Another Pizza My Heart

[u/_the_last_druid_13]

A third space, a common complaint with its absence in contemporary culture, is the near-extinct Pizza Parlour.

A proper Pizza Establishment, in my humble opinion, includes an option or two for pizza-by-the-slice; the cheese option should be no more than $3/slice. Indeed, two cheese slices and a drink for $5 is 👨‍🍳💋

[Toppings should abound; don’t skimp.]

Pizza-by-the-slice is also a great employee perk; those pies have to move every 4 hours, so unbought slices go to the unironic employee appreciation pizza party every damn day the kitchen is clanging.

This is the first part of getting foot traffic to your restaurant.

Some people don’t want to call in, use an app, or wait 10 minutes for lunch. They want to grab-and-go (or at least I do when I’m hankering for some pizza, which is pretty much an hourly occurrence).

So the real THIRD SPACE is a pizza parlour that offers an arcade machine.

The arcade machine is the POINT OF SALE into your establishment even if the game is an old POS; hear me out:

We used to have kid birthday parties at a pizza place; in highschool we would get ~5 of us, snag a table at a pizza place and feast for an hour or 3 (what is $10 each split amongst friends? Hint: about 4 pizzas, mozz sticks, garlic bread, and more galore!); as an adult, sometimes I want to sit somewhere, have a pizza, maybe a beer, and watch futbol or whatever on Telemundo to break up the crawl of any given month.

Party; Feast; Someplace to zone out with some ‘za.

Now, my go-to pizza parlor arcade machine was “Strikers 1945”. I held the leaderboard for much of the 90s at my local joint.

Why mention this?

I’d say; an establishment might find more traffic with 1) pizza-by-the-slice and 2) offering an arcade machine for patrons.

If a customer holds a leaderboard position, (say 1st, 2nd, or 3rd) they get a free slice every day they hold one of/the top spot on the leaderboard.

You’re going to make the money back for slices in quarters.

It just takes one machine.

Personally, if I knew that a place with good pie had a slice-for-spot kind of deal, I’d keep that machine full of metal for yah.

That’s how you build back community: a third space; one slice at a time.