mike’s Monthly Tip: What’s in a Name?
What you call something on your menu can make or break its sales It is impossible to sell dessert. It will be the most fruitless effort you ever attempt. There is no call to action, no pull, nothing for the mind to grab onto. On the contrary, it’s ...
Topics
Operations
Man on the Street: What Do Your Customers Really Want?
In the lead up to the 2018 Pizza Pasta Northeast show in Atlantic City, I was asked to lead a seminar called “I Am Your Customer and This is What I Want.” It sounded like a simple enough request since I spend quality time with pizzeria customers ...
Topics
People & Pizzerias
Conversation: Jon Hook, Parry’s Pizzeria, Denver
Parry’s Pizzeria Denver, Colorado Parry’s Pizzeria is a full service, NY-style pizza and craft beer restaurant. We pride ourselves on handmade pizza dough and some of the best Upstate New York-inspired wings in all of Colorado! We t...
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People & Pizzerias
Pizza Today on the Road: Pangea Kitchen, Evansville, IN
Food, The Universal Language Randy Hobson’s Pangea Kitchen brings a world of flavors to Evansville, Indiana Pangea Kitchen is a restaurant reminiscent of what you might see in a trendy large metropolitan district. It’s a pizzeria meets world mark...
Topics
Menu Development
Whiteout: Béchamel Sauce
Enhance your white pizza with béchamel sauce If you want to give a decadently creamy taste and texture to your pizza menu this fall and winter, there is no better place to start than with a scratch-made béchamel sauce. While red pies are the...
Topics
Finance & Growth
Mike’s Monthly Tip: Pricing Strategies
Don’t just blindly set a price point based on the competition Awhile ago I had a general manager who really wanted to change the beer prices of his store. He was emphatic that if we came down on price to matching or just under other local restauran...
Topics
Industry News
Commentary: Ongoing Education
Pizza & Pasta Northeast is finally here! It seems like forever ago that I began reaching out to potential speakers to discuss pertinent topics and help line up the seminars and demo schedule that will make the show so special to attendees. I’d ...
Topics
People & Pizzerias
Conversation: Doug Craig, Dougie John’s Pizza, Findlay, OH
Car-side pick-up, delivery, 20-seat outdoor patio. We make American-style pizza using the highest quality products we can get our hands on. We have three different crust options: Original Hand Tossed (thin), Fat Crust (thick) and Cauliflower C...
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Brand & Marketing
Man on the Street: “What the Heck is a Social Influencer?”
We all know that Facebook has become a minefield of negativity, punctuated with complaints and cries for help amid all the photos of vacations and babies. It’s usually pretty easy to scroll past the squeaky wheels, but a friend’s complaint post r...
Topics
Dough Production/Development
Knead to Know: Sicilian Pizza
Learn how to make a Sicilian Pizza and Get a Sicilian Pizza Dough Recipe Bakery Pizza, Casalinga, Rustica, Upside Down Pizza, Square Pie (even when it’s a rectangle) … there are many relatively thick, focaccia-like pizzas baked in a pan that can ...
Topics
Operations
Front of House: Greet & Seat
How to effectively train a restaurant host Think of your host as a conductor of an orchestra. Instead of a baton, the critical crew member has a seating chart and a wait list. The entire rhythm of your restaurant hangs on their ability to set the tem...