Pairing Organic and Local Wines with Pizza!

This past weekend I took my very first trip to California’s Napa Valley.  Given my love of wine and Napa Valley’s reputation as one of the top Viticultural Areas in America, I’m kicking myself for not making that trip a long time ago, but better late than never I guess. 

Napa Valley is beautiful at this time of year - it just the perfect temperature and there is something so fun about stumbling across a small boutique winery off the beaten path and discovering a wine that you’ll never find at retail.  And one of the wonderful things I learned on my many winery visits was just how far organic wines have come over the past few years (1,200 acres to date the Napa region alone, in fact).

What does “organic” mean when it comes to wines?  It simply means that no chemicals can be used in the vineyard; no chemical fertilizers, weed killers or insecticides. The only substance that is permitted for use is elemental sulfur, which is itself organic and which is used to prevent powdery mildew.

Both organic and local wines represent a neat opportunity for pizza operators to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Slice pizzeria, for example promotes an “Organic Wine Pairing Night” at their restaurant in New York.  For $35, clients enjoy two glasses of wine, an appetizer, gourmet pizza entree and dessert.  Mobile pizza vendor Beatrice’s Inferno, a user of the eco-friendly and multifunctional GreenBox pizza box, is invited many weekends to Galen Glen Vineyard and Winery in Andreas, PA and Va La Vineyards in Avondale, PA because these winemakers know that pizza and wine together create great draws from their local communities.

So to pizza operators that haven’t stomped their feet in the organic and local wine barrels yet - give them a chance.  By turning your organic and local wine pairings into a fun experience as did identical twin owners Slice founders Miki and Radha Agrawal and Beatrice’s Inferno owner Jason Brown, you can generate traffic, help your local and organic vineyards and most importantly, bring something different and more unique to the table than your competitors.

My personal organic fave on my visit to Napa?  Frog’s Leap!  It is a winery that tries not to take itself to seriously that has an impressive of list of very good, albeit sometimes a little pricy, wines, including zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, rosé, and even a dessert wine.  

Cheers!

Green Spotlight On… Pizza Boli’s New Multifunctional SmartBox!

If you’ve ever spent time at college, or even crashed for a weekend in a friend’s dorm, you’ll know that students and pizza go hand in hand. Case in point, one resourceful student at the University of Maine, which has an annual enrollment of just 11,500 students, calculated that over 17,000 pizzas are delivered to Maine campus each month, equating to 25 tons of waste each academic year. Considering there are 2,680 colleges and universities in the US alone, the number of pizza boxes that end up on campuses each month becomes even more staggering.

Such a volume poses a significant challenge for campuses around the country. Regular pizza boxes don’t fit down in school recycling bins and trash chutes and routinely sit for days on end in the dorm rooms of students until they finally find the gumption to figure out a way to dispose of them.  In fact, according to a manager of one of University of Pennsylvania’s largest college houses, pizza boxes are the “single biggest attractant of pests,” as reported by the residence’s extermination service.

Such a predicament is one of the many reasons why Pizza Boli’s, a chain whose stores are situated on and near many a college campus, decided to provide an innovative solution.  Pizza Boli’s new SmartBox pizza box is perforated and scored, allowing for easy disposal into recycling, compost and trash bins (whichever disposal receptacle is required by the relevant municipalities).  What’s more, these perforations and scores allow the SmartBox to be broken down into plates and a storage container, thereby addressing age-old problems experienced by college students of (a) never having plates and (b) never being able to fit the pizza box with leftovers into a dorm room bar fridge.

With eye-catching new graphics, copy that touts the SmartBox as well as an entertaining new commercial, Pizza Boli’s is making sure that its green pizza box technology makes a huge splash with its customers.  With future green initiatives on the horizon, Pizza Boli’s even calls out a website page on its new box that will highlight its ongoing efforts on this front.

The message to pizza operators? Look for sustainable solutions that will have a direct positive impact on your community and don’t worry about starting small. Going green does not have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Every little bit helps when it comes to the environment and small changes by every pizzeria create a big impact overall.  Most importantly, don’t be shy when it comes to touting your efforts to go green. Being a ‘green leader’ in your community will pay off in spades in the long term via customer goodwill, loyalty and, ultimately, increased sales.

Pizza Operators: Get Your Green Message Off and Running!

Chef Ed, Diego and Miguel of Pizza by Certe (L to R) and Jennifer of Ecovention

In June this year, I received a fun, albeit slightly daunting, invitation from Edward Sylvia, owner of Pizza by Certe'.  Chef Ed, as he is affectionately known, challenged me to participate in a unique event called the NYC Pizza Run.

In its second year, the NYC Pizza Run takes place in the heart of NYC’s Alphabet City and is for a great cause (entry fees benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International based in New York).  Participants are required to run a 2.25 mile course that winds through and around Tompkins Square Park, stopping along the way to scarf down pizza at three separate checkpoints.

I like running. I do. I’m not one of those gazelle-like creatures that can spring swiftly and effortlessly, but I can plod with the best of them and 2.25 miles is well within my realm of capability.  And I like pizza… a lot actually.  I like doing something charitable every once in awhile too.  So when Chef Ed proposed this challenge, I jumped right on board. 

Now, I wouldn’t put "running and pizza" in the same category as "chocolate and peanut butter", but I will say this – it does make for great PR.  For green pizza operators, getting involved in unique events like the NYC Pizza Run is a great way to gain exposure and drive home their eco-friendly message.

For Pizza by Certe’ that message is to buy green and source locally and Chef Ed reinforced this at the NYC Pizza Run every chance he got.  He did so both subtly (by using and displaying the 100% recycled GreenBox pizza box) and directly (by highlighting the eco-friendly aspects of his parlor to the many TV and print journalists that were present).  He also managed to give prominence to the Pizza by Certe’ logo by displaying it on the backs of the official NYC Pizza Run T-Shirts that were handed out, and on the coupons and menus included with the official NYC Pizza Run swag.  The result of Chef Ed’s efforts?  A video on the NY Times site and mentions in the NY Times, the NY Daily News, USA Today, the Huffington Post and multiple other blogs.

The message to pizza operators:  Look for interesting events to get involved in to get your green message out there.  For the cost of a few pizzas and a bit of your time you’ll end up with some powerful publicity that matches the marketing power of a much larger chain that puts you on the map!

So how’d I do? Well, unfortunately on my third and final lap around the park, I somehow (perhaps intentionally, on some subconscious level) took a wrong turn, which ultimately landed me in the home stretch far quicker than I ever should have been.  Phew. There. I got that off my chest. A secret held by me and a cameraman who looked at me sideways as I raised my arms up in triumph at the finish line.  Ah well, I finished – somewhere in the middle of the pack - that’s all that matters. And it’s too late to take back my T-Shirt.

Hold The Pine Nuts

So a funny thing happened to me the other day.  While munching on blueberries one morning, I experienced, quite suddenly, a bitter, metallic and very pervasive taste throughout my entire mouth. 

Convinced that my blueberries were the culprits despite their wonderfully fresh appearance, I made the decision to toss them and seek out a pallet cleanser that would quickly eliminate this most unpleasant taste.  I theorized that citrus fruit, maybe an orange, would do the trick given their acidity… but that didn’t do a thing to solve the problem. I then figured that crackers might work (they work so perfectly at wine tastings)… but that didn’t solve the problem either. 

With my ‘metal mouth’ still 100% present I decided that the cause of my ailment must be far more sinister and infinitely more serious than I previously suspected.  My logic in thinking so?  A commercial from the 90s that ran through my head… the details were sketchy but I distinctly recall the recounting of a story of a woman tasting burnt toast before seizures… 

Being a person of the new millennium, I decided to do next what most responsible people would do under my circumstances – I googled my symptoms.  I take that back; I first did an exhaustive search for the burnt toast commercial.  For nostalgic reasons, I guess. Here it is for any readers that enjoy tangents, but be warned in advance that the burnt toast lady will be inexplicably emblazoned in your minds forevermore. 

Once off my tangent and with a renewed focus on my potentially fatal affliction, I began to grow nervous … Did I have lyme disease? A tumor?  Had I contracted a rare mouth disease that would cause my teeth to slowly rot from my head?  Whatever the ailment was, I resolved myself to be strong and pondered ways in which I would break my sad news to my family.  As I clicked through my Google search results it wasn’t long before I had my diagnosis – and it was weirder and more comical then I could ever have imagined… I had (gasp) Pine Mouth. Apparently, the pine nuts that were in the Eggplant Involtini I had cooked the night before were to blame.

For those of you out there that haven’t heard of Pine Mouth, you might want to pay attention... It’s a bizarre and little known problem that has only cropped up in recent years.  Here are the details in a nutshell, no pun intended (I’ve never seen pine nut shells before so this unintentional pun did just lead me to another, decidedly uninteresting, google tangent):

-       Over the past two years the FDA has received a number of complaints from consumers about Pine Mouth, a bitter metallic taste associated with pine nuts. The taste begins 12 to 48 hours after consumption and lasts anywhere from a few days to four weeks.

-       The FDA continues to review consumer complaints to identify potential causes of Pine Mouth, but findings to date indicate that the problem stems from pine nuts sourced from China.  Evidently the skyrocketing price of pine nuts has encouraged Chinese sellers to include non-edible and off-grade (i.e. immature, shriveled, oily, brown centered, rancid, spotted) kernels into the mix.

What does all this mean for pizza operators? With the consumer trend toward organic and locally sourced ingredients growing every day, it might be high time for pizzerias to join the movement.  Offering organic and locally sourced ingredients while reducing environmental impact carries benefits for both pizza operators and their customers.  It is no surprise that organic and locally sourced ingredients can often cost more, but serving a healthy, premium quality pizza that customers feel good about eating (i.e. one that is devoid of risks like Pine Mouth), will ultimately have a big impact on the top and bottom lines of pizza operators. 

The key to making such a strategy successful? Charge a little more for your healthy, premium quality pizza, inform customers which ingredients have been sourced locally, find substitutes for ingredients that are too pricy (case-in-point), shop around and, most importantly, hold the pine nuts!