EVENTS & PROMOTIONS JUNE/JULY 2022

Industry Events

Summer Fancy Food Show

June 12-14

Hosted at the Javits Center in New York City, this Specialty Food Association event showcases thousands of specialty food and beverage products. The winter edition, held in Las Vegas, attracted about 10,000 participants, and the summer show is expected to be larger, with more exhibitors and more networking and business opportunities.

Learn more at specialtyfood.com.

Texas Restaurant Show

July 9-11

Held in Dallas, this show (formerly the Texas Restaurant Association Marketplace) features 400-plus exhibitors and state-of-the-science products and equipment. It includes an “investment boot camp” to guide attendees through the process of franchising, becoming a franchisor, or growing your brand through capital investment.

Learn more at tramarketplace.com.

National Pizza & Pasta Show

August 23-25

Packed with 300 exhibits, 30 hot-topic seminars and 10 workshops, this show, taking place in Chicago, brings together some of the industry’s biggest names. Educational topics include combating the labor shortage, craft beers and specialty wines, delivery logistics and more, plus a boot camp for deep-dish, stuffed-crust and tavern-style pizzas.

Learn more at nationalpizzashow.com.

Pizza Tomorrow Summit

November 9-10

Find out what’s next in the industry at the Pizza Tomorrow Summit in Orlando. It offers hundreds of exhibitors with a wide range of products, educational sessions, and pizza competitions and demonstrations. You’ll discover the new companies, products and initiatives that will propel our evolving industry into the future. Learn more at pizzatomorrow.com.

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National Macaroni & Cheese Day

Thursday, July 14

You’ve seen all those pizzas out there topped with mac and cheese, so why not dream up your own version? It’s a pie that will catch the eye on Instagram, and you could score free media coverage if you invite your favorite reporter to try it.

National Salad Week

Sunday, July 24-Saturday, July 30

It’s time to add a little sizzle to your salads. Instead of iceberg or romaine, try butter lettuce, spinach, arugula, dandelion greens, Swiss chard or kale. Great salads are less about lettuces and more about what you do with them, so get creative!

Learn and Earn!

2 p.m. (CT), Friday, June 10

PMQ Live Update: Steve Dolinsky

Steve Dolinsky, the James Beard Award-winning culinary journalist, owner of Chicago-based Pizza City USA and author of The Ultimate Chicago Pizza Guide, talks about the Windy City’s pizza scene, his new book and the upcoming National Pizza & Pasta Show. Join us on Facebook Live!

2 p.m. (CT), Tuesday, July 12

PMQ Live Update: Jonathan Porter

Leading up to the National Pizza & Pasta Show in Chicago, Jonathan Porter, owner of Chicago Pizza Tours, explains the traits of Chicagostyle pizza, what he looks for when choosing pizzerias for his tours and why Windy City styles are so intriguing.

Join us on Facebook Live!

Creating A Monster

Many of us raise our tots to be monsters, but rarely on purpose. At Easy Pie in Revere, Massachusetts, Spiros Stogiannis knew exactly what he was doing when he created Monstah Tots, which he describes as “the size of a beer can.” The huge tater tots inspire childlike wonder with toppings like Kraft Mac and Cheese, buffalo chicken and a sour cream-ranch drizzle. His huge menu is also stacked with innovative pizzas like the Lord of the Rings (barbecue-infused sauce, steak-cut onion rings, ground beef, diced pickles and a barbecue drizzle) and The Last Dragon (a “pu pu platter pizza” featuring duck sauce, chopped egg rolls, fried chicken, teriyaki beef, Ah-So pork and fried rice). Stogiannis makes complex pies look, well, easy, dreaming up out-there applications for fried chicken and combos that fuse flavors from Greece to Bangkok. Meanwhile, his burgers, he jokes, are “bigger than a newborn baby” and also push boundaries, with offerings like the Kraft-Matic (mac and cheese, bacon and chipotle mayo) and the Sin a Burger, which is squeezed between a pair of seared cinnamon rolls. Stogiannis opened Easy Pie in 2010 and went his own way from the start. “Against the opinion of many, my original menu consisted of pizzas that I was told would not work,” he says. “When I started, we were the black sheep of the industry, but now everyone seems to be making some crazy pizza or dessert.”

Be Like Myke

Time for a price hike? Be like Myke. The owner of Myke’s Pizza in Mesa, Arizona, Myke Olsen is renowned for his innovative use of fruit toppings—think cherries, peaches, golden raisins, even lemon relish. But he’s now equally known for being candid with his customers about the demands of the business. In early April, he explained on social media that he was raising his prices as food and labor expenses shot up. “The cost of doing business has increased significantly over the past couple of years,” he wrote. “This is especially true for small businesses… who don’t have the same buying power, influence and presence as big businesses. We’ve been paying more for all of our staple ingredients—flour, tomatoes, cheese, meats and paper goods like pizza boxes.” He noted he was glad to see employee wages going up, because restaurant workers have been “underpaid for far too long.” The post earned 679 likes on Instagram and 57 comments, virtually all of them positive. On Facebook, the same post garnered 147 positive reactions and 14 comments, all of which were supportive. Better yet, two TV news outlets—Fox10 Phoenix and AZFamily 3TV & CBS 5—featured interviews with Olsen, complete with B-roll showing his staff hard at work making delicious-looking pies and desserts.

When Two Minds Come Together

Robert Guimond, owner of Public Display of Affection Pizza in Brooklyn, New York, knows his way around a pizza kitchen, but he’s happy to learn from chefs who specialize in other cuisines—and reap the benefits of media coverage in the process. Guimond recently collaborated with Alidoro, a tiny Manhattan sandwich joint with an outsize reputation, to create a pizza version of the classic Italian deli sandwich. It featured a spicy tomato sauce, hot soppressata, fresh mozzarella, pesto and arugula. “The greens, the pesto and the Italian deli meats all classically go on a more gourmet pizza and make the crossover work,” Guimond told InsideHook, a digital lifestyle magazine that featured the sandwich. “A lot of times, when you use deli meat on a pizza, it gets hidden by the cheese and the sauce. Instead of laying it on flat, we clump it up so that you get more of the texture, and we don’t kill it with the sauce or the cheese. It’s a little bit lighter so that all of the flavors come through.” Fresh culinary ideas can spring from collaborations with other chefs, Guimond noted. “It’s like two minds are coming together, and everybody’s working to bring their ‘A’ game.”

Scoring With Portnoy

Andrew Miller, Cameron Whyte and Samuel Emery, the founders of Flourchild Pizza in Milwaukee, never meant to go into the frozen-pizza business. They were primed to open a brick-and-mortar location when the pandemic hit. Like many operators, they had to improvise. But they set their frozen pies apart with clever monikers and artisanal ingredients, like the Curd Your Enthusiasm (caramelized onions, pickled peppers and cheese curds) and seasonal offerings like the Butternut Touch My Squash (butternut squash, spinach and honeycrisp apple cream cheese). In May 2020, they scored a positive One Bite review from Dave Portnoy by sending him a letter and several frozen pizzas in specially designed packaging: a stylized portrait of El Presidente himself clad as a European king of old. “Putting that on there is worth, like, maybe two, two-and-a-half points,” Portnoy said in the video review. He described the pizza as “very good, very cheesy,” adding, “It doesn’t taste like it’s a frozen pizza.” Portnoy rated it a respectable 7.7, giving Flourchild a boost in national exposure. When the owners finally opened their physical location this April, their reputation had preceded them, garnering coverage by media outlets like Fox6Now and OnMilwaukee.

Mike’s Hot Honey started out of a pizzeria in Brooklyn 11 years ago when its signature sweet-heat combo launched a best-selling menu item. From pizza and chicken to dessert and cocktails, Mike’s Hot Honey elevates any dish from ordinary to extraordinary. Request a sample today to see what all the buzz is about.

www.mikeshothoney.com/sample