Pepperoni is America’s top pizza ingredient This is a true pepperoni story. One night, six years ago, I received a call from an older customer saying that we made her pizza incorrectly. “You screwed it up! I ordered a plain pizza, and this doesn�...

Pizza with similar names just isn’t the same When pizza first became popular in the United States, it had already changed dramatically from its original southern Italian expression. Newly arrived immigrants couldn’t afford wood to fuel their oven...

Dessert pizzas take finesse to make, market Desserts are a hard sell for pizzerias, where that extra slice most customers don’t want but just can’t say no to can mean a sweet finish won’t be added to the check total. But when made right, advert...

Five ways to enhance the customer experience It can be tough to fully understand the vast array of tech options available today — let alone implement them into your pizzeria operations. While technology can help increase sales and boost the guest e...

Want to become better? Analyze the competition What’s your mindset when you walk into another restaurant? Do you just want to not think about your place for a little while and decompress? Or, like most of us in this industry, do you compare it to y...

What is the medical condition — and why should you be concerned about it? Last year, James Beard Award-winning pizzaiolo Chris Bianco recaptured a place in the headlines. The Phoenix-based chef, whose fame and following swelled in the early 2000s w...

Origin Stories and Tips from 5 Pizza Entrepreneurs Everyone who comes to International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas has an origin story. Some started from scratch, some bought franchises and others rebuilt existing restaurants. Here we talk to five entrep...

Operators say they have criteria for choosing which nonprofits to support James Tzepos, owner of Zois’ Pizza in Seymour, Connecticut, fields many requests from community organizations to partner with them for a fundraiser or to donate money or pizz...

Sterilization a critical element to success Plenty of things keep pizza restaurant operators up at night, but few are more worrisome than the thought of incurring a pathogen outbreak. There’s good reason for this concern. “In addition to the huma...

How restaurant leaders can minimize baseless unemployment claims and the trouble they often bring In any given week, roughly 250,000 unemployment insurance claims will be filed across the country, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. ...

Jam on! Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza thrives in post-Katrina New Orleans When three lifelong friends open a pizzeria in New Orleans, you know the ride is going to be fun. That’s been the case for Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza, which debuted on Magazin...

Making the Transition Arlington, Virginia-based Pupatella readies for  franchising Pupatella in Arlington, Virginia, has a style all its own. It’s not what many think of when they enter a Verace Pizza Napoletana (VPN)-certified pizzeria. First, Pu...