Hey, Pizza King fam—it's your dough-spinning, cheese-slinging host Tyrell here, and it’s time for some one-on-one with yours truly. We've been loving the symphony of pizza tales from past guests like Bob Protector of Pizza Shack and the sonic flavors from David in Florida, but today, I’m taking the mic to share my own saucy saga of the "Bust Crust" pizza experiment.
Strap in for a slice of life episode where I recount the thrill of fulfilling a customer's off-menu request and the valuable lessons learned from getting our hands dough-deep in the craft. From the playful banter with a customer to the nitty-gritty of perfecting a stuffed crust (spoiler: it’s harder than it looks), we’re embracing the cheesy triumphs and the topple-worthy flops that make the pizza game an endless adventure. No guest stars this time, just the pure, unadulterated Pizza King experience, topped with the return of the fan-favorite Pizza of the Week segment. Grab your favorite slice and join me for a heartwarming, oven-fresh episode that'll leave you hungry for more!
Hey, Pizza King fam—it's your dough-spinning, cheese-slinging host Tyrell here, and it’s time for some one-on-one with yours truly. We've been loving the symphony of pizza tales from past guests like Bob Protector of Pizza Shack and the sonic flavors from David in Florida, but today, I’m taking the mic to share my own saucy saga of the "Bust Crust" pizza experiment.
Strap in for a slice of life episode where I recount the thrill of fulfilling a customer's off-menu request and the valuable lessons learned from getting our hands dough-deep in the craft. From the playful banter with a customer to the nitty-gritty of perfecting a stuffed crust (spoiler: it’s harder than it looks), we’re embracing the cheesy triumphs and the topple-worthy flops that make the pizza game an endless adventure. No guest stars this time, just the pure, unadulterated Pizza King experience, topped with the return of the fan-favorite Pizza of the Week segment. Grab your favorite slice and join me for a heartwarming, oven-fresh episode that'll leave you hungry for more!
Welcome back Pizza King Podcast family. I'm your host, tyrell, and you just got me this week. For the last three weeks we've had some pretty sweet guests, if you haven't checked out those episodes. We had Bob Protector from Pizza Shack in Oklahoma and we had David with Sonic out here in Florida and we had Nick from Bricks Woodfire Pizza over in North Carolina, and all three of those episodes were incredible conversations and I'm hesitant to say interviews because I'm not really an interviewer. I'm just on here talking and just trying to have conversations with people who do what we do, and that has been cool for the last three weeks. But today you got me. We'll have some more guests coming up soon. We've been talking to quite a few folks, so I think it's going to be. I think you're really going to enjoy some of the some of the guests that we got coming up and that we're that we're planning to talk to and have already talked to. So but for today, you got me for a few minutes, um, to catch up and talk about what's been going on and, you know, really just just hang out with with my pizza family pizza of the week. We hadn't done that in a few weeks. So, uh, come back with pizza of the week and I'm sure if you, if you've seen Well, I can't say I'm sure, but if you follow me on social and you see some of the stuff, pizza the week this week is is what I'm calling the bus crust, and I'll tell you the story, if you didn't see it.
Speaker 1:
We had, I had a customer last week I think it was like Monday or Tuesday Came into the store or not. He didn't come into the store. He called. He called the store. I answered the phone. He's like you know, can you guys do a stuffed crust pizza? And I'm like, well, we don't. Well, he asked, do you sell stuffed crust pizza? And no, we don't sell stuffed crust pizza. But I'm like you know, if you want me to, if you want me to give it a shot, I shot, I'm happy to try it. I know how to stuff in my mind. I know how to stuff crust. I know how to do a stuffed crust pizza. So he's like hold on, let me see if she wants to eat. And he had to ask the wife. I thought that was funny too, cause he was like hold on real quick and he comes back. He was like yeah, let's you know I wasn't going to charge him, you know anything, he just pay for his normal pizza. I was just going to do the stuff, crust it, you know, give it a shot. You know, worst case scenario, you got a cheese pizza. So he, so I, you know I try to do it.
Speaker 1:
I took the mozzarella we wrote, wrote it up and, you know, tucked it in, tucked, you know, stuff to crush. You've seen a video. But the crust, but the seal was trash, seal was terrible. I didn't. I could have used water Some people say garlic butter, I don't that. That didn't really seal very well for us. But I could have used water. Kind of left the dough you know I should have not. You know, kind of like I do how my, how I do my calzones and strombolis, just, you know, flour one side of the dough and leave the other side wet or moist. Could have done that and but didn't, you know, just kind of tucked it in, sauced it, cheesed, it, busted open, and you could see it in the oven, as it was cooking, that the cheese was starting to, starting to ooze out through the, through that crust. But it came out pretty nice. But it came out pretty nice and so I posted a video of me, you know, going through that process and you know just kind of posting the wins and the losses, right. The fail it was I, but I was not happy with my execution of that pizza, right, I thought that, excuse me, I thought that I had it the way that I needed it to be and I didn't. But the pizza came out great and I posted a video for the first time since I've been posting content, which has been a few years now I've never had a video that has performed on every single platform and that's what this one did YouTube, facebook, instagram, tiktok. I mean Facebook, instagram, tiktok. I mean every platform. The video outperform all, just about all my other videos, except maybe some videos on Facebook. But we're talking at at this point 30, 40,000 on YouTube best video I've ever posted 30, 30, 25, 20, I think 25, 26,000 on TikTok Best video I've ever posted 10K on Instagram One of the one of the best videos I've ever posted, for sure, probably the best video. That was just the best pizza video. You know, I've posted some like some kids stuff and it always does pretty well. But and then half a million on Facebook, which is really good. It's the best I've had in a couple of years over there, best from a views and reach standpoint, not the best video. I think I've made better video, better content, but yeah, it was. It was cool. So you know a mini viral moment for that and there was a lot of good feedback like man, I look great, they, they started to call it. The bus crust on one actually turned out pretty good and you see it and you know, I imagine if you throw some garlic butter, some Parmesan on that thing and you know it turns into something that's really, uh, really a nice treat. I didn't try it. I did make another one for the staff because we wanted to do it again. Uh, alan wanted to try it, so we made a couple more. Actually, on Saturday Alan wanted to try to make one, I wanted to do it. It's never really worked out that well with our stuff. We still get blocks of mozzarella, we're still shredding our cheese. It just doesn't hold up very well in that situation. But it does make for a really cool cheesy looking in product. But to get that traditional stuff crust like people like you see, from the big, from really from the chain guys, you probably got to use like a string cheese or some, some shit like that. I don't want to do that, so we'll just keep making it the way we make it. Call it at the Bus Crest and if somebody wants it, I'm happy to do it for them. We'll try it. That was Pizza of the Week the Bus Crest. A lot of fun. A lot of fun to have and see the viral moment and Q&A. I'm actually going to pull a Q&A this week straight from one of the comments in social media because so all right. So In my opinion, there's always the good side and the not so good side of having a moment like that right, or what we would call a viral moment. Having a moment like that right or what we would call a viral moment, because there's always, there's always a lot of. It takes positivity to push something like that right. People have to like it for it to continue to be shared and viewed and things like that. But then there's always that small percentage of people who got some negative shit to say, who got some negative shit to say oh, I'm responding in my mind on all of them, but I try to stay reserved in that, because there is no value in going back and forth with people who are just there for the for the 30 seconds. So, like, what's the point of that? But the Q and a, which I think and I the reason I wanted to bring it up, because I think it's something that probably gets, uh, gets brought up a lot and I've seen it on other things and other videos and all these things. So you know, figured I might as well address it here. It says why and I just wrote, I just paraphrased, because there was a lot of comments about it. Comments, you know. The question is why don't pizza guys wear gloves, or? But on the comments and on the post it was always where are your gloves at. Your first mistake was you ain't put no gloves on. Oh, that's nasty as hell. You ain't got no gloves on and that. That shit drives me crazy, because for one it's always for one. Whoever's making a comment ain't somebody that's buying my shit anyways, like you, probably somewhere other side of the world, doing whatever you do. Don't understand, don't, don't understand what's going on, but you just, you just want to throw something out there. That implies that me, in my 22, 23 years of being in this business and being in a leadership role in this business, don't take my responsibility seriously as a food safety manager, as an, as a restaurant owner, as a business owner, as a leader, as father, as a, as a person who has been entrusted by the community to provide a product and to provide a service, that I don't take the responsibility seriously when it comes to food safety, as if I would be so reckless. But what you don't understand is that you don't know. You don't know how this works. You think and I don't want to go off on it because I already already been through that with me, you know, just talking offline, already been through that with me, you know, just talking off offline. But I'm sure that other other pizza guys and other pizza folks and you know y'all post videos and you know people probably ask y'all dumb ass questions and stuff like that. I think it's worth, it's worth bringing up you know who, who's wearing gloves, who's not wearing gloves. I'm a pizza guy. I've never I don't wear gloves. Um, I've never. I've tried. I ain't wearing no gloves. And I'll tell you why. Well, the first reason why? Is that it's not required, at least not where I make pizza. It may be maybe the law is different Some in different States and different, different places, but where I make pizza, it's not required to wear gloves on food before it's cooked. Now, we do wear gloves If we handle raw product. We do wear gloves If we're like I'll put on some gloves to get the anchovies or something, something wet. I don't like the wet toppings. But I think that the larger issue that needs to be addressed is that people, people just assume that we don't take the responsibility seriously, like come on, come on, man, that's just that's. That's reckless in itself to even say something like that man. That's just that's. That's reckless in itself to even say something like that. But I did take some time to respond to one of those comments and I figured I would bring that here for Q&A just as a Just as a way to just address it one time, because I got I'm not going to respond to every comment, but I will respond here. So this guy, this guy wrote, and I don't know. I popped the screenshot up on the screen. This guy wrote and just said no gloves, with a question mark after watching the video, which, if you watch the video clearly you can see, I didn't have no gloves on. So I just responded and said is that a question? And he responded and said yes. So then I'm like, all right, well, I guess I'll answer his question. And I said, so-and-so dressed, straight to him. You'll find that most pizza makers don't wear gloves unless we're handling raw meats. We do, however, follow strict hand washing and food handling guidelines. I've also found that wearing gloves gives people a false sense of safety and actually results in increased risk for cross-contamination due to less frequent hand washing. Appreciate the question Now. Do you agree or disagree? I think that when you, when you see folks in there wearing gloves wearing gloves does not protect you you can still have some gloves, grab some raw chicken and then go go touch something else with those same damn gloves on. Washing hands is what is what protects us. Washing hands is what prevents cross-contamination. Gloves don't do shit. Gloves don't do shit, but protect your hands from touching the product. That's all it does. It does not protect the consumer. So I think that people have this. They have this misconception in their minds or they have this false sense of security when they see gloves. Misconception in their minds, or they have this false sense of security when they see gloves and I get it in some places it is important, like a sandwich shop, or you know. You know, on our grill side we're making salads, we're making sandwiches. That's food that gets prepared and you know, direct to direct to consumer. But if there's a cook step, like a pizza oven, there's there's no need to wear a glove. Besides the fact that it's hard to help, it's hard as hell to stretch a pizza with a glove on, especially with the style of pizza that I make with flour. It's just slipping all over the place. But you know, I had to, I had to go ahead and address it. So that's my answer. It's not required. It's actually probably more unsafe and I don't want to. That's why I wear gloves. But if you want me to wear gloves when I make your pizza, when you're at the counter or when you're on the phone, or when you, when you place an order at my shop, put it in the notes and I'll oblige. That's my answer. I'm happy to do whatever for my customers. So someone's at my counter and they say, hey, can you throw some gloves on for this one? Absolutely Sure Can, not a problem. But for people on from God knows where, no, I'm not wearing gloves for you. You don't like the video? Don't like the video, that's okay. Um, and that's and that's. You know that's the end of that one. From now on, I see that I'm just going just just like their, their comment, appreciate the engagement and keep it moving. What I wanted to discuss today beyond that. So that was Q&A. Thank you, sorry about whatever ran I just went on about. You know, with that I mean I apologize, but that one, that one, that one burns me, you know, grinds my gears like like like Peter says, but I want to talk about, you know, just the, the overall evolution of our shop. You know, I just I kind of got in this moment, you know, thinking about where we are versus where we were, as we, you know, kind of start with. Whenever we do something new or do something different, it always takes me back to just the importance of embracing change and then taking time to appreciate the things that were the change back then, like where we came from. Right, pre-change, we just sent out and I'll tell you, because we just started to send out text campaigns. You know we've been doing email for a little while but we hadn't done text yet. I know I'm a late adopter, sorry, don't kill me for that, but we hadn't. You know, email had been working for us. So we hadn't embarked into the land of text yet. I mean, corporate had done some stuff for us and we had already started to build a list of tech subscribers, but we hadn't, we hadn't really put a trigger and started sending out any messages to tech. So Last weekend we did, you know, you know, for the last couple of weeks, and we so at this point we've been doing it for two weeks, but it, you know, just the topic in my mind came and I Paul Paul will love if he hears me say this but one of the over one, one of the overarching themes. One of the overarching themes when I was working in the West shore corporate office and with with Paul and the franchise edge team, was it's an evolution, not a revolution, and I'm like I'll get Paul to come on the show one day, but because that was one of his, one of his. Paul isms right, it's evolution, not a revolution. But when you think about it, that's, that's exactly what this business has been. And you know you talk about now, 21, 22 years, 21, 22 years In the, in the same brand, I've seen a lot of evolution right, and it always, it never came without resistance. So what felt like a revolution really. Was the? Was the spawn or the beginning of Are evolving? Was the spawn or the beginning of our evolving, the evolution of our marketing, the evolution of our operations, the evolution of our customer experience? All of those things have changed over the last two decades. I think about how we used to market. We used to like, literally used to do facts. We used to do facts door hangers, like walking door to door, putting menus on doors and mailboxes, or cars or in parking lots. We would build a fax list, like we would do. We would do business visits, like in the morning we make up, you know, three or four dozen garlic knots, go out, hit the plazas, talk to somebody, get a business card and then start faxing them, like our menu once a week or once a month, like on a fax campaign. We used to do, and the same thing with the schools, like the schools, the churches, we would just try to get the fax number and start faxing, or get the, get a list from the chamber of commerce. It was straight up on a fax campaign and then that then it. Then we went to like bulk mail, like where you had to do the big crates and you had to get the bulk mail, go, get a bulk mail certificate and we'd be dropping, dropping menus by the tens of thousands. That was, that's how you know. That's how long I've been doing this Text is that now and I know that. I know that because people have been. I didn't discover this, but someone else I was on, I was on the on the smart pizza marketing the SPM pro call Bruce, was doing office hours, which I think is dope, by the way. Keep doing that, bruce. Bruce is doing office hours in and he just kind of said you know he was letting us know that text is. Text is what that used to be, that you go out. I mean remember back in the day you go out, you drop menus in this community. You hit three, these four streets and then we come back to the shop because you know we're going to get orders from those four streets, like that's how, that's how direct it was, that's how targeted it was back then. Right, and text is that now and I just learned that and it's and it was. It was a good, it was a good weekend with those. We went from bulk mail we went to. I just wrote in my notes, like all the things that we did. We went. Then we went to share mail like the junk mail pieces and um, and we still do that like a couple of times a year just to just to keep it out there. Every door direct mail was a big one for us. For a long time we were, you know, we went from bulk mail to every door direct mail where we could, where we could actually target routes and households with mail pieces and not have to send out 10,000 at a time. So every door direct mail was a was a big piece of what we do. And you know, really, up until print went crazy during COVID, we were still pretty, we were still doing a good bit of EDDM and honestly, I would probably still look at it. I just haven't. I haven't done that in a little while. We haven't even revisited print. I haven't done that in a little while. We haven't even revisited print. So I might have to, uh, I might have to take a look into that. But from from EDDM we went. We went into really going hard on on our social media marketing and building our law or building our loyalty program up and building our email list. So from that, from that, it was like well, shit, an email was with our, with our loyalty program. Email didn't cost us anything extra, so I can send out as many as I want every every month. So email kind of became a new way for us and we've been killing it until we started to to. They made this text, you know feature available to us and now we can made this text, you know feature available to us and now we can we can actually do it and control it. Pretty, pretty solid stuff. Pretty solid stuff. Where's your shop at? Like, how long have you been doing it? Where did you start and where, where are you at now? I think about how some other things evolved when I was talking about you know, just making notes on. You know our even our order taking process and how we operate. We used to take all of our orders used to be phone orders and walk-ins. That was the only way you're going to get ordered from us until we. You know I was there when we bought our first, bought the domain and set up our first. You know I was there when we bought our first, bought the domain and set up our first. You know online order partnership with a third party company. Back in the day, customer to you shout out to those guys. And that was our first experience with online and it was crazy. And it was. It was so crazy with trying to map menu items and build these different, build these different modifiers and all of this it was. It was wild to where you are now, where everything is just like so seamless and so integrated and so easy to set up. You know, you could be, you could be going on a platform within a day or two In a lot of cases if you have your. As long as you have, as long as you have the right POS. We went from here's. We used to write our catering, like to do catering. We used to have a book, we called it the catering book, and we would come in and check the book every morning to see if there were any caterings that day. But someone would call to get a catering order and you know a manager. One of us had to go write the entire order in the book. You know name, date, what they're wanting, like you have to put it all in the computer, into the POS, so that we knew what the price was. But then you know, before you submit it, you just, you know, kind of cancel it. You couldn't even store orders back then we would take it and write it all down so that we could reenter it when the day of the catering came. That's, I can't believe. We used to do that, oh my God, that was crazy. But you know, now we now catering orders come in, you know, first party through our platform, third party through easy cater. Everything is just. I mean, I get, I get the alert right on my phone, I can accept it. Modifications, whatever the world has changed Like I know it, people, I know it as soon as it happens, know it as soon as it happens. You know even even uh, you know before we would, our first online ordering experience wasn't even built for mobile. You know we had to go to a mobile. You know, get to a more mobile, optimized platform. Now, everything I'm telling you now and we're looking at, we're looking for P for pos right now talking to a couple of different companies about making a pos change and obviously change with us comes, you know, with a lot, of, a lot of moving parts. We're, we're now 19 locations, so a lot of moving parts. When we're talking about changing my and I'm not, they're not all my locations, but because I've been, you know, part of a lot of the processes, a lot of it starts, starts kind of where where we are Right. So we'll be, we'll probably be the test store and we'll try to work out all the kinks and make sure that it's ready for everybody once, once it is time to launch and make that change. So it usually happens with us first, not just us but us and a few other folks like like Bob and like like Paula, and you know some of the folks that are other franchisees in this, in this, uh, in this West shore universe. So I'm excited about that, because the things that we're looking at now, I mean I'm telling you we used to have order pad. I started a little Caesars. My first job was a little Caesars and it was order pad with a register that we would have to, like do the X and the Z on To. Now we're looking at, you know, kiosks and A iPhone phone attendance, like A lot has changed in two decades in the pizza game, which is, which is great, because those things used to be barriers to and for, you know, people doing business. Those things used to be things that will hold you back, because if you were a pizza guy, you didn't want to do all that stuff. You weren't going to set up inventory modules and you know, scheduling, scheduling platforms and doing all like everything is just so integrated and so easy now. I mean, we, we used to write schedules by hand, we used to build them on Excel, we used to do like, everything is just so, so easy. Now, if you, if you are, if you embrace the change, it becomes, it makes it easy if you embrace the technology and embrace the change. So what I'm excited about is what's next for us as we, as we look, you know, for new POS, pos partners, new loyalty, um, you know, having, you know, getting my eyes open with texts and the text is crazy, I'm telling you. So we just started it and let me be one to encourage you that, if you, if you've been thinking about adding, adding a text, platform, like if it's Boostly or if you're your loyalty, you know, platform offers, an SMS option or an MMS option, do that shit, because we did it. We were resistant because it was like man, I don't know, I don't know if I wanted to spend that money. Right, do it, do it. It's a, it's a game changer and it's and it's just like it was before, where you know, even with you know, I said when we would door hang a street, we knew we get orders from that street. When we were even EDDM to a certain degree, when we would hit these routes, we knew where our orders were going to come from, based on where we were marketing, you know, versus having to do like these big blanket campaigns we could get, we could get targeted down to the street, which is important in a. In a business like mine, which is a, you know, mostly delivery business. So do text. Text is like they get the message there and you're on their mind and you know you're on your phone, you got your phone, you're going to check your text. Do that. We were. It was. It was a game changer and an eye opener for us and I'm excited about how we continue to build on. You know what we've learned so far with, with text. So, yeah, definitely do that. I think that's it. That's all I got, you know. Appreciate, just getting back into the, getting back into the studio. Remember, go check out those episodes with, with our previous guests. Come on back, check us out with, with, with our future guests. We got a lot of good folks coming up over the next few weeks. So you'll be, you'll be learning and growing from those folks. Hey, monday night was dope, had the franchising one onone discussion. That's going to be our first pizza piece of premium content. So if you're subscribed to pizza King podcast plus, you can, uh, you'll have, access to the franchise one-on-one discussion and other and other. You know, soon to be, soon to be recorded and release a premium content. More. That's going to be more of the stuff where we, where we dig in and teach. You know, even. You know even stuff like this text, like I'll go in depth on. You know how we set up the text messages, how we, how we build the links and you know how we're distributing our list, like, like. I'll give you an example. Like we sent out, we sent out to, we segmented our list to engage, to engage customers, folks who've ordered within the last 90 days or signed up for rewards within the last 90 days. Ticket average from those sales was about thirty four dollars. We had, you know, fifty five redemptions from that. It broke the. It took a lot of folks off of the list versus our full all records list, but because they were engaged, we got a higher percentage of a higher percentage of orders from those folks versus what we did this weekend when we sent out to the full list. So you know we can go. We can go a little bit deeper and in depth on some of those types of things, and, um, yeah, so I'm just happy to be back. See y'all soon. Tune in for next week's episode. Remember to like, subscribe, share, leave a comment, feedback, go, follow us on Instagram, follow us on Facebook or also on TikTok wherever, wherever you, where wherever you, you do your social media. Tap in with me. If you want to be a guest on the show, reach out to me, send me a message on Instagram. Reach out to me, send me a message on Instagram. That's the best way, uh, the best place. If you know someone who should be a guest on the show, tell them to send me a message, or you just send me, send me their contact and I'll reach out to them and, uh, and we'll get them on. So appreciate everybody. Have a good week. Pete's King podcast Peace.
