EVENTS & PROMOTIONS SEPTEMBER 2022

Industry Events

IBIE:

International Baking Industry Exposition

September 17-21

Held every two years, this baking industry extravaganza is produced by the American Bakers Association. The 2019 event featured 939 exhibitors and attracted 21,000 baking professionals. This year’s workshops cover topics like supply chain strategies, understanding leavening functionality, and running a sustainable bakery. Learn more at bakingexpo.com.

National Family Meals Month

Premiere: Best in Dough, Hulu

September 19

Hulu debuts its new series, Best in Dough, bringing together competitors from all walks of life to showcase their pizza slinging skills and battle it out for a cash prize. Hosted by Wells Adams with head judge chef Daniele Uditi of Pizzana in Los Angeles, this first-ever pizza competition show features chef Millie Peartree, comedian/ influencer Eunji Kim and baker Bryan Ford as judges.

Pizza Tomorrow Summit

November 9-10

Find out what’s next in the industry at the Pizza Tomorrow Summit in Orlando. This inaugural event 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.

Promote This!

National Chicken Month

Get kickin’ with chicken on your pizza! Chicken is one of the healthiest proteins—and one of the tastiest. Consider adding a specialty pizza featuring Nashville hot chicken or Southern-style deep-fried chicken and develop some new wing recipes and sauces while you’re at it.

The kids are back in school, and parents’ schedules have gotten hectic. Make their lives easier with family-friendly bundles and meal deals. Value perception is paramount, so make these deals affordable for your customers and profitable for your restaurant.

DON’T FORGET THESE NATIONAL FOOD AND BEVERAGE DAYS IN SEPTEMBER!

International Bacon Day

Saturday, September 3

National Cheese Pizza Day

Monday, September 5

National Beer Lovers Day

Wednesday, September 7

National Eat a Hoagie Day

Wednesday, September 14

National Cheeseburger Day

Sunday, September 18

Hug a Vegetarian Day

Friday, September 23

National Foodservice Workers Day

Sunday, September 25

YOU DON’T NEED A BIG BREWERY TO MAKE A BIG IMPACT. Old Town Pizza’s brewery component Slice Beer Company knows a few things about making big beers in a small space. Slice and BrewBilt teamed up to customize a system that perfectly fits both their brewing style and 1,100-SF production area.

Keeping Pizza Weird

Matt Wojtowicz doesn’t look like an oddball, but he’s made it his mission to “keep pizza weird.” Wojtowicz left his job as a VP at Gino’s Original Pizza, a Toledo, Ohio-based chain, to open Pizza Cat in the same city in 2017. The eatery has its own quirky, feline-fixated esthetic, a vibrant social media presence, and a menu that’s downright daunting, including more than 30 pork- and beef-based pies, plus nine for vegetarians. And that’s not counting the one made with a hemp crust. Some of the pizza names are appropriately bewildering, such as the Isosceles Kramer (pepperoni, bacon, banana peppers, jalapeños, and Kalamata olives) and the Little Caligula (chicken, sausage and jalapeños with a spicy garlic butter sauce). And who wouldn’t want a taste of the Smelly Cat? That one features a garlic butter sauce, salami, sausage, red onions and roasted garlic. All of this weirdness has made Pizza Cat something of a media darling, with publications like the Toledo Blade, the Toledo City Paper and, most recently, the Detroit Free Press lavishing coverage on the concept. Wojtowicz and his business partner, the equally normal-looking Andre Robinson, recently opened a second location—called Pizza Cat Max—in the Motor City’s Greektown district and have pledged to keep it just as weird as the original. “Every time I’ve tried to have a job, I’ve been fired or left under weird circumstances,” Wojtowicz told the Free Press. “I like to be the boss.”

THE PARTY NEVER ENDS AT MIKEY’S

Mikey’s Late Night Slice, with seven locations in Columbus, Ohio, and one in Cincinnati, started taking drunk food to another level 13 years ago, landing on PMQ’s cover in the January-February 2017 edition. Co-owner Mike Sorboro and his wildly innovative team are back at it this summer with a roster of weekly specialty pizzas that elevate the after-party experience for the brand’s fans, affectionately known as “pizzafaces.” In a collaboration with Sabauce, a Columbus-based company specializing in sauces and marinades inspired by the flavors of India, they unveiled the SabAwesome, featuring chicken marinated in Sabauce, red onions and cheese, plus a red-sauce base enhanced with Sabauce. Then there’s the Cincy 4-Way, featuring Cincinnatistyle chili, spaghetti noodles, finely shredded cheddar cheese and white onions, and the Thicc-Ass Pepperoni, boasting thickly cut pepperoni slices and Parmesan cheese. Just don’t confuse the latter with Mikey’s other provocatively named pies like the Spicy-Ass Pepperoni, the Plain-Ass Pepperoni or, for that matter, the One Charming Mother F-ing Pig, touted as “10 times more charming than Arnold from Green Acres.”

THIS ONE’S A REAL GAS!

Seattle-based Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria was reportedly the first pizza shop in the Northwest to be certified by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (VPN). And it’s the first pizzeria anywhere—as far as we know—to offer discounts based on the price of gasoline. As prices soared at the pump throughout the first half of the summer, dine-in customers at four locations of the Washington State chain brought in their printed gas receipts and received a discount equal to the average cost of a gallon of gas in the Seattle area. In early July, that amount came to $5.65, although the discount was updated on a weekly basis. With customers “feeling the cost crunch at the pump,” Joe Fugere, Tutta Bella’s founder and CEO, said the company wanted to “ease the pain in some small way” with the promotion. Also in July, Tutta Bella beefed up its Amici Club rewards program by offering everyone who joined through the end of the month a chance to win free pizza for a year.

Bringing Pizza Madness To The Multiverse

Thanos snapped his massive fingers and made half of all life in the universe disappear in Avengers: Infinity War Let’s hope the Marvel supervillain doesn’t do the same to the guests at Infinity Pizza, which recently opened in Clearwater, Florida. Fortunately, while a portrait of Thanos glowers down from one wall of the comics-themed pizzeria’s decor, the good guys from both the Marvel and DC universes—including Captain America and Wonder Woman—are there to fight him off. Not to mention that life-size statue of Deadpool. Infinity Pizza’s menu features specialty pies named after beloved comic book heroes, including the Moon Knight, a white pizza with a garlicParmesan-infused oil base topped with light mozzarella, ricotta and Parmesan; the Peter Porker, a classic meat lovers pie featuring pepperoni, ham, sausage and bacon; and the vegetarian Groot, made with green peppers, black olives, mushrooms, onions and tomatoes. The eatery also offers free arcade games and pinball machines to keep the multiverse loud and lively.