A Slice of Life By Brandon Farrell | Stones Pizza

In my previous article I wrote of how I noticed there was a pizza shop on every virtually corner of Manhattan (New York City) and they were all basically serving up the exact same product. Well, there is one aspect of those businesses that we as Australians may want to look at as we don’t see much of it here. I’m talking about selling pizza by the slice. I am originally from Canada, and like the U.S., a huge number of pizza shops there sell pizza by the slice. When I opened my own store here in Perth I decided to sell by the slice as well. I can fully admit that at the time I was driven more by nostalgia for home than market research and it didn’t really work out. It wasn’t really a losing proposition, but it was really not worth the effort. My problem? It was all in my location.

I thought I would get enough business from the pub that was nearby to justify selling slices. In Canada you can’t get a meat pie, and kebab shops are few and far between. Everyone goes for a slice after a night out at the pubs. Unfortunately it was only after the pub closed each night that I sold any slices at my Perth store, as the pub was not a place people walked to, they only staggered from it…so after the bulk of my business was done by 10pm I would have to wait until after 1am to sell any slices. I found that it just wasn’t worth the effort to be there for so long for a couple hundred bucks in the till, so I gave up the slices and started closing at 11:00 on the weekends and got a bit of my life back. What I did learn from this exercise was what to look for to make selling slices work, because if you have the right location you can virtually print your own money by selling by the slice. Again it’s location, Location, LOCATION! When I first started selling slices there was only one other place in Perth that I was aware of that was doing pizza sales by the slice, which was Delizioso Café. This name may ring a bell with you as the café’s creator Raffaele Brotzu was on the front cover of this very magazine after taking Dairy Farmers’ Best of the Best top honours this past year. Raffaele started out only selling his rectangular pizzas by the slice, operating only in the day time (imagine closing your pizza shop at 5pm…most of us can only dream of such things). Delizioso is situated right in the middle of a fairly expensive shopping district and has a very large amount of walk-by traffic. This is essential if you want to sell by the slice and Raffaele has been doing quite well from it. To sell slices successfully you want a location that has lots of shopping for daytime trade where you can serve higher end and smaller gourmet slices where people will most likely want a nice quick lunch. Shoppers, of course, are mostly female so I would look at having a greater amount of vegetarian and lighter weight pizzas. Remember to properly target your audience.

The other location where slices would work very well is a restaurant that is in the heart of the nightlife. Here, however, tastes will not be as discerning and would best be served by offering larger slices like the American style, which in New York is typically an 18-inch pizza cut into either six or eight slices. I would have a few gourmet pizzas on hand for those who want something better, but I think you will find that most people would be happy with a big ol’ slice or two of cheaper pepperoni pizza to soak up some of the beer. Have shakers of parmesan and chilli flakes for the customers to top their slices with too. I remember after a night out when I lived in Canada when I would go to one pizza place over another because it had chilli and parmesan.

That said, you can’t just start selling slices tonight after reading this…there are a lot of things to take into consideration. First, you need a place to put your pizzas on display. Obviously this is going to have to be behind glass of some sort, and a cooked pizza can sit for no longer than 2 hours at room temperature before it has to be thrown out. I would not go any longer than 90 minutes to be on the safe side…poisoning people is never good for business.

To cut down on waste, you could either chill the pizzas down to below -15˚C, but a cold congealed pizza is a hard sell. You could keep it hot above 16˚C, but then it will dry out quickly and be a hard sell, so best to keep it at room temperature and throw it out after 90 minutes. Now you are going to have to account for that waste in your costing. I was cutting my pizzas into six slices and dividing the price of the whole pizza by five to get my selling price for a slice. That way I could throw out one slice per pizza without it costing me anything and if I sold the whole thing it was a bonus. Be prepared to throw quite a bit out, and although it is difficult to throw the product away don’t be tempted to hold on to them a little longer as this can be very dangerous to the customer, and therefore dangerous for the business.

Most places just opt for leaving the pizzas on display at room temperature. It is less hassle and the pizza still looks good after it has cooled down. You just have to be sure to have accurate times on each pizza so you will know when 90 minutes is up.

There is a relatively new product on the market that is a heated display cabinet that has a built in humidifier that will keep your pizza hot enough to be out of the danger zone (above 16˚C) and will keep the pizza from drying out. I was not able to get one to test for this article so I cannot tell you how it performs, but I would suspect the humidifier would make the pizza a bit soggy, so you would still want to reheat the slice in your oven to crisp it up again. Of course you would want to under-bake the pizza a little bit so it is not too dry after reheating. Every slice should be served piping hot to the customer.

At the end of the day it all comes down to location. If you have a lot of walk-by traffic, you would be crazy to not offer pizza slices…someone who pops in for a quick snack might come back later for a few full pizzas, or someone in to pick up pizzas might grab a slice when they are waiting so it can be a great marketing tool in itself. If you don’t have the right location, don’t bother. You will probably find it is not worth the extra work and headache and there will be a lot more waste.