A lot of bars near me have single slices of pizza on the menu and if you order them you get a typical triangle slice of pizza seemingly taken straight from an original circular pan pizza.
The thing is, the pizzas all can have multiple toppings on them, so if you order a pepperoni and jalapeno single slice you get a jalapeno and pepperoni slice. What makes me confused is do they really make an entire pizza and give me just a slice? I can’t really see how you make an individual perfect triangle of pizza without making an entire pan pizza first.
Are the toppings cut at the slice edge, or are they whole? If cut then a whole pie of that was made, if all in tact, it could still be mad as a pie with topping however more likely it was added for your slice.
Not always microwaved. It’s perfectly acceptable to par-cook and preslice some pies. When ordered, put the additional toppings on and put back into the pizza oven for a few mins.
Yeah I don’t feel like it’s microwaved because I’ve had plenty of microwaved pizza and it always tastes completely different and I would notice. But I have eaten re-ovened pizza and if done properly you can’t tell the difference from fresh.
So basically they cut slices off a premade pizza and add additional toppings as needed? Makes sense.
Doesn’t have to be a bar. Darn near any Italian restaurant that serves lunch has slices on the menu. With your choice of toppings a la carte.
They pre-make toppingless pizzas & slice them. When you order they grab your slice(s), add whichever topping(s), pop them into the oven for a few minutes max, then hand them over. Easy Peasy.
Also, the vast majority of people mostly order the same things every day, so it’s not hard to have a few pizzas made up in half and quarters with different toppings on them, that match the average number of such slices you sell each day. Being one or two over doesn’t really impact your bottom line that much.
Yeah, I imagine it wouldn’t take too long to actually get a pretty good handle on just how much of each type of pizza a place sells on average. Then it’s just a matter of par-baking enough of those kinds of pizzas to handle that volume per day.
A bar might know that they sell 19 slices of cheese, 48 of pepperoni, and 36 of sausage per day, so they know they need to have about 13 pizzas ready each day (6 pepperoni, 4 sausage, 2 cheese, and one that’s half cheese, half sausage), which gives you one slice of cheese left over. I imagine that they’d make a couple of extras in order to handle an unusually large day though.
You may not even need to par-cook the pizza. There are specialty ovens like a TurboChef that could bake a whole pizza in under two minutes. It’s kind of big, though, so if a bar is only offering pizza as a side deal, it’s probably not worth it to them.
Pre-estimating gets especially easy if you let your staff (who eat lunch after the main rush is over) have whatever’s left over for free as a perk. Fewer people ordered mushrooms today than usual? OK, guys, free mushroom pizza today.
Few folks will complain about the toppings on free pizza.
Or there’s the approach of the campus student union, when I worked there. At any time, a customer could order pretty much any sort of pizza they wanted, and get a whole pie (or more) in about ten minutes. And also at any time, there were four pizzas on a lazy Susan rack in a warmer, from which they could take one of more slices of any of those varieties, right now. The four pizzas would always include a pepperoni, a plain cheese, something with vegetables, and one of whatever the folks working the pizza station felt like making, and we’d monitor the racks to make sure that replacement pizzas would be available when they ran out.
Yeah, that’s another factor. If you have the crusts already prepped, it doesn’t actually take all that long to make a pizza. Where I worked, the conveyor oven was set to 7:45, and I’m pretty sure I could put the toppings on in about a minute. That leaves you another minute or so for cutting, and you’re done.
I’ve seen several pizzerias that had both plain and pepperoni pizzas ready to sell slices from. I’m sure if they have a regular orders for some other toppings they’d do that also.
Some places will make an extra large pie for slices, so the individual slices are larger, the customer is well satisfied, and the per slice pricing more than makes up for the cost of the extra pie.
Interesting because I’ve never been to a bar where you can actually order customized pre-fab pizza. Normally, the choice is between cheese, sausage, or pepperoni. Take it or leave it. Nuking pizza makes it gooey with a soft crust.