The Positively Pizza Blog

Upscale ingredients and food are appealing to customers. In fact, recent Technomic data points in that direction, reporting that 37% of diners actively seek out venues that offer premium choices — and are willing to pay more for the experience.

Wood fired pizza fits squarely into this customer preference, but doesn’t cashing in on the trend mean having an operation outfitted with a wood fired oven? Is every stadium, movie theater, c-store, deli, and other non-traditional foodservice location without a wood fired oven simply out of luck?

No and no. Here’s why.

About 45 million Americans go on a diet each year. That’s nearly 15% of the entire population probably putting pizza on their “no-no” list.

The truth is, pizza doesn’t necessarily deserve the bad rap it gets from calorie counters. Prepared and portioned correctly, a slice of pie can serve up calcium, protein, carbs and other essentials for a balanced diet.

What’s 400,000 square feet and soon to be chock-full of thousands of the latest products and services that c-store professionals sell and use every day? Yes! It’s NACS Show 2018!

When it comes to pizza, you can experiment with sauces, cheese, or toppings and customers generally don’t mind. But change the crust? You may get some pushback,  as most customers say the crust is the most important — and satisfying — part of a pizza.

Scratch-made pizza dough may be a traditions-old pride point for your operation, or perhaps it’s a business decision to contain costs. You may even be doing it because you’ve bought into popular myths about pre-made dough balls or you want to control the process to minimize food safety issues.

This article was originally published in December of 2015 and has been updated for 2018 to include 10 crust varieties.

As every pizza maker knows, pizza has a long and storied history. And while there’s a little debate over who actually made the first one, there’s a general consensus that it happened some time during the 1800s in Naples, Italy. Since then, chefs from all around the world have created their own take on this popular dish, each bringing something new and interesting to table. Whether it’s a Chicago-style deep dish or a California flatbread with calamari and basil pesto sauce, pizza has taken on many different forms since its original inception — especially when it comes to the crust.

The National Restaurant Association (NRA) Show is going strong in its 99th year, and the 2018 gathering at McCormick Place in Chicago once again demonstrated why it remains unrivaled as the industry’s largest trade show and international foodservice marketplace.

As both an exhibitor and guest at NRA, Alive & Kickin’ Pizza Crust had access to some of the brightest minds and latest innovations in the restaurant industry. Here are four of the most talked-about trends that you should consider when moving your business forward during the rest of 2018 and into 2019:

The National Restaurant Association is once again bringing the industry’s largest trade show and international foodservice marketplace to McCormick Place in Chicago on May 19-22, 2018! Be one of the nearly 70,000 restaurant, foodservice and hospitality industry professionals engaging with more than 2,000 exhibitors representing several hundred product categories.

The 34th Annual International Pizza Expo is in the books! Even after attending for 20+ years, it provided us with a great opportunity to learn about what’s happening in the industry and which general themes are shaping pizza for the next year.

If you were to ask customers what their favorite part of a pizza is, what kind of responses do you think you’d get? Is it the cheese? The toppings? The sauce? What if we told you it’s actually the crust!