Pizza Today _ January 23 - 37

on a pizza. The most common is half the
amount of a standard pizza. If your pizza
has eight ounces of cheese, extra cheese
would be four ounces. From what I've
seen, this is the industry norm, but it is
not a mandate. Many people put another
little bit on with a scoop of their hand.
For some pizzerias, extra cheese is just
two ounces more no matter the pizza, and
for others, it's a whole separate bag, with
tiered pricing based upon each size of
pizza measured to a finite degree.
Price Fluctuations
Executing how to monetize it
seamlessly is more crucial than ever;
with the commodities price of cheese
at insane fluctuation, you must price it
and portion it correctly. We've seen the
Chicago Mercantile cheese block price
fluctuate into the low $1.20 range, all the
way to the $3 range. Your price might
fluctuate with the market, or perhaps you
have a locked-in rate; either way, your
price has climbed significantly. Utilizing
the lessons of a challenging economy for
any economy creates long-lasting success.
That means portion control, menu price
awareness and vendor negotiations.
Aggressively attack your cheese price
with your vendor from a partnership
standpoint. Your vendor needs to know
that if your cheese price is out of whack,
you can't operate successfully, and they're
putting your store's health in jeopardy
and that your financial health is tied to
their health. Get a new vendor if your
vendor does not see your relationship as
a partnership. If they're trying to get as
much money out of you as fast as possible,
get a new vendor. Bear in mind that if the
price of cheese on the mercantile is $2.50,
it's irrational for you to ask for the same
or less, no matter what it was last year. If
you pay less than that, the vendor has to
make it up somewhere, i.e., overcharging
you for the rest of your products.
How to Charge for it:
Assume you have a $3 per pound
mozzarella price. By that logic, if you
are giving four ounces of extra cheese,
then that's .75 cents in raw food cost
you're giving out. If you're also charging
extra cheese at a $1.50, or even $2, that
is a horrible food cost percentage. $2.25
charger at .75 cents your cost would be
33-percent food cost. Not that great. To
hit 25 percent for four ounces of cheese,
you would need to be at $3 as an extra
cheese charge. If that sounds exorbitantly
high, you could give less; for two ounces
you could sell for $1.50 to $2, but you
would not be giving as much extra cheese.
With that said, I will give a little inside
baseball knowledge. In 18 years of giving
different amounts of extra cheese, I have
never heard someone who ordered extra
cheese say that this was not enough. I
just haven't. I've had it for every other
topping because it's much more apparent.
For example when a pizza is light on
mushrooms.
If you want the customer to have an
overload of cheese, that's awesome by me,
charge for it, or else you jeopardize your
restaurant's financial health.
Portion Control
If you use a handful method, that only
works if you've been doing it for a very
long time and you are financially liable to
your restaurant. This assumes you know
that weight, like the back or, in this case,
the front of your hand. Anyone who's not
you, not living off the bottom line, going
off the handful method is costing you.
None of your staff are Indiana Jones, able
to measure a bag of sand on instinct like
in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Even he got
it wrong, which initiated a boulder chase.
Your boulder is food cost, and you'll get
crushed every time when left to chance.
You need a system. NOT JUST ANY
SYSTEM, but a dependably great system.
The most basic system is to fill up a bowl,
measure it on a scale, and dump it on
pizza. The problem with this system the
cheese can often drop from the bowl on
the trek to the pizza and land on the floor,
but it is better than nothing. A flat gram
scale instead of a tall analog scale will do
better in this scenario. It's more specific,
which takes more time, which might lead
to this back-of-house employee not doing
it at all. A camera directly on the cheese
station can help you review film and
see who's doing it and who's not. That
assumes you check your cameras, and that
the cameras are functional.
If you buy pre-cut, be aware that
certain diced cheeses come measured to
a finite degree, and yes, you could use a
cup measurement to portion if you buy
this exact type of pre-cut mozzarella. This
process will not work on pre-shred; it
will not work on other styles of randomcut
cheese. If you have all the cheese cut
and want to ensure nothing goes wrong,
weight and pre-bag your cheese. Bag it
in a separate section of your restaurant
so staff separates it out in their mind
where cheese is measured and where
cheese is used. Whether in a cup like the
Big Dave Ostrander method or a loosely
packed sandwich bag, pre-portioning this
way ensures for the 1 cent in bag cost,
you don't lose 30 to 40 cents a pie in
misplaced cheese.
Prepping your Cheese
If you don't buy pre-dice or pre-shred,
you're cutting it yourself. The classic top
loader method of pressing with all your
weight down to get the shred is a little
old-fashioned but works with no new
equipment. New methods of shredding
cut the mozzarella like a woodchipper
taking out a redwood. This fast-cut
method is much more advantageous for
use inside a high-functioning restaurant
because you don't have much time to
waste cutting cheese.
Our restaurant uses a vertical chopping
mixer, like a giant blender. A VCM dices
it up for a minute, and then we dump
it into a big container. I find this is the
most affordable and fastest method to
getting a dice-cut of cheese which is easy
to spread out, in my experience. If you're
buying pre-cut, you are already paying
a significant amount more money and,
theoretically, aside from a few companies,
also paying for cellulose in your
mozzarella. For any pizzeria that's looking
to cut costs, which should be all of us, I
am a big proponent of cutting your own
cheese. The cost is just too inescapably
high right now to do otherwise unless
you have absolutely no space to prep it
and cut it yourself. If that's your situation,
price it accordingly for the excess cost you
incur.
Cheese is a numbers game. If you're
unaware of the numbers, the numbers
control you. Keep your cheese game tight,
and your profit will reflect that.
MIKE BAUSCH owns Andolini's Pizzeria
in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Pizza Today _ January 23

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