Pizza Today - September 2020 - 14

MAN ON THE STREET

SCOTT WIENER

Keep it Crispy

ike it or not, you're in the DELCO
business now. The foreseeable
future doesn't look good for
restaurants relying on huge dining rooms.
Fortunately the pizza business has been
thriving on mobility since the industry's
birth. As profitable as pizza delivery may
be, it doesn't overrule the fact that pizza is
an inherently difficult product to transport. Pizza's two components, the bread
base and the toppings, are diametrically
opposed in their ability to stay fresh. We
don't want the bread to get soggy but we
also want the pizza to stay hot, which is
usually achieved by trapping steam that's
harmful to the bread. The result is a soggy
slab that tastes like paper. Fortunately

there are several solutions.
The ultimate irony of holding a Guinness World Record for largest collection
of pizza boxes is that I never eat boxed
pizza. Your pizza is most dangerous when
it emerges from the oven, spewing steam
from both your toppings and your crust.
Giving the pie a 20 second rest on a wire
rack before hitting the pizza box is a
great solution that doesn't interrupt your
flow. I first saw this at Varasano's Pizza in
Atlanta, where they do the same thing to
every pizza that emerges from their oven.
The same theory can be applied to your
pizza when it's inside the box. The flat
cardboard surface quickly traps steam and
degrades the pizza, so creating the wire

rack effect inside the box is ideal. One
solution comes from India, with a box that
uses its own internal corrugation to channel out steam. Another box from Italy has
an elevated slotted panel that offers the
same effect. You may have seen a series of
space age round pizza containers made of
compressed fiber particulate, such as those
introduced by Zume Pizza and Pizza Hut.
(The Internet loves attempts to disrupt
the pizza box industry, even if they have
yet to catch on.) They all have textured
bases with channels and dips to allow for
moisture and oil collection.
If you're not ready to blast into the future of pizza box technology just yet, you
can meet your destiny halfway by employing a box insert. Your pizza box supplier
probably has corrugated sheets available,
which prop up the pie with steam channels below. The sexier option is a textured
pizza box insert. They're manufactured
specifically for clean food contact so
they provide lift and circulation space for
delivery pizzas without contributing the
essence of cardboard to your flavor profile.
Perhaps you don't think your customers
will appreciate your efforts in delivering
a crispier product, but you can use the
opportunity to market the change as a
competitive advantage. Dominos' customers didn't care that the product they were
eating was lackluster, but when the company revised its recipes in 2009 and used
it as a marketing advantage, sales jumped
up and haven't settled down since. Brag
about how your new technology delivers a
better pizza. If you're concerned about the
expense of a fancy pizza box, make it an
upgrade so customers can opt in to cover
your cost. People like this kind of thing
on social media and the press might even
pick it up as a story about what local businesses are doing to embrace the changes
brought on by COVID. Or you can keep
doing what you've been doing for decades
and wait for the competition to call you
out for it. Yikes. ■

SCOTT WIENER is the founder of Scott's Pizza Tours in New York City and SliceOutHunger.org Instagram: @scottspizzatours

1 4 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 0

014_PIZ_0920_MOTS.indd 14

8/11/20 9:30 AM

http://www.SliceOutHunger.org http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM

Pizza Today - September 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pizza Today - September 2020