Subway Introduces Pizza at Pittsburgh-area Restaurants

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Subway(R), the nation's leading sandwich chain, is expanding its fresh menu to include one of America's favorite foods -- pizza.

"We are excited to offer Subway pizzas to the local market, to give our customers more great-tasting options," said Rich Kaminsky, franchise owner. "Subway customers come to our restaurants for delicious sandwiches they love that are made to order, and we are bringing that same great quality and choice to our fast and fresh pizza."

Subway's pizzas bring new tastes and more options to the restaurant people already love. Customers create personal-sized, customized pizzas from a variety of toppings, including veggies, pepperoni, sausage and extra cheese. After the fresh ingredients are added, the pizzas are baked in Subway's custom-made speed ovens.

"Through our menu options, you can easily feed a family of four a tasty and nutritious meal at an affordable price," Kaminsky said. Subway's basic pizza costs only $2.99; extra cheese and veggie toppings are free, and pepperoni and meatballs are available for a dollar each.

Visit your local Subway to try a delicious pizza. To locate the Subway restaurant nearest you, go to http://www.subway.com/.

Biggest Pizza, Biggest Pizza Day

GRAFTON, N.D. -- Grafton Square convenience store owner Mike Beaudoin is celebrating his own version of "giant" success on Super Bowl Sunday. Beaudoin partnered with franchisor Hot Stuff Foods of Sioux Falls, S.D., to offer the largest pizza in the nation on the biggest pizza sales day of the year.

"This is the biggest Super Bowl I've ever had", said Beaudoin, whose Grafton Square store sold 21 Big Stuff Crowd Pleaser Pizzas for Super Bowl parties throughout the town of Grafton, N.D. Each Big Stuff Crowd Pleaser Pizza provided more than five square feet of pizza, measuring 15 inches wide and 4.5 feet long and weighing close to 15 pounds. The most popular topping combination, according to Beaudoin, was a four-way combination consisting of pepperoni, cheese, five-meat and supreme. To get an idea of the amount of topping needed for the Big Stuff, Grafton Square had sold an all-pepperoni pizza earlier in the week, which required 232 pepperoni slices.

Beaudoin said the reaction from customers picking up the giant pizzas was "a lot of wow!" Beaudoin said it was also the first time customers placed orders in advance, beginning early in the week. The pizzas retailed for $39.99.

According to Neal Hollingsworth, executive vice president of marketing for Hot Stuff Foods, Grafton Square is the first store in the nation to sell the Big Stuff Crowd Pleaser Pizza, and there are 20 other franchisees so far who will add Big Stuff to their menus in the next 30 days.

"Super Bowl was a nice kickoff for launching Big Stuff," said Hollingsworth, "and with March Madness just around the corner, we're looking forward to another spike in sales, but our research and test marketing revealed that Big Stuff appeals to a number of everyday events such as office parties, youth sports' events, birthdays, family get-togethers and all other gathering of pizza lovers."

Hot Stuff Foods franchises and licenses its branded food concepts including Hot Stuff Foods, SmashHits Deli and Hot Stuff Food On the Go in more than 1,400 locations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Hot Stuff Foods also offers Lettieri's Food To Go through distributors across the United States.

Source PMQ.com

CiCis Pizza Sales Feeding Weakened Economy with Notable Increase in January

February 2008 (Coppell, Texas)Despite recent reports suggesting that consumers are cutting back on spending at restaurants and bars for the first time in five months, CiCi's Pizza is reporting a 5.7 percent increase over sales disclosed in January 2007. The increased sales have been supported by two weeks of on-air national advertising where sales jumped to a 10 percent increase for the 600-restaurant chain.

Our strong January and year-to-date performance reflects the loyalty of our existing guests, brand acceptance by new customers, and the excellence of our restaurant managers and crew as they focus on delivering a great experience for an unbelievably low price, said Craig Moore, president of CiCi's Pizza. Our sales growth and operational efficiencies continue to drive our overall profitability.

Moore's outlook on 2008 is very favorable as the company announced earlier this year continued expansion plans taking CiCi's Pizza coast to coast with the opening of two major markets, California, New York, and New Jersey. CiCi's will grow to more than 700 locations, opening approximately 185 restaurants by single-unit and multi-unit franchisee operators between 2008 and 2009.

Founded in 1985, CiCi's Pizza is a family-oriented restaurant serving guests all the fresh salad, pasta, desserts and 16 kinds of pizza they want for an unbelievably low price. CiCis credits its continued success to the companys philosophy. CiCis mission then and now is to exceed each guest's expectation in food, service and cleanliness, all at their value-oriented price point. Since opening its first restaurant in Plano,Texas, CiCis has grown to over 600 restaurants in 30 states. Over the past three years, CiCis has opened nearly 180 new locations in new and existing markets.

$5 Pizza-Making Lessons at Nick & Toni’s

You know it’s February when Nick & Toni’s on North Main Street in East Hampton is serving $5 pizzas. But that’s not all. This forerunner of haute barnyard on the East End, with its big veggie garden in the back and its stable of celebrity clients in the front that challenges even the most connected to get a table in summer, has rolled out a number of customer-generating innovations this slow season.

A friend recently returned from pizza night with his two sons covered in dust and proudly toting one slice of each of their pizzas that they had saved for mom to sample. The kids, not always excited by food and cooking, were energized. My friend was also energized, having been allowed to throw back a beer with his own age-appropriate playmates while the chef entertained his kids in the kitchen. Could Nick & Toni’s be breaking new ground in gastro-child care?

Kids Pizza Night is every Thursday, and guides children from 6 to 12 years old through making their own pizza in the restaurant’s wood fired oven. The lesson costs $5 and the student get to eat the pizza.

Among the restaurant’s other experimental promotions are a rotating sampling of obscure Italian dishes. Joseph Realmuto, executive chef at Nick & Toni’s, who often guides the kids through pie-making, just returned from preparing a dinner at the James Beard House, where he dazzled with house cured bresaola involtini with sheep’s milk ricotta and baby arugula, crispy sweetbread spiedini, cockles minestra with cranberry beans, Salumeria Biellese sopressata and fresh thyme, house-made ricotta gnocchi with wild mushroom and winter truffle, Vermont Farms porchetta with Anson Mills toasted farro and Balsam Farms cheese pumpkin, and a trio of panna cotta.

Those who missed this memorable meal might consider showing up on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sunday, as well as Friday and Saturday from 6 to 7 P.M., when diners can try a 5-course tasting menu of regional Italian specialties. The $38 tour includes a glass of wine and starts with Friuli and head south from there. During the same days and times, the appetizers and entrées from this regional are also available as part of the $30, 2-course dinner that includes a United Artist/Loews movie voucher.

Finally, on Sunday nights, diners can live like they have a private chef, as chef Realmuto will prepare a meal specifically for the table, based on the diners’ preferences. The meal will be served family style and will include an appetizer, entrée and dessert, for roughly $35.

True, February isn’t the best time to swim in the ocean. But nothing enthralls like a walk on the beach in winter. With these deals scheduled to expire just as the dinner traffic picks up, now may be the best time for a Nick & Toni’s virgin to get initiated.

Nick & Toni's

Address: 136 N Main Street, East Hampton, NY 11937
Phone: 631-324-3550
Website: nickandtonis.com

Heart Foundation gives pizza the tick

The Heart Foundation is to award its well-known red tick of approval to a chain of takeaway pizzerias on the grounds they are much better for you than mass-market alternatives.

Crust Gourmet Pizza Bars, which has 16 stores in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, created six new pizzas to win the accolade.

Announcing the move, the Heart Foundation took a swipe at national chains Pizza Hut and Domino's, saying their pizzas were laden with up to four times the amount of saturated fat and more than twice the amount of salt as Crust's. The Heart Foundation said it analysed nine comparable types of pizza from Pizza Hut, Domino's and Crust.

The Heart Foundation's food supply strategy director Susan Anderson said the foundation was "horrified at the results".

"Pizza from the two top chains contained on average more than 5g of salt and 20g of saturated fat, which is what you should be getting in one day, not one meal," she said.

"It was clear that this industry needed some nutritional benchmarks, so we've taken action to give this industry the shake-up it needs."

One of the freshly ticked pizzas – the roast chicken pizza with button mushrooms, sweet potato, roasted tomato, baked ricotta and mozzarella – has just 5.3g of saturated fat and 880mg of sodium, compared with 20.7g of fat and 2087mg of sodium in a comparable Domino's pizza.

The foundation's latest foray into fast food looks set to reignite a controversy it created last year, when it teamed up with McDonald's to award the tick to nine meal combinations.

However, none of the approved meals included the US-based chain's signature fries, leading to criticism from some nutritionists that many people would negate the benefits by ordering unhealthy extras.

Companies pay annual fees to the Heart Foundation for the right to display the tick, which the foundation says covers the costs of random audits and testing.

In the case of restaurants and takeaway outlets, the fee is based on the number of branches.

Nutritionist Rosemary Stanton said the danger of the new tick was that it might give people the impression pizzas were healthy.

By Adam Cresswell

Super Bowl pizza stats revealed

ARLINGTON, Texas — Local pizzerias served pies to as many customers as the biggest chain on the biggest pizza day of the year, according to a nationwide study by marketing research and consulting firm Decision Analysis. One out of five Americans had pizza on Super Sunday, and one in four of those pizzas came from a local store.

Local pizzerias came away with a bigger piece of the pie than either Domino’s or Papa John’s.

Pizza Hut served up over a quarter of the pizzas and Papa John’s and Domino’s each accounted for 15 percent of sales on Super Sunday, according to the study. One in three pizza orders for the major chains were placed online, with Papa John’s leading the way at 38 percent of orders placed through their website.

Local stores took their orders over the phone (79 percent) or in person (12 percent), and their customers were about twice as likely as those from the major chains to pick up their orders rather than have it delivered.

Information provided by pizzamarketplace.com

Domino's Pizza Delivers One Million Free Pies on 'Super Tuesday'

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Just as the largest, simultaneous number of U.S. presidential primary elections are being held across the country, Domino's Pizza (NYSE:DPZ) will be e-mailing one million lucky customers an offer for a free pizza in the largest, synchronized e-mail blast in the company's history.

A free medium, one-topping pizza online ordering offer will be e-mailed to customers who opted-in to Domino's e-mail database as of Jan. 30, have never placed an order online, and are in the delivery areas of the 1,329 participating Domino's stores.

"While America is expressing its opinion on who should be the next president, Domino's is giving its customers the opportunity to order a free pizza online, track its progress using our new Pizza Tracker and immediately express their opinions on the service and quality of their Domino's experience," said Patrick Doyle, president of Domino's USA. "We're obsessed with great service. We measure performance. Now we can prove it every step of the way."

Domino's Pizza Tracker allows customers to follow the progress of their order online from the time they click the "Place Order" button until the Domino's delivery expert is knocking on their door. Customers will see confirmation of their order being received by the store; when it's being prepared; when it's been placed in the oven; when it's been boxed and placed in the Domino's HeatWave(TM) bag; and finally, when it's on its way for delivery.

The free medium, one-topping e-mail offer will include a unique, one-time use promotion code that will expire at midnight on Feb. 7. Domino's minimum delivery requirement will be waived for customers using this promotion code. Customers can sign up for "Hot E-mail Offers" at www.dominos.com.

Domino's Launches Revolutionary Customer Tool: Pizza Tracker

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Domino's Pizza (NYSE:DPZ) , the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, has launched another food delivery industry first: Pizza Tracker(TM). This revolutionary technology allows Domino's Pizza customers to follow the progress of their order online from the time they click the "Place Order" button or hang up the telephone until the Domino's delivery expert is knocking on their door.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080130/CLW027 )

Pizza Tracker was introduced to customers ordering online in a test in late December and was rolled out to customers ordering from www.dominos.com this month. Pizza Tracker is currently available at more than 3,200 Domino's Pizza stores in the U.S. that use the company's Domino's Pulse(TM) computer system. The list of stores adding the Domino's Pulse system is growing every month.

Starting today, customers who place orders via telephone will also be able to monitor their order's progress via Pizza Tracker at those stores using Domino's Pulse.

"There is absolutely nothing like this in the food service industry," said Domino's chief information officer, Chris McGlothlin, of the ability to track telephone orders. Domino's Pizza has filed for a patent on this innovative technology.

"At Domino's, we're obsessed with great service. We measure performance. Now we can prove it every step of the way. Pizza Tracker will allow customers to know when their order is being prepared, when it's out of the oven, and when it's out the door and on its way. It even includes the first name of the person delivering the order."

Pizza Tracker is linked directly to the computers inside the pizza stores using Domino's Pulse and is accurate to within 40 seconds, McGlothlin said. "Once it leaves the store, drive times vary due to distance, weather and traffic conditions, but customers will know that it's on the way."

Once customers place an order, they can go to www.dominos.com and click on the Pizza Tracker icon. They will see a horizontal bar that lights up red as each step in the process is completed. Customers will see confirmation of their order being received by the store; when it's being prepared; when it's been placed in the oven; when it's been boxed and placed in the Domino's HeatWave(TM) bag; and finally, when it's on its way for delivery.

"Customers using Pizza Tracker will no longer have to wonder where their pizza is in the ordering process -- it takes the 'mystery' out of waiting for their pizza. Not only that, it's entertaining, too," McGlothlin said.

Additionally, while using Pizza Tracker, customers will be able to provide feedback online, which will go directly to the store to be viewed by the store manager. That kind of feedback will allow the stores to quickly resolve customer service issues and help improve customer loyalty, McGlothlin said.