One would be hard pressed to find a pair of operators who love pizza as much as Jamie Culliton and Alex Koons.
“After my wife and my son, pizza is the love of my life,” says Koons, who owns Purgatory Pizza in Los Angeles. Koons worked his way up from delivery driver to the owner of Purgatory Pizza, and will soon be opening a vegan pizza parlor. “I love talking about pizza. I’ll do it with anyone.”
From California to Florida, pizza aficionado, Jamie Culliton could talk for hours about the science that goes into perfectly tossed dough cooked to spec. He also happens to be the Michael Jordan of pizza acrobatics, having won several national and world championship titles for his dough-spinning heroics—but he still prefers talking about a nice, crispy crust.
“There’s a certain cell structure that you look for in a perfectly cooked pizza,” says Culliton, owner of The Nona Slice House outside of Tampa, Florida. “It’s something many people don’t understand. They think pizza has to be this greasy, doughy mess, but when pizza is cooked right, it’s way more enjoyable, and it isn’t nearly as heavy on the stomach.”
While the duo may love pizza, their small businesses have been challenged by the many complications that touched the industry at large. The following pages will take a look at some of the insights the two operators recently shared with this publication in an attempt to help other pizza operators—and operators in general—navigate what is shaping up to be another rollercoaster year.
The Challenges
In Sept. 2021, Datassential reported that 95 percent of pizza operators believed that their pizza sales would increase or at least stay the same in 2022. The same survey found that 88 percent of consumers had increased or shown a steady amount of pizza consumption when compared to the year prior. This is great news for pizza operators, or operators who were considering adding pizza to their menus.
“I think we as restaurant owners have to do a better job of finding ways to create an atmosphere that people want to be a part of.”
It makes sense, too, as pizza is where so many current trends intersect: It’s a comfort food that is highly customizable and has always traveled well as a takeout item. It’s not just pizza that is trending—the entire segment has caught fire, with dishes like calzones, wings, and salads offering guests a wide variety of options at even the average pizza place.
As a result, like many pizza places, The Nona Slice House and Purgatory Pizza have not lacked for foot traffic of late. That comes with certain side effects, though, as Culliton has noticed a scourge of hangry visitors at The Nona Slice House in recent months. He lists this as one of his biggest challenges: It’s harder than ever to fully staff his restaurant, and yet, customers have never been more eager to find a rewarding experience outside of the home. Tensions are high, and patience can wear thin. “Of course, this is still the exception rather than the rule,” Culliton says.
“Yeah, the attitudes from some guests have been really strange,” Culliton says. “I just think everybody is stressed. You just have to scratch your head sometimes and wonder why people are treating your staff so poorly. But look, that’s the 1 percent of visitors, if that. Ninety-nine percent of our customers are awesome and very understanding.”
Culliton knows this isn’t unique to his restaurant—it’s been a theme across the country the past year-plus. He also knows he isn’t the only operator who has had trouble attracting employees. He says he’s had occasions where he has run ads for months at a time without getting a response.
“It’s really unlike it’s ever been,” Culliton says, noting that he still has an “awesome core of people,” that he has grown his business around. But as his business grows, he’s had the need for more people, and they’ve been hard to find.
A final challenge he has dealt with will also be familiar to operators across segments: inflation. He notes that his packaging costs have risen by about 200 percent, while the price of something as simple as chicken wings have gone up 400 percent.
Koons echoes many of these same issues, noting that packaging has been hard for him as well. Similar to Culliton, Koons prides himself on building a culture within his organization, but even he admits the responses he gets to job listings are different than they had previously been.
“Frankly, people sat at home for a year and had time to think about how the restaurant environment can be a really gnarly place,” Koons says. “We work tough hours, and there’s a lot of pressure on workers. I think we as restaurant owners have to do a better job of finding ways to create an atmosphere that people want to be a part of.”
Pizza Paradise
The solution to the labor problem, Koons says, is to create a work environment that is more enticing for people to work within. This isn’t exactly a new idea, he admits, but he has plenty of examples of how this can be accomplished because he happens to have done it himself.
Koons believes pizza restaurants can realize their potential by doing things like sourcing quality ingredients, making fresh dough and sauce from scratch, and offering unique and exciting menu items to command high dollar and create margins that will support a sustainable living wage.
Then, operators need to share that story with their diners.
“I think it’s super important to let diners know about the quality of life they are supporting,” Koons says. “When they are supporting my restaurant, they aren’t just supporting great food. We give all of our employees a living wage—that’s not easy in Los Angeles, by the way—as well as a 401K and health benefits. These are the reasons that our pizza costs $32. And you know what? Most people don’t mind paying it when they know what they are investing in.”
One way that Culliton has built up a great working culture at The Nona Slice House is by tapping into his employees’ creative side. For example, The Nona Slice House has built up a reputation for daily specials, with the 7,000 people who follow the pizza restaurant’s social channels clamoring on a daily basis for what the specials will be.
Culliton works with his team members and has them help design those specials and come up with catchy names for them. It helps them get some skin in the game, and it means they are eager to share those specials on their own social channels.
“We have a lot of fun with it every day,” Culliton says. “We name them after Blues songs, superheroes, whatever. I have a guy, Kevin, who I love to death. He names them after Pokemon characters and stuff like that. The same with our daily cheesecake specials—I have another employee, Eduardo, who takes it and runs with it. You can tell they really love being a part of stuff like that.”
Quality over Quantity
“Of course, not every customer is interested in the story behind a pie,” Koons notes. Some just want delicious food that is made in a timely fashion, which is why it’s important to be making the best quality product and using ingredients that even the greenest of employees will be able to execute with time and time again.
“I think another way to put it is that our customers, neighbors, and community know that we aren’t some run-of-the-mill pizza shop,” Koons says. “We go above and beyond when we are sourcing ingredients and how we’re cooking their pizza. Yeah, we’re paying for great ingredients because that’s something we want to share with them.”
“We wouldn’t be using Smithfield and Margherita products if they weren’t really high quality.”
Again, using the quality products helps an operation achieve a solid margin, which makes it easier to hire employees, and so on and so forth.
This is why both Koons and Culliton turn to Smithfield Culinary for pork products. They both rave about the consistency and taste of the products that they use—for Koons, that’s Smithfield’s ham, while for Culliton, it’s an assortment of different Margherita pepperoni styles, as well as capicola ham.
“Consistency is the name of the game in the world of pizza, and Margherita really goes hard on the consistency,” Koons says. “That’s why I like it, and our customers seem to really like it, too.”
Culliton echoes this sentiment, adding that Smithfield Culinary has been a great partner when it comes to listening to input from operators and helping highlight some of the things he and other operators have accomplished in the face of a couple of grueling years in the industry.
In fact, Smithfield Culinary recently put together a video series that highlighted the operations that Culliton and Koons run, among others.
“We wouldn’t be using Smithfield and Margherita products if they weren’t really high quality,” Culliton says. “But I’ll go a step further—I recently got to meet a lot of people on their team at a video shoot we recently did, and they are some of the kindest, easiest to get along with people. That’s what I want to work with—I want to work with people who aren’t just there to make a dollar, but they believe in what they are selling and the partnerships that go into that.”
Pizza Plus: What’s Hot
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Cup-n-char Pepperoni: Margherita cup-n-char pepperoni is what it might sound like: pepperoni that is shaped like a cup and chars more easily than pepperoni that lays flat. Chef Jamie Culliton, owner and operator of The Nona Slice House in Tampa, Florida, favors this shape of pepperoni, saying it’s a thicker cut with a better mouth feel. “And it collects that grease,” Culliton says. “A lot of people say they don’t like grease, but they secretly love it, right? I just think it adds a lot of flavor.”
KC Wild Wings: Smithfield Smoke’NFast KC Wild Wings are another trendy ingredient that operators are leveraging in times like these. They are pork shanks that offer a nice, meaty canvas for chefs to work with. Where Culliton estimates that chicken wings have gone up 400 percent in price at times from where they were at pre-pandemic, KC Wild Wings offer an alternative.
Detroit-Style Pizza: Detroit-style pizza—rectangular in shape and baked in pans—is said to have originated at Buddy’s Pizza in Detroit in the 1940s. Now it seems like everywhere one looks, a pizza company is adding Detroit-style pizza to the menu. Indeed, Datassential reports that Detroit-style pizza showed 99 percent four-year growth between Sept. 2017 and Sept. 2021. “Pizza in general is going super hard right now,” says Alex Koons, owner and operator of Purgatory Pizza in Los Angeles. “Chefs are trying to find their niche inside of that ongoing mega trend. One of the places you’re seeing that is with the square, Detroit-style pies—there are a lot of places making that, or concepts opening up based on it.”
Smoked Meats: Barbecue has long been a great way to quite literally spice up pizza offerings. It’s why things like Smithfield Smoke’NFast beef brisket and pulled pork have begun to show up on pizza menus. They are ingredients with great versatility, too—pizzerias can easily feature a barbecue sandwich or calzone alongside a barbecue pizza.
Hot Honey: Datassential reports that “spicy honey” has grown on pizza menus by 513 percent over the past four years. Mike’s Hot Honey, which was originally served at Paulie Gee’s pizzerias in New York, is largely credited with starting the trend. But some operators, including Culliton, have begun menuing local hot honey. “A friend of mine started raising bees and making her own honey,” Culliton says. “Now she makes a local hot honey for us. It’s one of those trends we saw and thought, ‘Okay, how do we make this even better?’”
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