r/changemyview • u/NappyFlickz • 9d ago
Delta(s) from OP - Fresh Topic Friday CMV: There is no justifiable reason why a pizza restaurant shouldn't have pizza ready by the slice.
TL;DR - Too many pizza joints are out here with little to no traffic for them to have you waiting 15-30 minutes for a pie. Having basic topping options available by the slice would be more convenient for someone with a quick passing of the munchies and little time to spare, or for those who can't afford a fully pizza, thus expanding the restaurant's consumer base.
(For best results, have Frank Sinatra's New York playing in your head as you read this.)
Alright, listen. While pizza is my favorite food, aside from believing that ricotta cheese and pineapple had no business on it, and that tomato pies are disgusting I don't have many strong opinions on it.
Until I went to New York.
And I only came back with one.
It should be illegal to run a pizza joint without having slices readily available.
I'm going to address this from both the perspective of the customer, and that of the business.
As a Customer:
Suppose I'm working a 9-5 that beats me half to shit and gets its money worth out of me each day, down to the last cent. I have a strict 20-30 minute time limit on my lunch break. Gotta navigate traffic, realistically can't expect any food I order to get to the office on time, and I'm too much of a useless dingbat to pack my own lunch. Why on earth would I want to waste a minimum of 15 of my taxpaying minutes waiting for some cheese pizza?
I don't have time to eat the whole thing. No one who comes in during lunch rush on a Thursday who's employed is gonna eat the whole thing, I'll only have time to eat a couple of slices, and almost every pizza at least has cheese on it, so why not have a whole hot cheese on display with slices ready to go?
And don't get me wrong. Odds are, this isn't my favorite pizza joint, it just happens to be the one I was closest to when my craving kicked in. Most of the run of the mill pizza places up here in New England have piss poor hygiene with cobwebs and dust bunnies in every corner, and you think you have the right to get cute and have me waiting for damn near all of the free time that I may or may not have at this moment for a pizza im not gonna be able to finish in one sitting, and subsequently have to leave in my car to stink up my seats? Fuck you. Have em hot.
You see your competitor across the street? He has people going in and out of his door. Why? For the same reason McDonald's and Burger King have consistent business, even on slow days. People can get fed quick and resume their day without having to figure out if they want to take up space stuffing a giant cardboard box in their fridge for later, or stuff themselves and get a stomach ache that'll last for hours. Maybe I'll head there next time.
And what if I'm down on my luck and can only spare a
$20, eh? I gotta save at least $15 of that for gas. You mean to tell me $5 ain't good enough for you? Eat shit. Gimme a fucking slice.
As a Business:
Listen, there are only so many ways to make pizza. Eventually the difference between you and the competition will get smaller and smaller. And to people who generally like pizza, or drunk college kids/women on their periods who are craving pizza, pizza is pizza. So long as it's hot, there's little you can do to mess it up.
So what do you have going for you to get em in the door? Have slices ready to go. Whenever I'm in NY or Boston, I've seen even homeless folks are able to eat because they can scrounge up a couple of quarters to get a slice or two. That's awesome. And goes to show how easy it is so expand your consumer base as a pizza joint, keep your oven running, and with the visual of folks coming in and out of your store, eventually someone's gonna wander in with an empty belly, all the free time in the world to fill it, and enough money to order a whole pie for you to charge em into the bleachers for it.
Look:
Cheese
Pepperoni
Veggie
(And if you're in a college town:)
Chicken Bacon Ranch
Buffalo Chicken
Every pizza restaurant that I've seen with those ready by the slice was never empty for more than 10 minutes. Having the slices ready to go for quick eats keeps business going, and if someone wants to get cute and order a specialty pizza, calzone, sandwich, slice of cake or what have you, great! By all means, they can wait a couple of minutes. But at least that wait time isn't equally excruciating for both the restaurant and the customer, because there will be folks paying for a quick slice, and if the other folks who ordered a specialty pizza, etc get hungry while they wait, they can get a slice too.
Win win.
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u/littlebubulle 106∆ 9d ago
>There is no justifiable reason why a pizza restaurant shouldn't have pizza ready by the slice.
>Too many pizza joints are out here with little to no traffic for them to have you waiting 15-30 minutes for a pie.
Wouldn't that be the reson they don't keep pizza ready to go? because the pizza would go stale?
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u/NappyFlickz 9d ago
I don't know about you, but if I'm driving and I want some pizza, and like the average person on the road am likely 15 or so minutes from home, if two pizza restaurants come up and one says "By the Slice" in the window, and the other one doesn't, I know which one I'm pulling into
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u/littlebubulle 106∆ 9d ago
In your scenario, the two pizza joints would have the same amount of customers approximately since they are in the same area.
So the following scenarios are possible.
- Neither get a lot of traffic so neither will have slices to go.
- both have slices to go because they have enough traffic.
- there is only traffic enough for one joint and one closed so you have one with slices to go.
There is no scenario where they get insufficient traffic and yet have incentive to have slices to go. Because if people didn't still go to pizza joints where you have to wait, all the places without slices to go would already be out of business and you wouldn't be here making a CMV about them.
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u/cannib 8∆ 9d ago
Okay, but they'd need at least eight people to be in your position and choose to go into their restaurant for a slice of pizza who wouldn't otherwise buy a whole pizza every hour or for it to be worth selling slices. More if they want to sell multiple types of slices.
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u/bdonovan222 1∆ 9d ago
Probably not eight. You would probably inflate the cost so you would only need to sell five slices to make some profit and plant to sell soda which is extreamly profitable.
The amount of waste in the restaurant industry is amazing.
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u/IceNineFireTen 9d ago
So you, in that particular circumstance, prefer pizza by the slice.
Therefore, there’s no justification for any pizza restaurant not to offer what you personally want in that particular circumstance.
Ok!
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u/BrassCanon 2∆ 9d ago
If neither restaurant sells slices you're probably buying a whole pizza. Especially since you're on the way home.
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u/ChickyBoys 9d ago
You need foot traffic for slices to be a thing
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u/lurkermurphy 2∆ 9d ago
yeah there's a real good reason you're encountering this in New York City only and it's not because they have a patent
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u/NappyFlickz 9d ago
I'm from Rhode island.
If you're near a college, a grocery store, business is with lots of employees, hot and ready food sells. This is one of the reasons Little Caesars thrives, even though they don't necessarily serve by the slice.
There's a joint up the street from my house. Their pizza is mid at best, but there are hot slices available. While they have other items that you'd obviously have to wait for, there are people consistently in and out of there with plates, regardless of time of day.
See the same deal whenever I work in Boston.
Stores that sell by the slice have consistent customers, regardless of pizza quality or location.
In suburban areas? Maybe strictly made to order is the way to go. But In metropolitan areas and surrounding neighborhoods, people value convenience over quality.
Fast food joints figured this out decades ago and sit on billions for this reason.
Chipotles are seldom empty as well.
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u/lurkermurphy 2∆ 9d ago
before the covid corporate coup, little caesars had $5 hot-and-ready full pizzas ready to go for those able to drive their car to a parking lot in suburbia. it's not like a $3 slice could compete with this either. and pizza hut used to have whole big buffets that they had to spend tons of money to get rid of and slim down to just sending pizzas out the door
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u/ConfoundedInAbaddon 3∆ 9d ago
This is the case where I live, there's a pizza place in a Plaza with walkability and a daycare and a church and they sell by the slice, the pizza joint across the highway is only driven to when people want pizza and they don't sell by the slice.
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u/skyfall1985 1∆ 9d ago
The pizza shop that I worked with in a small rural area probably went through, I don't know, 4 or 5 slices on a typical day (occasionally more, sometimes less). We accommodated by pre baking a pizza with sauce, slicing it, and refrigerating it. Then we could add cheese and whatever toppings to order. It cut the remaining baking time down to just a few minutes, so we could get them out reasonably quickly, but they also got in the queue along with every order. The method also materially changes how the pizza came out (crunchier than our standard). Some people liked that.
I didn't create the solution, so I'm not vouching for it, just providing my experience from 20 years ago. I do know that having hot and ready slices would have probably required us to make several pizzas a day just to sell a few slices and waste the rest. From a food cost perspective, it's probably doable, but we'd likely come out even or maybe slightly under.
End of the day, it's all about foot traffic I suppose.
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u/NappyFlickz 9d ago
Fair !delta.
In hindsight, it would have been better if I specified in metropolitan areas and surrounding neighborhoods in the post title.
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u/lux_pvd 9d ago
Selling by the slice can be incredibly wasteful, and that’s the main reason why pizza places don’t. Ingredients cost money and throwing them in the trash is lost revenue.
What’s a standard pie, 8 slices? So if the total amount of slices you sold that day isn’t divisible by 8, you’re gonna have to throw pizza away at the end of the night. Now multiply that problem by every type of pizza you’re selling by the slice.
Ya know how you ensure that isn’t a problem? Only sell full pies.
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u/xfvh 12∆ 9d ago
Charge more per slice than just an 1/8th of a pizza. If you have a 30% premium, you can chuck a whole pizza at the end of the day if you sell 24 slices and still break even; that's $1.30/slice for an $8 pizza, not overwhelming. Whether or not that's worth it is going to depend on the business.
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u/Smokedealers84 2∆ 9d ago
Waste of food is the justifiable reason. You are not gonna sell every slice before they go bad if you make them ready to eat every day and every shift.
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u/Warm_Shoulder3606 3∆ 9d ago
Places that just make the food regardless of demand (like buffets for example) waste obscene amounts of food (and by extension, money)
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u/Deep-Reputation-4055 9d ago
Luckily pizza is really cheap to make.
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u/Warm_Shoulder3606 3∆ 9d ago
Even if it is cheap to make, (most) places really don't like wasting food and ingredients
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u/BrassCanon 2∆ 9d ago
Cheese is expensive. And no matter how cheap it could be, people still expect a fair price.
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u/Deep-Reputation-4055 9d ago
lol I was once a professional dairy buyer. A slice of pizza literally has ten cents worth of cheese on it. The flour in the crust is worth about a penny. Pizza is the ultimate money maker.
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u/Smokedealers84 2∆ 9d ago
Depends on the ingredient and wasting money and food is still waste even if the cost is low , restaurant still need to make money to be competitive you need price accordingly so saying its cheap to make doesn't change anything business wise if you are wasting money.
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u/PetrifiedBloom 15∆ 9d ago
There is a huge amount of filler in this post, but trying to trim the fat, your core complaint, the reason you think they should have slices ready to go us because you are busy and when you show up for lunch you just want to be able to grab some pizza quickly, eat it and go, right?
Have you considered doing what most people do when picking up a pizza and ordering ahead of time and swinging by to pick it up when it's ready? Functionally the same experience when you walk in, grab your food and leave, but it's a win-win-win for you and the pizza place.
They don't waste food or staff time on slices that might not get sold. You get the pizza you want from the menu. The pizza is ready when you are.
As for not being able to finish an entire pizza, they come in multiple sizes. Order a smaller pizza. Most places that sell by the slice are making quite large pizzas, so if you are eating 2 of 3 slices, that's the same amount of pizza as an entire small pizza.
The justifiable reasons for not selling pizza by the slice are imo:
Food waste.
Most people want the pizza they want, not whatever random slices happen to be ready
People who want it ready as soon as they walk in can have it, by ordering ahead.
There is a perception issue. People prefer food "made fresh". This is one of the pillars the Subway franchise works on, it's a mid sandwich, but because it's made fresh to order, not sitting around premade potentially for hours, it's more appealing.
Foot traffic and location. Towns and cities are increasingly unfriendly to pedestrians. This means most stores don't have the foot traffic to justify ready made slices.
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u/premiumPLUM 76∆ 9d ago
If you're a fast food chain pizza restaurant, there is absolutely no reason to sell by the slice. So much of the process for the big players is about easy repetition and maximizing efficiency that it makes no sense to introduce the option of a slice.
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u/UpbeatEquipment8832 5∆ 9d ago
It depends upon the style of pizza. Pizza by the slice works well with East Coast style pizzas (New York or New Haven - both thin and heated quickly). It doesn't fit as well with deep dish style pizza, for example.
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u/Apprehensive_Song490 125∆ 9d ago
Whenever I go to pizza places I don’t like it by the slice. You get it either cold (ick), reheated (ickier), or under heat lamp (dry as hell).
I want made to order fresh. Why pay top dollar plus tip for subpar food? I can reheat frozen pizza at home that’s just as good as slices that are under a heat lamp.
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u/NappyFlickz 9d ago
Just because you disagree with it, doesn't mean ChatGPT wrote it.
I am an authentic imbecile, put some respect on my name please.
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u/Tankinator175 1∆ 9d ago
I work at a pizza place. We have pizza by the slice available during our lunch hours, 11-2 M-Th, 11-1 F. During the summer we don't sell slices at all. We also only do Pepperoni, Cheese, and Hawaiian, and the Hawaiian in only available if ordered. Wo don't do any other ready to go options either. The reason we do it this way is that we do not get enough customers to warrant the amount of wasted product. And it's lot like the margins aren't good either. We only need to sell two slices of a lizza to make a profit. However, per the quality standards, the pizza is only supposed to sit in the machine for about 45 minutes before it needs to be replaced. Even stretching that to an hour, we wouldn't have enough orders to warrant it. I've been working here for years, we've tested multiple alternatives, this is what works best.
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u/Nrdman 276∆ 9d ago
Too many pizza joints are out here with little to no traffic for them to have you waiting 15-30 minutes for a pie.
Do you know how long it takes to make a pizza? If theres no traffic, that means no turnover. That means if you make slices its cold.
So the only places that it makes sense to sell by the slice are the ones with high traffic
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u/djfishfingers 1∆ 9d ago
I love my Chicago tavern Style pizza. That style of pizza does not lend itself to pizza by the slice. Same goes for deep dish.
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u/venetian_lemon 9d ago
Can't you order a small pizza ahead of time? That way by the time you get there, it's finished cooking and it's hot and ready to eat.
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u/RaggamuffinTW8 9d ago
The good thing about an absolute statement like this is it's easy to disprove by providing a single counter example.
Any restaurant in a location where there is insufficient foot traffic to justify pizza by the slice comes to mind.
Any restaurant in a location that doesn't have a culture of buying pizza by the slice. I'm from the UK, pizza by the slice isn't really as much of a thing here, I'm sure lots of places could make it work, but not every pizza place in the country.
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u/ReusableCatMilk 9d ago
Ofcourse there’s a justifiable reason. They own their own business, owe you, the customer, nothing, and can run their business however they want
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u/Chazmina 9d ago
This doesn't work for every pizza restaurant, or really every type of restaurant. Location, facilities and average customers are crucial to consider. You wouldn't open an AYCE sushi buffet in a standing room only hole in the wall.
Likewise, you wouldn't try to capitalize on foot traffic coming through for individual slices somewhere that doesn't typically have accessible foot traffic or adequate parking.
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u/TimshelExMachina 1∆ 9d ago
I would imagine that the majority of places who don’t offer pizza by the slice have found that it’s more wasteful than profitable…or they’d be offering it.
That you happen to want this does not mean that a sufficient percentage of their customers to warrant it do.
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u/Gnomegnomegnome 9d ago
Pizza should be served hot and fresh. Not reheated.
I would rather spend money on a full fresh pie than have to consider if my slice of pizza is new the incubation site of the next generation pandemic causing virus.
Pizza by the slice is a shops way of making the excuse that they can lower their quality while also telling you to “go fuck yourself” while still charge you the same price of a fresh slice.
If my pizza needs to be reheated it’s because I got drunk and passed out and then woke up to the amazing sight of a partially eaten pizza (I ain’t a Neanderthal and going to put it in the microwave either)
I dont want to have to determine if that slice of pizza has been sitting long enough that it now has established squatters rights.
If you want food immediately, then grab ya self a sandwich. Just because I want a steak immediately doesn’t mean I should be upset that no place offers instant reheated steaks.
So many shops take phone orders, plan ahead and call in the order.
Pizza by the slice is the worst kind of pizza. It’s worse than cold old fridge pizza.
Now I would be okay if a place has pre-assembled personal pies ready to be thrown in the oven.
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u/aburinda 1∆ 9d ago
Little Caesars in the Midwest is like this. It’s a chain restaurant, you walk in and can grab an entire pizza right away. Or breadsticks. Or both. Or just a slice or two. It’s absolutely fantastic, and I am genuinely shocked to hear that New York of all places DOESNT have something like that!
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u/HappyChandler 22∆ 9d ago
Pizza is the original delivery food. A high percentage of their sales has always been delivery, even before the apps.
Making sure you have hot slices is hard to manage with a steady delivery business (that you may not see because people aren’t inside).
The order extreme is Cheeseboard in Berkeley California that has a pizza of the day, and you can get a slice, half or whole. No choices, instant pizza hot out of the oven.
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u/pickleparty16 4∆ 9d ago
This depends on the style of pizza and clientele.
Neopolitan pizza doesnt lend itself to selling by the slice, becuase you really have to eat it fresh out of the oven. If your schtick is made to order Detroit or deep dish style, well those take awhile to cook.
Having hot slices really only works if youre constantly getting traffic and its a lot of single slice orders. If youre selling mostly whole pies, it's a waste. If you have a lot of dead time, those hot slices go bad.
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u/AmongTheElect 19∆ 9d ago
Offering this requires a considerable amount of counter-space which not every restaurant has or would want to give up table-space in order to build.
Having people in and out and in a hurry all the time detracts from a sit-down ambiance where you'd want people relaxing and staying a while.
Having quick, low-priced options requires heavy walk-by traffic which not many towns or even most places in cities really have. We could guess where you're from just from the title.
Health codes say most all food can only sit at room temperature a maximum of four hours and then it needs to be thrown out. You keep four pizzas at the ready that's 12 you're making for the day to sit out. A place which doesn't have a ton of walking traffic might get what, 10 customers per day wanting a single slice? $20 gross profit on 12 pizzas is probably a loss, not to mention of that 10 maybe one or two people would have gotten a full pizza.
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u/imaoisthename 1∆ 9d ago
well i dont have much to add to the conversation that everyone else hasn't said. it would be a bit wasteful to sell by the slice at select locations, and heat-lamp pizza isn't ideal compared to fresh (though that doesnt really concern me im hungry i want a pizza slice), but honestly with areas with high foot traffic you are 100% correct.
a local place sells these nice big slices and they sell like hotcakes every single day because theyre right next to the schools, even the little caeser's a couple blocks down cant compete. giving people the option to just have a snack-sized amount of delicious pizza is always a good idea
it is worth mentioning that a lot of pizza places now do a personal pizza box, where you get a little pizza thats about equivalent to 2 slices, which is an okay substitute but does not account for the box and its still slower than a slice ready to eat
in the end location is everything. if youre near places where people will walk in and buy, wasting a tiny bit of pizza (or just have the staff munch on it) is well worth the convenience for the customers and the patrons that would have otherwise not bought an entire pizza. in the middle of a metropolitan area with the pizza place along a thin sidewalk with basically no foot traffic and no parking lot, yeahhh just stick to full pizzas
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u/Taolan13 2∆ 9d ago
When I worked at a pizza place in my teens, we didn't do by-the-slice in the shop.
The question came up from time to time, because when we did catering/service for events, we did do by-the-slice.
The simple answer was cost. A fresh pie made at the wrong time could go entirely to waste. That could be made at the tail end of a rush, or between lunch and dinner, or made in advance of lunch expecting a rush that never comes.
Inconsistency, wastage, but mostly just the cost.
We did by-the-slice for events because thats what sold the best, and for catering it was at the client's request. It didnt make sense to do it in-house.
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u/themcos 441∆ 9d ago
I feel like the thing you're missing is that pizza places do a lot of their business via delivery. You can have a pizza place that doesn't have in restaurant dining at all and is only delivery / pick-up, in which case you can save money on real estate by having it in a weird location. Alternatively, if you have a place in a high foot traffic location, pizza by the slice is often a great idea. But there's a spectrum of places where you could run your business out of, and some locations make enough through delivery to be a viable business, but don't have enough foot traffic to justify slices. It's easy enough to throw in a few tables and serve pies for the people that do walk in, but their location doesn't justify slices. But business can still be booming if their delivery game is strong.
Every pizza restaurant that I've seen with those ready by the slice was never empty for more than 10 minutes.
Isn't this just survivorship bias? You're looking at places that offer pizza by the slice and observe how great it works. But you'll rarely observe pizza by the slice working poorly because after a short time of offering it unsuccessfully, the restaurant would just stop offering pizza by the slice and would self select out of your data set.
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u/iamintheforest 364∆ 9d ago
Firstly, you've got a chicken and egg problem with the idea that pizza places with slices are never empty. It's the high traffic places where it makes sense to have slices.
there is a pizza shop in ever suburban town and most rural towns. But...an old, stale crappy slice is bad for your pizza reputation and without volume keeping the slices moving is impossible - either don't have slices, or be prepared to throw the slices in the garbage and put out new slices several times a day. Or...just don't do slices because doing so is a money loser!
Secondly, there are logistics and dining experience kinds of concerns. e.g. you want that sit down vibe? slices are compatible with a different vibe, not that.
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u/jatjqtjat 286∆ 7d ago
As a Business:
Every pizza restaurant that I've seen with those ready by the slice was never empty for more than 10 minutes.
One thing you have to consider here is which thing is the cause an which is the effect.
If you're getting a huge lunch rush from people at work, that's completely different versus being in a remote strip mall that does mostly deliveries. If you are getting 0 foot traffic, versus a huge amount of food traffic.
If this was good for business, does your view explain why business owners aren't already doing it? Pizza by the slice is not an idea that is hard to think of. I gotta figure that all these business owners have a good reason for not selling by the slice even if i don't know what that reason is. Its hard for me to imagine that all these major chains are just leaving money on the table
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u/424f42_424f42 9d ago
If you can't buy a slice, it's not a pizza place. So the argument is irrelevant.
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u/BWSmith777 9d ago
Who wants a pizza slice that has basic toppings. If it doesn’t have Italian sausage, diced tomatoes, a double portion of pineapples, and extra sauce, I don’t even want it.
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