![]() Jay Myers, co-owner of the restaurants.Įach year, Pizza Expo sponsors a competition for innovative pizzas _ ``Pizza Across America.″ Goodfella’s has won two years running. ``Now every store is saying, `We have vodka pie! We have vodka pie!‴ says E. Goodfella’s pioneered pizza with vodka cream sauce. This anything-goes-on-dough attitude is typified by Goodfella’s Pizza, a two-store chain in Staten Island and Brooklyn. ``Maybe it was ahead of its time back then,″ he muses. He tried it six years ago, but it didn’t go over. Scalise, meanwhile, is looking to add the dessert pizza to his menu. ``I call this one our yuppie Pizza Log,″ he says. But Russ Klass of Finger Food Products has high hopes for the Original Pizza Log, especially for the version that contains roasted peppers. Which brings us to the Original Pizza Log, which is basically pizza in an egg-roll wrapper.Īt the moment, this is mostly a Western New York delicacy. ``You have to stress quality, you have to stress freshness, you have to stress customer service,″ says Anthony Scalise, who owns Prima Pizza of Cornwall, N.Y.īut he says you’re also looking for an edge _ new products that might catch the fancy of fickle consumers. The competition is intense, both from other small operators and from big boys like Pizza Hut and Domino’s. He says polls indicate 46 percent prefer thick crust, 48 percent prefer thin, and the rest will eat anything put in front of them.Īn Original Pizza Log (with pepperoni). Regi Hise, a cheese industry consultant, says Americans eat 125 acres of pizza a day. In this country, the leading pizza periodicals are Pizza Marketing Quarterly and Pizza Today, which offers hard-hitting reporting on the popularity of Sicilian pies and the multiple uses of mozzarella.) (Yes, our 31 million northern neighbors have their very own pizza magazine. 4 in Canada, where hamburgers still dominate, according to Joanne Peach of Canadian Pizza Magazine. You are reminded, again and again, that pizza is the No. ![]() And for the 300 exhibitors and the hundreds of store owners and others who attend, pizza is serious business. Now, it’s a day here, a day there.″Īside from Frank and Arturo, there is little entertainment at the Expo. ![]() The Pizza Expo is a good gig, Tamburelli says ``In the old days, there used to be a lot of work. A friend of his sells mascot costumes and needed someone to model the pizza suit at the Expo, so Frank flew in from California (``I figure I might catch a couple of shows, have some fun.″) and is now clowning around on the convention floor.įrank embraces Arturo Tamburelli, a 74-year-old accordionist who is singing old Italian tunes on behalf of a cheese company. In real life, Frank is a baseball umpire. I’m having the time of my life!″ says Frank Rios, who appears to be a slice of mushroom-and-pepperoni pizza. On a floor that is nearly the size of two football fields, fate has unfolded before you all the stuff of pizza _ the prosaic (ovens, signage, paper goods, cash registers, espresso makers) and the ambrosial (doughs, sauces, cheeses, toppings, more toppings, still more toppings).Īnother meatball.
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