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Menu Development
2010 February: Great Starts
Appetizers come first in the meal, but do they come last on your priority list? They shouldn’t, because if you put as much attention into your starters as you do your main dishes, your bottom line can benefit. “Appetizers are an opportunity for u...
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Menu Development
Chicken tenders can be menu powerhouses
Call them chicken tenders, chicken fingers or chicken nuggets — they all sound good to diners. According to Technomic’s Appetizer Consumer Trend report (March 2009), two-thirds of consumers polled say that they order chicken strips “sometimes�...
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Menu Development
2010 February: Perfect Pies
Giving a pizza a Mediterranean spin is as easy as saying “tomatoes, olives and anchovies.” But, then that would be giving short shrift to so many other flavors that make up the colorful portfolio of delicious Mediterranean ingredients. For exampl...
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Employee Management
2010 January: Buy It Now
When Scott Gittrich founded Toppers Pizza in Champaign, Illinois, in 1991, he didn’t look for prime locations for his shop. After all, in the early 1990’s, 95 percent of his stores’ sales were delivery. But as his pizzerias became more popular ...
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Menu Development
Dough Doctor: do I need a special dough for take and bake?
I have been thinking about adding take-and bake pizza to my menu. Can I use my regular dough, or do I need a special dough? Making take-and-bake pizza can be a pretty simple proposition, or it can be a bit more in depth, requiring a spe...
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Menu Development
2010 January: Perfect Pies
White pizza is the hot new trend in fi ne dining Italian restaurants. For example, a fi ne-dining restaurant here in Chicago recently switched cuisines mid-bite –– it went from contemporary American to Italian –– and one of its featured dishe...
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People & Pizzerias
Il Pizzaiolo: Pi-zzeria
Drive up the Virginia beach coast, and just about every block is peppered with at least one pizzeria, full-service restaurant, bar and shake shack. That’s a lot of white noise to wade through, but Pi-zzeria, with sales at $1.2 million annually, see...
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Menu Development
Steak Out
My pizzeria’s love affair with steak began over eight years ago when restaurant consultant Big Dave Ostrander convinced me to put steak on my menu. Of the 53 toppings I offer, it’s a standout. In fact, in the past 10 months, steak has been respon...
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Menu Development
‘You Say Potato’ on Pizza
As a child Sergio Vitale traveled throughout his father’s native Italy. “I remember having potato pizza in Tuscany — it stood out as a unique combination. and i loved how simple and delicious it was,” he says. Today, the chef/owner of Baltimo...
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Menu Development
Roast `Em
Why bother roasting? Roasting intensifies an ingredient’s natural flavors. it also cooks away the rawness and pulls out some of the moisture that can result in a soggy finished pie. It is a cooking method where the vegetable is exposed directly to ...
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Menu Development
Respecting the Craft: Making dough
Q: Do you use the same flour in your starter as in your batch? A: Not necessarily. In some cases I may not use a Caputo starter with a Caputo batch. I might use a Central Milling starter, “Keith’s Best”, and use 20 percent of the starter in my ...
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People & Pizzerias
The New Paths Of Pizza Delivery
In a typical day, Woodstock’s Pizza in isla vista, California, will make about 60 deliveries across the lunch and dinner dayparts. To homes, office complexes, industrial spots and the nearby campus of University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)...