Episode 13 - A Slice of Home: Pizza Shack's Bob Protexter Introduces A Pizza Paradise On Route 66

I couldn't help but reminisce about the taste of home as Bob Protexter joined me to weave a tale of his journey from humble beginnings at Jerry's Pizza to creating his own slice of heaven at Pizza Shack in Arcadia. His story, rich with nostalgia, is a masterclass in blending the art of pizza-making with the heart of community-building. As Bob paints the landscape of his past, we explore how his baseball career and a deep-seated tradition of treating customers as family have seasoned his approach to business, from free pizzas as the best form of advertising to the camaraderie shared with childhood friends in the industry.

The aroma of authenticity fills the air as Bob shares the challenges of keeping it simple in a complex world, focusing on perfecting a singularly fabulous 14-inch pizza and facing the skepticism of a new Oklahoma community. Our conversation stretches from the nuances of pizza packaging debates to the branding ingenuity behind a hand-painted logo and a chicken mascot that humorously nods to the local culture. Bob's resilience shines through as he recounts earning the trust of his patrons and the sweet reward of becoming an integral part of their lives.

Bob's passion for culinary excellence doesn't stop at the oven's edge; it stretches out to the local landmarks of his Sioux City roots, where the pursuit of the perfect dough is a labor of love. He reveals the secret sauce to leadership in the kitchen, the strategic choices that keep the quality of ingredients high and customers coming back for more, and the serendipitous birth of his frozen pizza venture. Tune in for an episode that's as heartwarming as it is hunger-inducing, where the essence of community and pizza intertwine in a story that's as much about the people as it is about the pie.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:02

You know whoever's watching this. You might not think that Sioux City, Iowa, would give you an extraordinary culinary experience, but it's an amazing setup of these small places that are family owned, that have been in business for 50 and 60 years.

Speaker 2: 1:21

It doesn't happen by accident. All right, there we go. I'm here with bob bob, you have to tell me. Protexter correct, that's bob protexter from from pizza shack in arcadia, oklahoma, oklahoma. We've been chatting here for the last 10 minutes, bob, super cool, welcome to the show. Welcome to the Pizza King family. Can you tell us about Pizza Shack and who you are?

Speaker 1: 1:57

Well, that's awesome. Thanks for having me on. Well, who I am and who the Pizza Shack is are kind of a little mix of things together, but I'm from Sioux City, iowa, okay, and it's very the whole life story. But in 1984, and I was between my junior and senior year high school I worked at a pizza place and it was two blocks from my house and I knew the family growing up my whole life and the best story I can tell you about that place is I was 12 years old one time we went in to get a pizza and we paid for it and I left and I asked my mom.

Speaker 1: 2:36

I was like, why did we have to pay for that pizza? Because they were so generous and my dad worked at the college, you know, right next door, about two, three blocks away also, and he would always let them in the pass gate to go watch basketball and then when I got busy they would leave and it was just always. They were always generous and they remembered when you helped them and they would help you and they sincerely beat their made their business by giving away free pizzas. So I'm from Sioux City, iowa, with a place called Jerry's Pizza. For the record, I did call him before I come down here to get his blessing, because you work at some place and you take some ideas and some methods of doing stuff and you go somewhere else. We are eight hours away, so it's a little different.

Speaker 2: 3:24

Are they still open and operating over there too?

Speaker 1: 3:27

For eternity. They will be open and operating. They uh knock on wood. They uh opened in 1959 with jerry and his wife eileen, and then their kids were real young and and they opened with a card table, a shoebox for money and a rolling pin.

Speaker 1: 3:42

So I got my I got my rolling pin right here just in case you ever need it. So, um, and they've been open ever since and they're killing it. You know they have it's. Jerry died in, I think, the late eighties, early nineties and and I mean it was, it was it was news on the, on the, on our local news. He was had such an impact on the community as a whole and the extended community of our town and and uh, and I've worked there on and off from around my baseball schedule. I was fortunate enough to travel out with baseball. Then I worked in my. I coached college in my hometown of sioux city and, like a lot of coaches and in the off season, at different times of year, you'll work. So, yeah, I worked there on and off, for I'm old man, I worked there on and off for I'm an old man. I worked there on and off for 34 years, so until 2018 is the last time I worked there.

Speaker 2: 4:30

So you got to spend your summers traveling and playing ball and your winters tossing pies.

Speaker 1: 4:36

Something like that. Yeah, yeah, delivering a lot of pizza.

Speaker 1: 4:39

So we, you know, the worse the weather, the better the business. So for delivery, and you know, I learned I just didn't realize till I got here how much I thought I could do this, you know. But I didn't learn until I didn't know, until I got here, how much I'd learned to work at that place and how to. How you know, when you grow up you're kind of treat people like your family treats people, but that was kind of a secondary family like, and you work there for so many years. You get to know people and they just they treat people really well and as we try to do that, I encourage our workers to do that. But we give away probably more pizzas than my, my owner and friend wants me to. But you know, it's our best investment, it's our best. Advertising is a slice of pizza. People come back for it.

Speaker 2: 5:26

But I always say the best way to make friends is show up with some pizza.

Speaker 1: 5:31

There you go, there you go, and we were just talking about that today, you know, I think probably going to start driving to hair salons and beauty parlors and barbershops because that's, that's your town, crier. And we just met a lady and she said I talk to people all day and she likes our pizza, but anyway, uh, the the kind of fast forward to this story was in april last year, a year ago today or a year ago, um, I'd be today a year ago this month. Um, I was just closing out my sixth year of substitute teaching and um, eddie gokenauer, the owner of the chicken shack, uh, he called me. We'd grown up, we played baseball together, we played football together. He, he played football. I suited, I was a skinny second baseman trying to play, trying to play football, so, and he was a linebacker.

Speaker 1: 6:15

We won the state tournament. And another friend of ours, troy bulky, he works here, and so there's three of us from the same class, but he, you know, he started a. He had a chicken shack in Iowa, a couple small ones in Iowa and a place called Iowa, great Lakes, okoboji. If you were Okoboji shirt long enough in Tampa, somebody's going to know where that's from.

Speaker 2: 6:35

So I have to get me one.

Speaker 1: 6:36

I will you send me your address and your size. I'll send you one tomorrow. Today, tomorrow, he had a place up there and you know he got married and started having kids and he got in a different type of business and then he came down here on business and he left that and in 2016, he's. He's for the locals here, for anybody traveling through Route 66. He was in Luther, oklahoma, with a food salesman. They sat on two five gallon buckets and started telling him his vision and the guy told me, when I, when I came here to talk to me about food, he goes. Either he was crazy or he's a dreamer. And you know not.

Speaker 1: 7:13

Now he's got the largest landmass restaurant in oklahoma. It's it's. You know. I just counted the tables because I want to tell you that next door I think there's 179 tables, so there's, there's his. You walk in the first part of the restaurant and it's a restaurant, and you walk into the second part of the restaurant, the size of two restaurants, and then the bar. The bar is something out of whatever you call it coyote, ugly or some, some, some movie, you know some New York city bar. That's like 50 feet long and the bar is expansive. That's not until you get outside, when, when the weather turns nice, you know we are. Uh, you wouldn't think of oklahoma, you know, as bad weather, but people down here don't like it when it gets below 50, so but it gets about 50 and 60 and sunny.

Speaker 1: 7:58

We got outdoor music and then you have a expansive outdoor area. It's kind of a the state atmosphere, state fair atmosphere, you know there's it sounds like a whole experience.

Speaker 1: 8:08

That's what people come here for. They bring their dogs, they, they, they, they ride their motorcycles out here. They drive their Corvettes, have Corvette club stuff and just uh, it's you know and you know he was. We were texting back and forth and he said pizza. Like you have pizza, you want pizza, he goes. I want you to come down and make some pizza, see how it goes. He was really respectful of my time. He goes. You come down for two or three days and you know, see how it goes. I was like there's not much damage I can do in two or three days. So I said last year was one of two times I could come down.

Speaker 1: 8:40

It was came down on Memorial Day. It was kind of a big bang entrance by accident, by mistake. So growing up you know you don't realize this when you're in high school, but a lot of people take care of you. You don't realize when you show up to eat food that somebody paid for it. Somebody had to work. Food's not free. I mean you can give it away free, but in the back end somebody paid for it.

Speaker 2: 9:06

It costs somewhere.

Speaker 1: 9:07

Somebody paid for it somewhere. It costs somebody something. So they say pass it along, or what do they say, pay it forward. So, on a side note, but also involved in all this, you know the Savannah Bananas. We're traveling the country and a friend of mine plays for them and I'm not sure how involved he is this year. In the past couple of years he's been pretty involved. His name is Bill Lee, pitched for the Boston Red Sox, pitched Game 7 of the 1975 World Series and he's been to Iowa to help me with baseball programs.

Speaker 1: 9:41

I run I've been involved with baseball for 35 years but I said, hey, maybe we can invite the team to this chicken shack place and I hadn't been here yet, I I'd seen pictures, I knew it was pretty big. But I proposed eddie. It's like, hey, can, can you feed him? He goes, yeah, and I I kept he gives me a hard time because I keep going back and I said, okay, but like to feed him, you're gonna pay for it. He goes, yeah, he goes. Don't you understand? There's like 110 people. He goes, yeah, it's a lot of food.

Speaker 1: 10:10

I said, yes, but you know it's, it's a big deal. And and uh, they played a couple games in uh, oklahoma city at the bricktown uh ballpark it's triple a park and uh, they played friday, saturday. They were on their way to Tulsa to play on Monday. So we contacted through the team and said you know, we'd like to take care of your team and Eddie footed the bill. They showed up with two cruisers, two 55-passenger buses. They got 100, 110 people packed in there and they sat outside for three hours. They ate, they drank. Guys that wanted to be secluded, they kind of hit off in the corner. Guys that wanted to do stuff they went on the dance floor. They started doing line dancing. Oh, my goodness, all the dances they do. They started doing them there and it wasn't advertised to the public, which is, you know, it's a credit to Eddie Just kind of wanted to invite him out, kind of inviting your friends over, right.

Speaker 2: 11:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:09

So, and there's basketball, there's volleyball.

Speaker 2: 11:13

That makes them more comfortable too. You know when it's, you know.

Speaker 1: 11:16

They said hands down, it was the best day off they had off all last summer.

Speaker 2: 11:22

Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 1: 11:22

You know they travel the country. They said one guy is crazy, he's like this is better than Vegas. So we videotape record and say it was better than Vegas. But you know it was a big deal. It's a country atmosphere, but I'm skipping past the first year. But he invited me down. I literally arrived at 1130 am on the Memorial Day Sunday. They arrived at 1230. I had been with the team not really with the team. I was out there for their tryouts the year before, kind of observing, watching and seeing if there was some baseball aspect in there for me. And I'm too old to play at that level and I don't dance very well, so I don't.

Speaker 2: 12:08

I was going to say are you one of the? Are you there to choreograph?

Speaker 1: 12:11

No, and I, yeah, it's kind of out of my realm, but I just fascinated, like flying the wall. I was like you want to see it, I wanted to see it. So I went out there. So I knew some of the players and I introduced Eddie and Troy and I said, hey, go, go have at it. And they, they were there. They were there for like three hours but we went to the game on Monday in Tulsa, sat in the dugout and then Wednesday you know I drug my feet starting here that Monday and Tuesday, cause I know once you start you can't not stop Right.

Speaker 1: 12:40

So once it's on, I took a day off before I started, so I started on a Wednesday and that was um May 31st. I've been at it ever since. You know we had I don't know if you could see our ovens, see our ovens, rick oven.

Speaker 1: 12:57

He bought. Those are deck ovens, marsal ovens. He bought those at a some kind of auction. He he was in restoration business for a long time, so he has a really good eye for finding good deals and knowing how you know the back, the back end of that business works. Rather than walking through the front door and buying a new toyota, you know he knows where the older toyotas are that were going to work just as good and kind of kind of a comparison of that that, that the car life. But uh, and then to get those through there, back through this wall, he had to cut a hole in the wall to get the ovens in the building.

Speaker 2: 13:36

Oh, so once they're in, they're in. Yeah, that's what we're going with.

Speaker 1: 13:41

There's too much, the legs were too long, they couldn't tip them sideways. With all the mechanisms in there, it wasn't going to work. So that was before I got here. So when I got here, uh, building was intact. And and uh, it's a fascinating building. Uh, but no, that was a simple ask. He goes can you come down here and make pizzas? I said I guess this is one or two times, I can come down and see how it goes. And and, uh, yeah, got here. And and uh, at the Savannah Bananas, and Wednesday we started with pizza. You know, wednesday, thursday, friday, I started meeting with distributor food distributors and you know, and I had an idea really what I wanted to do. And, and you know, to replicate perfection is really tough.

Speaker 1: 14:21

So the place I came from is considered by a lot of people, you know, our favorite pizza, our town's favorite pizza, you know, and sometimes you know, is it nostalgia? Is it just your hometown stuff? And it's not. You know, it's really that good.

Speaker 1: 14:34

And they do a lot of unique things and I think they did a lot of things back in the early days that they continued with. You know, rather than trying to modernize and be new and fancy, they just kept with what worked and yeah, they've been open since 1959. They have two locations. Two brothers own the place back in Sioux City and I was fortunate enough to be a part of that for a very long time and, yeah, I just never realized how much I learned after I started from scratch and do it myself. So I mean I didn't walk into mean we had, I didn't walk into a place, I didn't walk into a chain. You know it was start from start from uh, an empty cooler and ovens that had been used in about five years and and uh, put it all together yeah, and a subway.

Speaker 1: 15:21

We use a subway making table. Um, first day we tried to make pizzas, the the roller broke, so we had to, we had to fix the roller and and, uh, we just just, you know, those are daily stories. You know you do what you've done. You know that, like there's not a day that goes by that doesn't have a story that could be a, you know, a full episode on tv. There's something to happen, and and uh, something's gonna happen every day.

Speaker 1: 15:45

That's just part of it yeah, yeah so so our biggest thing is you know, just like we make pizzas, you build them from the bottom up. So you got your dough. You know and, and, and, sauce, cheese, then your ingredients. Most pizzas are made that way, some are kind of upside down. Or you know different types of pies or styles, but um, so two things happen. Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 16:07

No, I was going to say so, you know, for a place to be open for 60 years, that's not. That's not brainwashing, that's, that's the real deal.

Speaker 1: 16:18

You know that's not just home cooking, that's they don't market, they don't advertise. They support the local schools. You know they put their ads and programs but I mean they don't put stuff on TV and I, I it's just, uh, it's one of those places as part of the community, as part of the culture, and it's not. How do you say, like I said, I wonder more. This year is like it was just nostalgia. It's just like when people go back there they want to eat there. But now I delivered there.

Speaker 1: 16:41

I deliver pizzas there on and off for four years and I would go to the same house on the same day at the same time for the same person with the same pizza for a year in and year out. And you know, just on a Tuesday, on a Tuesday, that's what that guy orders on Tuesday. Yeah, so you can't fake that, you can't advertise your way into that. You got to like it. They a lot of love in their pizzas. They have a lot of people that that, uh, you know, I, I think America gets a bad rap, for we can't find good workers. I'm super fortunate. Knock on wood Again. I got great workers here and they've had great workers there. But I think that's you have to cultivate that. Just that doesn't happen by accident. Can't just say can't. When you put a help one and sign out, you don't say looking for great workers.

Speaker 2: 17:23

Right, you know, somebody saved me.

Speaker 1: 17:26

Yes, we need workers. So, uh, we've been really fortunate for some local. Uh, you know, I'm by far, by by more than a generation or two the oldest person working here. So we have a lot of young people and you have to give a lot of direction. But I watched how it was handled. You know where I came from. Yeah, I didn't invent this, you know. I watched it, I watched it, I watched how it was enacted, I watched the, the culture that was cultivated, just it, it. It went on for, you know, decades you know for generations.

Speaker 2: 17:56

That's. That's incredible. So you were, you were able to, you know, borrow some of the, the philosophies and and lessons that you learned from, from, and tell me again it was jerry's pizza, right jerry's pizza in sioux city, iowa.

Speaker 1: 18:08

Yeah, I'd like to think I was smart enough to invent this stuff, but I'm not. You know you like that. You always like to think, wow, I did that. But I, you know you, your hand, my hand was held for 37 years watching it, you know, and I did every. The only thing I didn't do there was payroll. I would deliver payroll, I would pick up payroll. I would, you know you do. You do trash, you do deliveries. When they were desperate, I would make pizzas because I, you know they had pizza makers and I, and you know I would. I would, I would fill a pizza making position every once in a while, mostly delivered and, and, and you have to basically know everything there. You got to roll because you're not. You're not useful as a functional human being in a pizza place if you can't do everything a little bit of it, for sure a little bit.

Speaker 1: 18:50

Yeah, a little bit. You know, go help me with this because you can't have the wheels stop just because somebody can't, you know, do the roller or watch pizzas for 10 minutes, or just filling in a void. So, um, we don't have a name for the system, but it's just kind of we fill in voids, you know so. When the phone rings, we don't have a name for the system, but it's just kind of we fill in voids, you know so when the phone rings we don't have a phone answer, whoever's closest, whoever is the most free, will go take the phone and they fill in that void. Now, if there's a pizza back there they walked away from, somebody can walk up, look at it and finish that. So it's, you know, watch the oven for 10 minutes.

Speaker 1: 19:24

I'm going to go next door, and so there's just a lot of void filling. You know, I always say girls, but we have more than just girls here. We have a couple guys, but our employees we'll go with that but our girls, our guys, our employees have become really excellent void fillers. They take care of our customers. We serve in sacks, we serve in pizza sacks.

Speaker 2: 19:52

I saw that I was going to ask you about that. He's going to show us the sack. I want to see this because I saw that on Instagram.

Speaker 1: 20:06

So we serve in pizza sacks and this is something that uh so on a tray in the sack on a, on a white disc. I might make a pizza for you right, I don't know if you have time, I might make a pizza for you, but so pretty standard, right. But we do that, and then it'll go right inside the sack and the amazing thing from my thighs to the floor.

Speaker 2: 20:38

I got 2,000 sacks.

Speaker 1: 20:42

No boxes whatsoever. We begrudgingly use boxes from time to time and then if we're not on on it, we, we get busy, we run out of sacks, we, it takes a couple days to get in and um, we do use boxes.

Speaker 2: 20:52

so for emergency purposes only for emergency purpose only.

Speaker 1: 20:57

There's a few customers that request it. But what happens with sacks? Is it? It? Uh, how do you say it? It? It really forces your hand there there's a better term than that but it prompts you into have to have excellent customer service because you can't stack them. So all of a sudden you got mom with two, three pizzas. You got one in one hand, one another.

Speaker 1: 21:18

She got to open the door and you got to go help her and you got to go to the car, so like, hey, we'll help you out with that. And some people are a little taken aback Like no, no, no, no, we'll get it. I'm like, well, because they're not thinking ahead. Like I got to open the door and somebody rolls in the parking lot with a $70,000 car. They don't want to put that pizza on that car, it's going to scratch it. So that kind of. But I like that, I like that aspect of it.

Speaker 2: 21:45

How did you guys decide to go with the sack versus the traditional box.

Speaker 1: 21:50

You know, when Eddie asked me to come down here, he goes I'd like you to work here, I'd like you to, you know, do pizza here because of where I worked at. And that was about the limit of our conversation and I took that as we're going to do our best to emulate where I come from, which is Jerry's Pizza. And they had sacks. You know sacks, they have a handmade dough, you know just. You know, like I said, our ovens are different, our dough is different, but but within all that, you know the customer service, you know, but got to help people and opening doors and and, uh, sacks, you can't stack them, you know, you pop them with air and they they case that air, but then they don't. They don't carry the, they don't carry the whiff of cardboard and I'm not a fan of that, I think probably because I worked at a place where we didn't have boxes. But I mean, if you do what you do, you know how much space 2,000 boxes take up.

Speaker 2: 22:49

I had to put a whole shed out back for boxes.

Speaker 1: 22:52

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:53

So we use wax there.

Speaker 1: 22:57

They come from Fisher Paper Products. We get them from a place called Wrap it Up To Go in Illinois. Hi Rich, I'm going to tell Rich to watch this.

Speaker 2: 23:07

Is it wax or is it?

Speaker 1: 23:09

So there's a name for it. It's not butcher paper, not parchment, I'm not sure parchment paper. There's a specific name for it. I'm really failing you today.

Speaker 2: 23:20

It's hard to tell on the camera, but it looks like it had kind of one of those like a wax coating on it.

Speaker 1: 23:24

It's got a little bit, because that was a big question. So what happened was um, you know, I I love oklahoma people, but there's a little, there's a little bit of you can't do that in oklahoma people, like chat, there's always a challenge. They're like, how, you can't do that, how are you going to do it? And you can, you can get you got to be a little tough to like get past that because, like, you can't do that in sacks, like, and then they told me all the reasons that that you could, eddie and I would look at each other. It's like we watched it been done since since we were in middle school, you know and you know, and the place been open since 1959.

Speaker 1: 23:58

And then a lot of places in the North Chicago area they do the sacks North Dakota. There's places that do that, but it's not prevalent. It's not prevalent, it's not popular and the some of the customers don't like it. We actually got a bad review because we have sacks instead of boxes and I'll take that. That's okay, but but but for us it's this better, better taste and and uh, you know, you get into storage and, like I said, I got uh, uh, cheese stick sacks and pizza sacks. I got got uh from my waist down to the floor. I got a thought, I got 2000 and 2000 boxes take up a lot of space, it sure does.

Speaker 1: 24:33

We're going to say it's better for the world to a little less, a little less footprint.

Speaker 2: 24:36

But uh, yeah, I'll take that. I'll take that all day long, and I'm used to seeing slices go in a sack, but I hadn't seen where you know, at least in operation, where a whole pie would go in. So what size, what size pieces do you guys make?

Speaker 1: 24:50

So we officially only have 14 inch pizzas on our menu? Ok, so I mean, we're set up with templates to cut eight, 10, 12, 14 and 16 inch pizzas. You know, like I said, I love your podcast and the messages you put out there and you talked about. You know making it simple If you can do. You know I'm involved in baseball and you know if you can catch a ground ball. You know you make money. You know it sounds too simplistic, but the higher levels you go up you don't see guys miss. So on this we didn't want to miss. So instead of offering minis and smalls and mediums and large and doubles, we just offer one size. It's a large.

Speaker 2: 25:39

Let's master a large pizza, yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:42

Yep, and we get all kinds of ideas. You need to have salads, you need to have this, you should do this. You're never going to survive in Oklahoma without chicken bacon ranch pizza. I'm like, well, so chicken bacon ranch pizza is not happening here. So we, we serve pizza and next door they serve chicken. So if you want chicken, it's all. We call it 47, 10 steps east, 47-second walk over there. If you want chicken, if you want pizza, so then we have. This is our mascot. I'm trying to do this on camera.

Speaker 2: 26:14

You got the chicken. Oh, I see him. Oh, with the pizza.

Speaker 1: 26:17

This is the chicken. Our chicken serves pizza, so we don't serve chicken on pizza.

Speaker 2: 26:32

So that became and that went on our shirt then.

Speaker 1: 26:34

So that's on our uh oh, that's crazy.

Speaker 2: 26:35

I see it. Yeah, I see it. So we got all the identified. We don't serve chicken, no pizza chicken serving pizza.

Speaker 1: 26:42

We have route 66, oklahoma, um. Tried to go through some fancy logo designs and a friend of mine that's designer said use that. I'm like I can't use that. That's the sign I paid out front. It took me 10 minutes and he says no, you have to use that like no I can't use that.

Speaker 1: 26:59

And I said he goes no, you have to, because now you have hand-painted sign and handmade pizzas. So, wow, I like it, that's. That's that became our logo. But back to the sacks. You know, it was something we had been used to and uh. Yet, like I said, if you're going to come to home and toughen up a little bit because they're going to tell you, they're going to challenge you and they said you can't do that, you know the sacks are going to get greasy and and uh, and they're going to rip. And. But no, it's, if you prep them right and pop the sack, a little air in there creates a little warmth bubble too, a little steam in there. So when you tear it open, the steam comes out and got that freshness, yeah, right in your face yeah, yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2: 27:41

I I mean the one thing I know about oklahoma if they're going to challenge you once, they love you, they love you though.

Speaker 1: 27:47

I've been told that, yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:48

Once they love you, they love you.

Speaker 1: 27:50

That's that a friend? So I was. I got down here and you know I hadn't been here much, a couple of days here and there in my life and passing through. I used to go to school in Texas and I would go right through Oklahoma. You're exactly right. I think you have friends or relatives out here.

Speaker 2: 28:10

Yeah, my brother's in Bartlesville.

Speaker 1: 28:11

There you go, so. So you got to put Pizza Shack on your list of destinations this year.

Speaker 2: 28:17

I'd love to. I'd love to, and I spent a lot of time with with Fuzzy's Taco Shop and you know the stores that operate in Oklahoma were firing away some of the best in the system and you know those people just just absolutely love the brand. So once they embraced it and it was the same thing.

Speaker 1: 28:31

You can't make tacos like that in Oklahoma and once they embraced it and, you know, put one there in Bricktown and just took off. It's crazy. Well, bricktown's a. You know it's a famous place. I was down there yesterday and it's. It's got a lot of neat places. I'm not sure what the name of your place is, but what is it? What was it?

Speaker 2: 28:47

Fuzzy's Fuzzy's Taco Shop.

Speaker 1: 28:49

Yes, I've heard famous things about that.

Speaker 2: 28:53

Yeah, so, so they had to. They had to earn it the same way, you know, because they were different, very different.

Speaker 1: 29:06

So I, I, uh, I got here, I didn't know anybody and and I knew Ed and uh, uh knew Troy is a classmate of ours. Well, there's another classmate that lives 10 minutes from here. So I had a few points of reference and people to know and after that I was like every day it was new. You know, I, I got, I got, I got lost in the, in the. How many tens, tens of new friends and people am I going to know today?

Speaker 1: 29:22

So I was watching, I got here the first week. I got here I emailed a guy, um, um, you know he was from out of town and he moved into. I read about him a little bit from out of town, moved into town and and started up some restaurants and won an award and that's, that's the limit that I knew about it, you know. So I I don't know that I really consider myself a restaurateur or a pizza pizza place guy, but I, looking back, I've worked in like 15 kitchens in my life, not including the Jerry's pizza, but it's always kind of been an interesting you know, fascinated by the food stuff and and my mom told me some because I'd make funky sandwiches and she said we should be a chef and I never never thought about it.

Speaker 1: 30:07

But I paid attention. You know, we came down here. I thought we could do something neat and so I emailed the guy. I said, hey, you know, if you want to bring your family or friends out, sometimes because it's like chefs, they get engrossed in what they do and they need to not do that and go somewhere else and and just relax and have, like the savannah bananas, just go somewhere and have a meal, yeah, um. So uh, I did, and then he never called me back and uh, about a month and a half later, he calls me back and he says, hey, this is andrew black.

Speaker 1: 30:37

And I'm like it's like, wait a second, I know this, he goes, you would email me. It's like, yeah, yeah, because we're. I know this he goes, you had emailed me. It's like, yeah, yeah, because we're out here. He goes, we're going to have chicken next door, we're going to like to come over and have some pizza. I was like okay, and as we're walking over here, I tell him. I was like you know, I contact you because you were from somewhere else.

Speaker 1: 30:58

He's from Jamaica originally and had been in the states for quite a while, but he's, I was like you're from somewhere else and you came here and I told him that I'm like you get a little bit of that. You can't do that here. And and he goes. You know what he goes? I ran the same thing, he goes. But once they love you, they'll love you and and you make good food for them and they'll they'll turn out for you, they'll be loyal and and he was right, and we have an amazing amount of loyal customers. They're like clockwork now. They're starting to come in. On certain days I'm like, okay, that's Mark, at 4.30 on a Saturday he's here for a few days, Get the regulars.

Speaker 1: 31:31

I like that yeah yeah, but I think what appealed to him in replying to my email was I'm not from here and I'm trying something new too, and I think you took some appreciation for that. Turns out the guy who is Andrew Black is is. He won a major nationwide restaurant tourist chef award and is considered one of the top chefs in America. So we were, we were blessed that just. You know, that's, that's. I just contact people. You have to contact people and and and, just like I contacted you. And I just contact people. You have to contact people, just like I contacted you.

Speaker 1: 32:07

It was interesting to see people do interesting things. I just had no idea the level of high fluency it was in the kitchen. He didn't put that on when he came here. I brought him to our kitchen and said he likes something about our kitchen. He walked, I brought him to our kitchen and say wow, you got going on here. He likes up about our kitchen and and had some pizza. He goes I'm not much of a pizza eater, but I like your pizza and and so so it's been good. That's a great endorsement.

Speaker 2: 32:35

to get you know right from the beginning it is.

Speaker 1: 32:37

I haven't used it. I'm not, you know, I tell the story, but I, you know, I wouldn't be bad to say Andrew Black approved, but he's an, he's a neat guy. We've traded a few messages and he continues to hope. But you know, then I listened to one of his stories. You know where. He came in and he opened up a fancy, high-end restaurant. I think he said they had four people the first night and four or six the next night, and some big spender told him you can't make that stuff here in Oklahoma. Never hope to make money. Might as well close up now. That was you know. So you get a little, you get challenged. I didn't see it as a challenge first. I took it as an insult and I realized it's not an insult. It's like you know what do you?

Speaker 2: 33:19

got, you got to earn it yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:21

What do you got? Yeah, what do you got? Well, I'm convinced it came from the sooner days, when the sooner is named after who gets there sooner, you know. When they had the land rush, you know. So people had to rush out, put a, put a, put a flag in the land that's our land. So you got to. You know, you're challenged. You're challenged by that mentality. I think that. I think that carries through to today, and no, it's been, and I learned something new about Oklahoma every day, and but it's been interesting.

Speaker 2: 33:52

So so you guys, then you open and it looks like in July. Was there pressure from the beginning to to live up to? I mean you're, you're attached to an iconic restaurant, now know they're at, you know, next to chicken shack. Was there pressure on you guys in the beginning to to show up and say like this is has to be right, on that same level as experience as chicken shack?

Speaker 1: 34:14

same chicken shack. That's a. That's a different entity, like that's a different. You know the whole atmosphere over there. That's different than where I came from in the pizza place. Our pizza place is miniature, same building as Venice in 1959. So that was my level of I need to be. I need to do whatever we need to do to make it as good as that, you know that's considered by everybody.

Speaker 1: 34:36

Every town's got one, but for some reason that seems to be a little different cut above the rest for me. And like reason that seems to be a little different cut above the rest for me, and like that's, you know we consider that the world's best pizza.

Speaker 1: 34:46

So now, all of a sudden, I work there forever. Now I gotta try to, I gotta try to emulate that. I gotta, and I can't replicate it. You know, there's nothing to replicate there, it's just like. You know, the dough recipe is a secret. Uh, our ovens are different, um, you know, and you're used to using certain equipment. I walked in here, I opened the oven. I'm like, oh, it's like these are different ovens, you know, and you're used to using certain equipment. I walked in here, I opened the oven. I'm like, oh, it's like these are different ovens, you know. And then so I got different ovens, so you got to create our own dough and we had, you know, 30 days up and running. So, food stocked. Uh, dough recipe, um, that was so.

Speaker 1: 35:17

I was talking earlier about building from the pizza up the pizza up. Like you. Like you, uh, like you, make a pizza. You know, we had to start with dough. And, yeah, they, they jerry's used to do their own dough. And then, a long, long time ago, they uh very famous donut shop in our town that's also been open for 60, 70 years. You know, whoever's watching this, uh, you might not, not, might not, think that uhoux City, iowa, would give you an extraordinary culinary experience. But it's an amazing setup of these small places that are family-owned, that have been in business for 50 and 60 years.

Speaker 2: 35:52

That doesn't happen by accident.

Speaker 1: 35:55

No, there's miles in. They have Charlie Boy's. Somebody watching this somewhere is going to know what I'm talking about. They have Charlie Boy's sandwiches. There's Tasty In-N-Out, which is two blocks away. That has a different type of sandwich that's famous. They've been open since the 50s or 60s. There's a place called Lawanitas that President Obama visited and somebody named them as a top 10 life-changing burrito of 2017, whatever. And Jerry's Pizza Named them as the top 10 life-changing burrito of 2017, whatever. And Jerry's Pizza. There's Bob Rose Point.

Speaker 1: 36:29

After they have pizza and wings and a lot of the stuff Eddie also tried to emulate. He's like can we do that as good as they did it? And there's Sneaky's Chicken and I want to get somebody mad at me that I didn't name their restaurant or somebody, but it's you know, it was just all these really Alfredo's pizza Our pizza down here is called Unique. You know, back home, where I came from, there was, you know, six blocks away there was another place that was kind of similar Bob Rose and Alfredo's similar. And there's a place downtown that has Buffalo Alice, alfredo's similar, and and uh, um, there's a place downtown that has Buffalo Buffalo Alice. Um. So if you're from Sioux city, been through there, you're going to appreciate this If you haven't been, if you're close uh, I hope it encourages someone to go to Sioux city and try out and try these places that I know I'm interested.

Speaker 1: 37:20

Well, so it, and it's not a nostalgia thing. It's nostalgia when you go back there, but when you live there, you eat these places yeah, these are the places that you go to every, every week, right?

Speaker 1: 37:28

yep, and, and they've been there, they're family-owned, they've been there for 40, 50, 60 years and, uh, I mean, la juanita's is an amazing, it's a, it's a cultural mix, for, in the middle of town, of people from everywhere, all, all, all color shapes, sizes, billfold sizes, different, and just people walk in there and the guy has a paper, brown paper bag and he's writing it down, he's shouting out the orders and the Mexican food circles, it goes in a circle to you to write out to you, and it's, it's, it's an experience just to watch it, so, so, so, in an effort to kind of hopefully, you know, like I said emulate or replicate those places, our level of I don't want to say stress, but what you're trying to attain was really high.

Speaker 1: 38:13

It was a high mark, it sounds like it. So, yeah, so we wanted obviously good dough and and and we called donut shops and Tyrell. You, you know, sometimes it's not so much. Can you get that to me? Do, do you want to get it for me? You know? So it's ambition testing, you know, we, we, we tried a few places that, uh, very well, rep very good reputations and and one said you know, we can probably put together a couple recipes for you. Having to in three weeks, I'm like when do you need it?

Speaker 1: 38:41

I'm like well, yesterday yeah, three weeks ago because, because whatever dough you give me is not what we're going to use. We're going to tweak it, we're going to request tweaks and additions and subtractions and stuff. So we started getting dough from about three or four different places and, uh, and then, yeah, can you add more? Can you take a little moisture out of it? Can you try this? Can you add this? Can you take this out? So our, we people think it's a fascinating story, I guess, but it just we, just that's.

Speaker 1: 39:12

Who had the best dough was a place called Oklahoma Academy. Uh, it's the Seventh Day Adventist Boarding School. Uh, saturday is sabbath, so I have to make sure I have my dough and I can't order on saturday. So I got to plan my week out around that and and, uh, they have margaret. Margaret, I'm gonna make margaret watch this so she can see your name out there and karen, the lady that runs the place. So it's a seventh day adventist boarding school. Kids from all over the world. Um, they have, they have an aviation program, they have a mechanics program, they also have a bakery and food culinary. It's a high school, but it's also they do a vocation with it.

Speaker 2: 39:58

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1: 39:59

And they have their own standalone bakery store I'm sorry store that sells their baked goods. They do a lot of clean food To the public.

Speaker 2: 40:08

They have a retail location.

Speaker 1: 40:10

Yeah, yeah. So it's a non-for-profit school and they run a non-for-profit business. It's a bakery and a food store and you know the owner and the sister of the owner Winch, you know they just said you and the sister of the owner winched, you know, they just said you know this is a place that needs to be on our list and I tried other places. You know, I tried the sourdough place and I couldn't get the dough through the roller. Just dough's got its own character.

Speaker 2: 40:32

It's got its own life for sure, absolutely it's got its own character.

Speaker 1: 40:35

It's like weather can change. So you got to be, you know, you got to be ready for that. But you know, and then one day in the process, you know, she showed up with dough and basically apologized. She goes I don't think this is what you're looking for, but this is kind of how you told us how it should be. And I started moving it and feeling it. I'm like this is amazing. It's the one, it's the one you know, and she was apologizing for bringing me a bad batch of dough. The one, it's the one you know, and she was apologizing for bringing me a bad batch of dough and I, because it's, it's not traditional, you know, it's not aaron, ours is kind of more dense. It's not light and airy and puffy. Uh, it can be when it expands, when you, when you expose it to certain temperatures, it'll get puffy and airy. But we like to keep it cold for as long as we can. And then, uh, you know, just let it go to room temperature and start the dough process and a little more dense.

Speaker 2: 41:23

You guys put a lot of toppings on, so I imagine that's necessary too for a dough.

Speaker 1: 41:28

I never thought about that. So, yeah, our dough is a little dense, but it crisps up, it hardens up, but yeah, we, we it's. I even had one customer say do you really need to put that many toppings on? I'm like do you not like that? He goes no, no, no, I like it, but maybe you make more money if you put less on. He goes yeah, but I think people are coming for that. Now it's a thing. Now it's a thing like wow, you put a lot of toppings on your pizza, so they show up. There's nothing worse when you show up to a place, get a pepper bite of pepperoni. So we don't, you know, I mean our largest, our largest 14 inches.

Speaker 1: 42:06

We don't count. If we do count it should be around 63. But uh, you know it's a, it's. We fill all the white spaces. Uh, we talk about color a lot, so those white we fill up. We cover up the white with the red, with the sauce. You know you don't want to see much of the dough.

Speaker 2: 42:22

So no crust toppings to the edge right.

Speaker 1: 42:25

Toppings to the edge, yep, yep. And then you cover up the red with the white, with cheese. You know, and you're going to have minimal. You know some places, you know different places, they'll have blobs of cheese, but we cover ours. And then after that, you know you, you, you cover the toppings and and we have a systematic way that changes every day because it's it's really tough to have as many templates as pizzas that we make to have. That's how that one is, that's how that one is. But we follow kind of a set of rules of how much meat is exposed and how much, how much more meat you put on if there's less ingredients. So so by the time you get to the top, it's kind of all equal, regardless of how many you know ingredients you have on there.

Speaker 2: 43:10

But so constantly, constantly evolving. You know how the distribution works and you know what that, what the end product looks like. Do you square cut or is it or is it uh?

Speaker 1: 43:22

we get. We get our illinois people come in here and they want a party style. They want to cut, square, cut or whatever you call it party style, but general, no, we cut it in 12s. So we have 14 inch pizza. We cut in 12s and uh, uh, occasionally what we like to do, uh is cut it into 16s or 20s and take it next door to the chicken shack.

Speaker 2: 43:43

Let people sample it.

Speaker 1: 43:44

Yeah, yeah, we call it appetizer slices, so we half it, we half it again and we half those halves and half those halves. If I did my math right there, you should have 60 and 20 pieces. But you know just something to grab onto. You know like I talk about. Like pizza is $20. It's a commitment, right, it's not a. You know like I talk about. Like pizza is 20 bucks. Like it's a commitment, right, it's not a seven dollar sandwich and a coke for for 9.99, and 20 is a commitment. So are you going to try 20? You know so. No, you'll spend 20 in a hurry if you like that little slice, but if you never had it, you know that.

Speaker 1: 44:16

So that's our biggest, our biggest, our biggest and best and baddest advertisement is walk next door to the chicken shack and we just walk up to the table Like we didn't order pizza. I'm like, no, no, no, we got some from next door. I'm like you can do that Because they don't know that we're connected so much. But yeah, it's so that and a million other stories I could tell you. So when you start a place, you know I started with all my employees, I think three of them. This is their first job ever so, which can be challenging. That can also be good. They don't have anything in their mind of how it's going to work, so given a lot of instruction, I love a blank canvas.

Speaker 2: 44:55

It gives you the chance to really do it the right way. It takes the right leader to do it. However you can get, you can get the most out of a person when there's no, when there's no other.

Speaker 1: 45:05

You know experiences in there preconceived pizza experiences seems like it'd be a great thing, but but it's hard to break those habits. So so we've had one of our girls worked in a restaurant before actually two of them had, and there's some they go. You know, we did this there, we did this there and we try to eliminate we did this there because this is how we're going to do it, you know, and, and the biggest thing in making pizza is sometimes you'll get a, you'll get a tendency. That's my biggest, my biggest downfall when I worked at Jerry's Like, like Bob, make it how we make it, not how you like it, you know, because sometimes I might like a little more sauce and but you had to standardize it and there was no templates there either, it was just.

Speaker 2: 45:45

Jerry's pizza, not Bob's pizza.

Speaker 1: 45:47

Yes, it was hand-me-down information. You know, it was all verbal, it was all verbal. There was no booklet, there was no instruction manual, there was no videos, there was no templates. So you know, to the chagrin of one of my workers at the chicken sack, we've kind of avoided that to here because I wanted them to. I want because if I can teach you, Tyrell, how to do it and you're proficient at it, then you can teach the next person. So I don't have to train the new people, not in a lazy way, Just I like to watch our people train the new people because that reinforces to them how we make it and then I can correct it if it's not right. But then you don't have to micromanage little things like that. Like pizza looks good and I want to have our pizzas not identifiable by who made them.

Speaker 2: 46:33

Absolutely. I like that.

Speaker 1: 46:34

Because you know there's restaurants. When you walk in, it's like, is John cooking today? He's like yeah, it's like wow, we're going to go next door. Is like yeah, it's like wow, we're going to go next door. Like, yeah, is Jimmy back there? It's like yeah, okay, so I'll take this this and this, so you don't want to.

Speaker 2: 46:47

The customers know. The customers will know.

Speaker 1: 46:50

You think they don't, but they do so. But anyway, no, the biggest challenge was you know there's so many steps to a pizza like. I really encourage them to fix things. You know, because if I, if I roll, if I don't dust off enough flour, I like the next person you have to do that. You know I have to get rid of the flour on the pizza. You know we don't want to cake. You know that pasty taste in your mouth. So I was like, if that person doesn't do their job not in a bad way, just it didn't get done or didn't get done how it should have been, you know next person has to do it. So then the sauce goes on, and then the cheese goes on, and then the pizza goes on, and and then. So the pizza gets checked once when they're done, once when I check it, you know, and another time when I bring it out and make sure everything's right, cause you'll miss stuff. No, black olives, add black olives, whatever.

Speaker 2: 47:44

And and the biggest challenge was boy, our first month, month and a half I was auditing probably 75 of our pizzas, just just. Oh yeah, you really want to make sure in those early, those early days yeah, yeah, and then the early days like that.

Speaker 1: 47:54

That sets your tone right. Besides sending it back, it's like that's too much of this, that's not enough for this. You know, I sent it back and and, uh, our sending it back means it's just, I hand it to the left because our kitchen's pretty small. You know, we work in a circle or in u-shape, j, j, shape, slash, u, shape slash, circle. It's pretty small. A lot of butts in the kitchen, a lot of a lot of contact. You know you got to be careful where you're at, but it's not. I don't have to walk it somewhere. I was like turn around, I was like here you got it, yeah, yeah and and I just I just was thinking about last year.

Speaker 1: 48:26

The other day I walked in and, uh, one of my, one of my workers comes in, girl comes in and and didn't say boo to me. I started making pizzas, I started rolling, I started she was sauce and cheese, she'd make them. We. We hardly talked at all. So she, you know but. But, but that happened today. From what happened took place last august, yeah, like it was reinforced and all of a sudden, like I just went through the whole night realizing that, other than a little bit of chit chat, there was no pizza talk. It was just like, okay, that's done.

Speaker 2: 48:55

And everyone just do, just doing what they need to do yeah that's unfortunate.

Speaker 1: 49:00

I have good workers. I I'll you know. I always hear the American thing like wow, we can't find good people. The young kids, they're crap, they can't do anything, they won't work and, like I don't know, ours do. I've been fortunate, you know, and and people.

Speaker 2: 49:14

People work for people. It's if you can't find good people. It's probably. It's probably a reflection on leadership.

Speaker 1: 49:23

There you go. That's what I say. Yeah, so you know. And then then the next thing was we got the dough. We got the dough how we wanted and and the sauce that we get, you know, the companies tell me it's like bob, nobody gets this sauce. Why do you want this? I'm like oh, I want it because I like it.

Speaker 1: 49:34

It's like, well, how about this other sauce? Like no, I I go, 80 of the people in oklahoma city order that sauce. I'm like, well, that's probably one reason I don't want it. But you know, I just wanted, I wanted what I wanted and Eddie was satisfied with that. He wanted what, what he wanted. Where we came from and tried to like I said you can't replicate perfection. So it wasn't a effort to replicate, it was an effort to make your own thing and do your own thing and and try to emulate what you learned and have good pizzas. So you know, people like our crust and and that's, that's a huge part of pizza.

Speaker 2: 50:08

Yeah. And so so how does, how does Oklahoma Academy get you? So do you have scheduled deliveries with them? Do they give it to you? And I guess, if it's, you're doing 14, what are you getting? 14, 15 hours of dough balls from them, or do?

Speaker 1: 50:23

they actually press out. We do. We get it in a sack, about a 15 pound sack, and when I I worked at, before we go pick up the, we go pick up the dough. I think it was like 30 to 40 pound bags. You know, we just the the less cut the better when I get it, because then if it's cut, every time you've cut dough, that dough is exposed to the air and then it gets a little crispy and crusty and which isn't terrible, but you want it as as untouched as possible. So we get it in, you know, in bags, probably 10, 15, 20 pounds. They vary a little bit. But yeah, as needed, we just, we just cut it. You know, we punch, punch it. We punch our dough after a certain point.

Speaker 1: 51:06

So, uh, to to it expands to the area that is growing in yeah and you know we'll cut the sacks so they can grow a little more, but at a certain point I want to collapse it, you know. So we'll punch it to take some air out of it.

Speaker 1: 51:21

Yeah, take some air out of it. You know, keep it that, keep that dense like we like it and get it dense. And then you know, we go through a couple of orders a week and I've heard, I've heard people brag about fresh dough, while we make fresh dough every day. I'm like I was like we don't want fresh dough. You know that day of dough is OK. You know, just like chili, chili is OK that first day.

Speaker 2: 51:48

But there's nothing better than two or three day old chili, you know, yeah, seasons, yeah, our dough, our dough's best on day two and day three. Yeah, it's day two, day two, day three, that's what we prep for I don't know if that's a good insight inside conversation office.

Speaker 1: 51:55

It's uh, because because day old donuts are cheap, right, day old bread, you know, week old bread is cheap, but our, our best dough is on the second and third day. You know it, it uh, it grows within itself and it it just it uh. You know, without probably probably unmasking that I I'm not an expert baker, but, um, whatever happens inside the dough, you know when it ferments and stuff, and and I've read things they talk about. You know when it ferments and stuff and, and I've read things they talk about. You know the second, third day. But I just, I just know by taste, by touch, by feel, by how it pulls, how it rolls. You know your best, your best dough and our dough will last a little longer. It's really clean, a lot of cleanliness in it. You know the type of type of stuff we could. We requested some different things that they couldn't or wouldn't put in there, based on your dietary guidelines at their school, uh, but yeah, yeah, you know that when they advertise fresh dough, you know it's so good but that says you didn't.

Speaker 2: 52:51

You didn't have to buy a mixer, you don't have to tweak your recipe or worry about who the prep guy's going to be day to day correct. Um, you have some, you know some, consistency and and really the the foundational product of what you do, so I like it. Now, from a cost standpoint, did you find it to be comparable to just doing it on your own?

Speaker 1: 53:14

Too expensive, so, uh, but you get into a lot of the ingredients they use. You know, and, and I told somebody, like you know, maybe our pizza is a little too expensive, but if our pizza is too expensive, that covers our dough costs. You know, and, and I told somebody, like you know, maybe our pizza is a little too expensive, but if our pizza too expensive, that covers our dough costs. You know our dough is a little expensive, but you know it's not factory made, it's never frozen. Um and uh, one of our sale, one of the salesmen at a place called hagar they, they fix machines. We went in there one time and he would. I was telling about our new place and just little stuff like that. He gave me a cutting board. I'm like wow, he gave me something. You know, he gave me something that I use every day, and so you remember those things. But I always remember him telling me he goes, people will pay for better, that's right.

Speaker 1: 53:57

So we like to believe it's a little bit better. You know it's not churned out in a factory, it's not. It's not using all the cheapest ingredients to make a cheap pizza, to, to, to bump up a little bit in price to make a lot of profits. And I mean, obviously you're in business, you want to make more than you spend to stay alive.

Speaker 2: 54:16

But you got to last.

Speaker 1: 54:18

Well, you do, but I mean to compromise on a lot of things, things you know. So our pizza is a little more expensive, I think, than a lot of places. But also the ingredients we put in. I mean, we shred our own block mozzarella cheese. Um, we use, uh, we use, sauce that we have to special order because we can't get it.

Speaker 1: 54:35

You know, normal, normal ways, but people really like our sauce. It's california tomatoes, super low in acidity and a little bit of basil, but, um, we kind of heavily season the top of our pizzas, yeah, so I think your best Mexican food is not spicy. You add your own spices to it. You know, it's really fulfilling, how do you say it? It's really the best Mexican food I ever had. It's not spicy, it's like you spice it up how you want, but it has a good foundation, a good, good base, but it's really rich in taste. Yeah, so, so our dough is, you know, it's not seasoned with garlic, anything. Our sauce has a touch of basil. Our, our, our, our, our block mozzarella, straight whole milk, block mozzarella doesn't have a tweak of, you know, any other kind of cheese in there, or a cheddar mix or something like that yeah, so, and then our, our, uh, you know we press our own meats, so our hamburger and uh, sausage we press our own and, and a lot of people they don't.

Speaker 1: 55:36

They don't understand that until they tell us, like, like, you get hamburger at the store, you know you can buy a frozen patty and put on the grill, but if you make your own hamburger that's going to taste better. So we, we press our own sausage and hamburger and, you know, cut our own onions and green peppers and then we do heavily season the top. Well, not heavily. We do a little extra seasoning on the top to make up for what's not in the rest of it. And and that's it's been a big thing for us People, people like it, the rest of it and, and that's, it's been a big thing for us People, people like it, and and I don't know it's been, it's been good and it's been interesting.

Speaker 2: 56:09

So Well, that's cool. So you, I mean you got it, you got a good team, you built a great product. You, you're seeing the success of it.

Speaker 1: 56:19

What's next for pizza shack. What's next for pizza shack here it is is. I'll show you right here what's next for pizza shack is. Here's our new. We'll call it a campaign. How do I put that right there?

Speaker 2: 56:30

chicken shack. Yes, we have pizza. Yeah, you know there's.

Speaker 1: 56:34

There's that challenge, like, like, we are literally so I might give you a tour of the building in about a 30-second tour, but it's a 1920s gas station. I'm going to turn this around. Well, I'll just turn around. I'll just go out there and talk to you for a second. Yeah, let's do it. You can see Route 66.

Speaker 2: 56:59

Do you get a lot of tourist traffic?

Speaker 1: 57:02

You know we do, so there you can see where we're at. We're at Route 66. And it's got all the signs up there. I'm just trying to get in some good light here. Literally on Route 66. And we've had people from Belgium, australia, germany, spain, portugal, and they're just traveling through. Sometimes they don't want pizza, they just want to take pictures.

Speaker 2: 57:28

Nice.

Speaker 1: 57:30

But our building is a 1920s gas station and it's. You know, I think I said the chicken shack has 179 tables, if not more, and when Eddie hears me say this, he'll probably add another 15 tables. Just so he's got more and it's expansive, it's huge. And when Eddie hears me say this, he'll probably add another 15 tables, just so he's got more and it's expansive, it's huge. I mean, they'll serve, you know, six, 700 people on a weekend, on a single day weekend, and cycling through people all day long. You got fire pits out there, but we have we seat about 20, 22.

Speaker 1: 57:58

And so the yes, we have pizza we're calling it a campaign, yes, we have pizzas is we forget. Sometimes, when you're inside the game, you forget that not everybody knows what's going on. You know people walk in and it's like, you know, we have pizza next door and the chicken shack menu is a sacred menu. It's going to stay the same. Now he adds specials, he'll add specials, he'll add daily specials, different things like that. But their menu is kind of, uh, he wants to be consistent. So in that consistency doesn't include exactly pizza on that menu, but we're allowed, obviously, because you want to sell pizza, but we're allowed to have. You know, we've handed out flyers, we've tried different things, but I think a lot of it is like you'll talk to people like you guys have pizza and so our, yes, we have pizza yeah yes, we have pizza it's not there, but I promise there's pizza.

Speaker 1: 58:51

If you want pizza, we can yeah, so, and you know we're about 100 yards from the chicken shack kitchen and and, uh, that helps take a little stress off of their kitchen. You know when they're doing, when they're serving. Uh, I mean they just did a party the other day, about a four hour party for 300 people and they're gone in 20 minutes that that dining room looks like nobody's been in there all day. They'll clean it up, turn it over and next thing you know, then you got serving customers all night. It's, it's, you know he's done a really great thing just just by I call it five miles from civilization. Know he's done a really great thing just just by I call it five miles from civilization.

Speaker 1: 59:27

We are, we are five miles from edmund. Uh, like, I, like we talked about oklahoma people. They will challenge you and and, uh, you gotta, gotta be ready for it. And then the other thing is is, regardless of how big of boots they have and how nice the cars they have and they work or live in downtown oklahoma city, they like the country. It's, it's part of the culture here. You know there's more horses in Oklahoma, I think, than in the state, but yeah, they love coming out here and you're in the country when you're here and you're only 25 minutes from downtown Oklahoma City and you're only five minutes from Edmond, which is a very large community right north of Oklahoma City. I don't know if it's a suburb, so much as it is its own city, oklahoma city, its own.

Speaker 2: 1:00:03

I don't know if it's a suburb, so much as it is its own city just adjacent to Oklahoma city, cause they're their own thing and and uh, um, you know, but but uh, so do you guys? So, being located, you know, five miles outside the city.

Speaker 1: 1:00:19

Uh, I imagine you probably don't deliver then. So everyone comes to you, right, comes to you, right. So, uh, one size pizza and then, and then 10 inch cheese stick and and then just pop and and, uh, you know, uh, uh, just trying to make do simple good right right now, so pete's delivery might be down the road. Um, we're starting to do more and more pickup certain things with to go section run by troy we talked about earlier and and and um, but yeah, I just just trying to do simple as good as we can and then go from there, so so so last story, I guess on the simple is uh, we tried, uh, we had some oven issues, we had some earthquake, we had, uh, freezing pipes which not really conducive to Oklahoma they don't freeze down here a lot, but but we had, uh, freezing pipes which not really conducive to oklahoma they don't freeze down here a lot, but but we had a bunch of issues.

Speaker 1: 1:01:06

Next thing, you know, it's like wow, we got all this dough, we got this food. What do we do? I mean, your cheapest option is throw food away. It's probably your worst option, but it's your cheapest option. Then you know, because you're just going to use it and what do you do with it? You can't sell it. So we made it 10 for the kitchen and had them freeze it. And next thing, you know, we're taking full advantage of the chicken shack with their giant freezer and we got, we stock about 30 to 50 frozen pizzas over there now and we make them here. We do a factory night or factory hour. Bring our girls in or guys or workers in for, you know, two hours and we'll knock out a bunch of pizzas and freeze them. And yeah, and now, and all of a sudden, we have a frozen pizza business at the Chicken Shack.

Speaker 2: 1:01:44

So are they par-baked? Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. You're taking baked businesses taking on as an accident, but became a big mover for you.

Speaker 1: 1:01:55

Well, what do they say? With lemons, make lemonade. When you have frozen pipes, you make frozen pizzas. So no, they're not par-baked. We'll occasionally do some half baked, but uh, no, they're not par baked, half baked, quarter baked, anything they're just, they're just straight frozen pizzas. So, uh, the dough and that's. We have some instructions, you know, to preheat the oven with with, uh, you know something underneath the surface.

Speaker 2: 1:02:18

But uh, we've had good reviews, people, people seem to like them and and to the point that you have to keep you know, 30 to 50 in stock at all times. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:02:28

So we go count stock, so it rotates with our dough. You know, at the end of our dough cycle it's like, ok, where are we at with frozen pizzas, how much dough we have left. Don't want to throw anything away. You know, sometimes we make the kitchen, the chicken chat kitchen, very happy. They got 30 to 50 people working over there on any given day. We'll make them pizza.

Speaker 1: 1:02:49

You know, we just want to get to the end of our dough cycle and not have to throw anything away and and uh, but also do it in a timely manner where we're using fresh dough, uh, so it's kind of a trick, it's a little little imaginary trick. You gotta try to put it together like a puzzle. So that's very cool. You know I got. I gotta tell you one thing, though. I know I, I, I, if you let me, I keep talking, but I I'm sure you want to get onto other things for the day. But you know, I I tell we have a, so we got this. You walk in, you see the free apple juice sign right, and then, and then we have a. Uh, we have apple juice in a container and and uh, you know people like what's the deal with the free apple juice like it's strange and I'm like I don't know what's the deal with free tortilla chips at a mexican restaurant you don't have to take it right before.

Speaker 1: 1:03:40

You're like, you know you're going to that mexican restaurant that's got those awesome chips, right. You walk in it's like, uh, where's my chips? You know, you, yeah, you know, and and uh, so there's no correlation with the chips and the apple juice. But I tell you what people ask me, why we do that, and when I was, when I was young and like probably 10 years old, we go to a place called stevenson's apple farm in kansas city. We'll watch some Royals games, and my dad was a coach and he had one of his former players named Paul Splitter.

Speaker 1: 1:04:07

If you played for the Royals, we would go down to this, down to Kansas City, down to Kansas City, and we'd go to this place every summer called Stevenson's Apple Farm. And so I'm a little kid. If you can make an impression on a little kid, it must be a good thing, right? Yeah, a little kid, if you can make an impression on a little kid, it must be be a good thing, right, yeah? So they had free apple apple cider. Everything in the restaurant was made out of apples apple butter, apple crisp, apple muffin, apple apple fritters. All their steaks and chicken had some kind of apple rub in them, but they had free apples, my kind of place.

Speaker 2: 1:04:38

Yeah, it was so good.

Speaker 1: 1:04:39

Actually they're closed unfortunately, but there's their cookbook and they would sell their cookbook. They didn't have any secrets, they would sell like what they made in the restaurant. Then you know, the challenge is you can't make that, you can't replicate that, you can't replicate that perfection. So I tell my workers, like this might be somebody's favorite restaurant, we don't know why. You know if it's the sacks and the pizza or if it's, you know if it's the uh, not not necessarily free apple juice gonna make it. But I still remember when I was 10 years old how big a deal was. And now we got kids that'll come in.

Speaker 1: 1:05:13

They make a beeline to the apple juice yeah, someone's gonna remember that there you go, there you go, and I just I thought it'd be a nice touch and eddie's full of yeses. He's like, yes, yeah, you know it's a platform, it's a platform to you for you to do things. So he said yes to a lot, of, a lot of things that a lot of people you know. But he knew where we came from and our, our football coach always said never forget where he came from, and so it's why he called me, it's why he's got another friend down here, it's why he's tried to bring you know this taste of Sioux city to to a place eight hours away and and it's been interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:05:50

So it sounds like it's been a very good mesh of of two different, two different areas and cultures between Sioux city and you know where you are now in Oklahoma. It sounds like they're really embracing.

Speaker 1: 1:06:05

So it takes a little bit. You gotta, you gotta figure out your new, your new area. But, uh, people from minnesota, iowa, illinois, wisconsin, really like our pizza because it reminds them of back home and people down here. It's. It's like wow, I don't never had anything like that. It's unique. It's considered unique, I'm not sure why, but it's unique.

Speaker 2: 1:06:25

Because it's new to them.

Speaker 1: 1:06:27

Well, and it's called Iowa Stone Pizza. You ever heard of that?

Speaker 2: 1:06:30

I had not, until you said that earlier.

Speaker 1: 1:06:32

Well, it's a new invention because everything we have has been somewhere before, just like that Toyota, you could get the used ones. So the used ovens about 20 years old, they're probably about 20 grand new. And he got them for not much of anything and had to do a lot of retrofitting and call the chef friend of mine's chef about cleaning the ovens and he said, uh, I said they're soapstones. And he goes how do you know? And I'm like you know, I don't know, you know I can read the pdf file, the owner's manual.

Speaker 1: 1:07:00

I can, I can, I can figure out what it is and he's like how do you know? Because his thing is is he's experienced enough where, if you clean those ovens in the in the wrong way, you're gonna mess them up you'll crack it you'll.

Speaker 1: 1:07:15

They're porous yeah, yeah, exactly, and uh, you know, do we use oil, do we use water? Know, tell me a little bit about these. And he goes. Well, I was like, if you don't know what they are, you know, play it safe. And and in absence of knowing exactly what kind of stone they are, somebody named them Iowa Stone and that's that's what we serve now. And it turned out to be a thing. It's, it's Chicago. What do they call it? Tavern style, pub style in Illinois, and thinner crust and crispy, and it pub style in Illinois, and thinner crust, and and, uh, crispy, and and and holds up to the weight of all the toppings.

Speaker 1: 1:07:49

And yeah, it's, you know, I like, I like to think I'd been in stuff that I just fortunate enough to work at an awesome place with for awesome people Terry and Diane Foister for you know, for on and off, for 30 some years. 1984 to 2018 is the last time I worked there, so it's I learned a lot by not by not knowing I was learning anything. I learned a lot Like everything I do here is tied back to something there.

Speaker 2: 1:08:10

So well, that's. It's a really cool story and I'm glad that I was able to talk to you and get to know you and you know, for the listeners that had a chance to to hear this thing and hopefully someone's driving through route 66 and yeah stop in and say hello let me, let me grab a shirt.

Speaker 1: 1:08:25

I want to show you something. So eddie's the owner I think more he's the director of fun of anything you know. He creates all these things. So here's like, here's a shirt. Obviously it says chicken shack on it and they have their logo. This is something they did. It was chicken shack, palooza chicken shack palooza yeah, and they.

Speaker 1: 1:09:00

He's got merchandise and they. We're about ready to order some new pizza shack shirts, so I've got to get your size and address. But they have a crawfish festival coming up here. They have a big event about every month, that's really cool.

Speaker 2: 1:09:14

How do, how can, how do people find you guys?

Speaker 1: 1:09:18

So if you're five miles outside of civilization, edmond, oklahoma, we're on right, right on route 66. So we are five miles East of I-35 in Edmond. Online, you can find us on Instagram at Pizza Shack Arcadia, oklahoma. Facebook you can find us it's the same name, those with spaces and pizza shack Arcadia, oklahoma. Um, uh, if, if, uh, a lot of times people will Google pizza near me, which I, I, I always thought would be an awesome restaurant name and I saw, you saw that name. Somebody said name their place pizza near me.

Speaker 2: 1:09:55

But yeah, my buddy in Texas did it, yeah, and he I love that he did that.

Speaker 1: 1:10:02

Yeah, I was like that'd be a great name for a pizza place, but yeah, and then that was one of our things. It's going to be Shacktown Pizza or Pizza Shack, or we talked about Iowa Stone Pizza for a couple minutes and just settled on Pizza Shack. Pizza Shack at the Chicken Shack brings up a Google site and I appreciate you reading our reviews on there. That brings in business. You know people, um, people read, you got lookers, you got readers. So we try to appease everyone and have a little bit of everything. I, I think, I, I, I think. Uh, in the end, though, what I tell my customers, I'll tell my people and I get a little funny looks, but then they understand it. I said the only complaint we want is bad pizza, because I can fix that.

Speaker 2: 1:10:47

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:10:48

Don't complain to the Internet. If you don't like your pizza, you call me, you know, and you tell us and we'll fix it. You know I don't want to complain about bad attitude from my staff, about not being clean and you know, just just different things, things. The only complaint I want is bad pizza. I can fix that. But you know, message to anybody watching this don't complain on the Internet. I mean they're not going to fix your meal. You know, complain to your waitress. People don't realize that actually the back of the house wants those complaints. They want to know what's going on in the front of the house because there's a disconnect a lot of times and I don't see people when they go home it's like wow, the pizza was not what they wanted and so yeah, we've had complaints and we fix them.

Speaker 2: 1:11:30

I love it If they don't complain.

Speaker 1: 1:11:31

I don't know that we had a problem and I can't take care of it, give me an opportunity.

Speaker 1: 1:11:34

I've had a guy say, hey, come back, come back. He came back and now he's a regular. He went from being a complainer not in a bad way, just that to being a regular Because I say, hey, come back in, we'll give us another shot. And that's a tough thing. So we've been really fortunate on good reviews and it's driven business in here and people driving on I-35 and in the Oklahoma City area you know if they do pizza near me or food near me and they look at at that. They uh, it's brought people in and then and then now it just kind of snowballs. You know, good reviews brought people in, free samples, brings people in friends. That's our biggest area.

Speaker 1: 1:12:12

Our business is friends, friends of the word of mouth yeah, yeah, word of mouth that that's your best and that's you know. But you have to have a good product to have good word of mouth.

Speaker 2: 1:12:23

Absolutely. It starts there. Well, this has been. This has been really fun. Thank you again for telling us your story, please, and now I'll put all your, your Instagram page and your website on the in the show notes so that you know folks can find you quickly. Hang out, I'm going to, I'm going to stop the recording, but hang out, yes we have pizza at Chicken Shack.

Speaker 1: 1:12:44

So check out 600 people next door. They're going to come over here and eat pizza. But it's hey. I appreciate you having me on Like. I said I was a follower of your Instagram page and then I became a little addicted. I started looking at all your things and a lot of it resonated with a good human and a good business owner and a good conveyor of ideas, which helps me in the middle of Oklahoma, be better. So I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 1:13:10

I appreciate you and, just like we said earlier, it's good to know that what we're going through is not only us. We're all in this together. So thank you, and obviously I appreciate that support. I'm going to send you a book too, and obviously I appreciate that support. I'm going to send you a book too, and yeah, so hang tight.

Speaker 1: 1:13:27

I'm going to end this. Yeah, and thanks for having me on for such an extended period of time. I hope your customers will get to the end of this.

Speaker 2: 1:13:36

Oh yeah, no, definitely that's. The best part is that we get to have a good conversation and I get that, and I got to say it here because I told Bob this is the first time I've ever interviewed anybody one on one like this. So thank you for being my first.

Speaker 1: 1:13:50

Yeah, yeah, you're just going to be, you're just having a conversation with a camera, and I don't think it'd be a different way if you didn't have a camera, but it's, it's absolutely so this, this couldn't have gone any better, and thank you so much. No, thank you. This is great. You know it's going to reach all of America, all the world, but if you're on Route 66 near Oklahoma City, make sure you stop by. Go check him out we are, hey, and we are Dave Portnoy ready, just so you know.

Speaker 2: 1:14:13

Oh yeah, we want that 10, the 10 in Oklahoma.

Speaker 1: 1:14:17

Yes, we are. Dave Portnoy ready, hopefully, hopefully he's watching today. There you go, hang tight, all right, thank you.