Happy Joe’s director of franchise compliance and development Tim Anderson works with head coach Ashley Balluff to ready a pizza for one of the pizzerias’s loyal customers.
and now Pasquarella ships dozens of pizzas monthly, with orders approaching 100 per month during the holidays.
New York Flying Pizza (nyflyingpizza. com) started two years ago as a part of Pappardelle’s Italian Restaurant in Beth-page, New York. “Our customers would constantly tell us about their relatives who moved away and how they miss New York-style pizza; they would tell us, ‘You can’t get good New York-style pizza anywhere but New York,’” says NY Flying Pizza’s website. “We heard this daily, and finally, we decided to do something about it: We started NY Flying Pizza in order to get New York-style pizza to all our friends, family and loved ones.” Owner Pasquale
DiMartino began the Flying Pizza side of Pappardelle’s two years ago. The business operates out of the same building as the restaurant but ships 40 to 60 pizzas per month, in addition to the pizzas sold in-store, he says.
Before New York Flying Pizza had a steady mail order business, the restaurant had to go through some extensive experimenting, DiMartino says. The first and perhaps most difficult challenge DiMartino faced was the issue of how to get the pizza to the customer. “It took me at least a year to find a good shipping method,” he says. He tried using different pouches, then dry ice, but finally settled on a packaging and shipping method that can ensure proper pizza temperatures for up to three days.
Pizzas are par-baked, and then immediately flash-frozen in Flying Pizza’s walk-in freezer. After being frozen, the pizzas are shrink-wrapped and placed in an E-flute
pizza box, and then wrapped and sealed again in plastic. This package is placed in a 2½” foam box with FDA-approved gel packs inside to help maintain the temperature. Uline, a North American shipping, industrial and packing material distributor, supplies all of the packaging supplies for New York Flying Pizza, DiMartino says, and this packaging method has proven to deliver still-frozen, high-quality pizzas anywhere in the United States, in any weather condition. Other methods, such as a simple pouch, would not hold cold air well enough or long enough, while other methods, such as using dry ice, proved to be far too expensive, he says.
There are a few limitations of the packaging and shipment of the pizzas, though, DiMartino notes. Delivery must take place within three days of shipment in order to ensure the pizza is still frozen upon arrival. And in the summer months, when conditions are especially hot, Flying Pizza will not ship orders that take more than two days to deliver. Also, New
New York Flying Pizza began two years ago as a means to ship pizza from Pappardelle’s Italian Restaurant to those who missed a taste of home.
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