Pizza Today - December 2021 - 50

When the COVID-19
pandemic halted dine-in
at Razza, the staff quickly
transformed the original space
into a to-go-focused concept.
Though sidewalk seating helped
get the business through the warm
months, Richer says Razza will
notice a spike once the new dine-in
space opens.
" We totally had to alter our
More on Razza
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of great material
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model, " he says of the pandemic's
impact. " Where there used to be
dine-in tables and bar seats, now
there are piles of boxes and
to-go plates, napkins, plastic forks.
Everything changed. Being able to
seat guests and serve guests inside
again this winter is going to be
huge. Our winters are pretty cold
here and it won't be long before
we can't really seat anyone on the
sidewalk. The roller-coaster ride
we've been on with sales spiking
and dipping based on weather has
taken a toll. It's going to mean a lot
getting the new dining room open. "
Whether the new space
results in a menu change
remains to be seen. Razza offers
a weekly pasta, fresh bread with
homemade butter, meatballs and
occasional sandwich items, though
the focus during the pandemic has
been the pizza.
" We had really been getting into
" The more I learned, the more I wanted
to continue learning and pushing myself
and my bread, " he says. " Ultimately, pizza
is a variety of condiments on top of bread.
If I wanted to evolve, I figured out that I
had to understand bread and first make
the best bread I possibly could. Only then
could my pizza evolve as well. "
Again, he went all in. This time by
taking on an adjacent space that recently
came available, allowing him to increase
his restaurant's capacity. Construction
on the expansion is underway now, and
Richer hopes early next month he'll be
50 / PIZZATODAY.COM / DECEMBER 2021
open for guests in the new dining room.
The addition won't just seat patrons, but
also includes a bar, more kitchen space
and a dedicated dough room.
" We'll be able to better control
variables in that room, " he says. " We've
got water lines dialed in to the exact
temperature we want, we'll control the air
temperature in there to what we want. It's
going to make such a difference to our
consistency and our ability to put out the
pizza dough we want to put out. "
pasta, " Richer says. " We were doing
a lot of pasta. But then I realized
it was just too much at that time
and our focus needed to be on our
core product, which is the pizza.
We scaled down the menu and did
what we needed to do to serve our
customers the best pizza we can
during all of this. But it's fun to
grow the menu and to experiment,
so I'm sure we'll do some pretty fun
stuff once we can. "
JEREMY WHITE is the Editor-inChief
of Pizza Today.
http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM
Pizza Today - December 2021

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