Given the amount of good pizza on this blog I think many people would be surprised at how much chain pizza I actually consume. For every review you see on here (roughly one a week) I often have 1 or 2 chain pies. I eat a lot of pizza. Shut up. It’s a problem that I’m actively NOT working on. I often want to review these places just for some content but it’s never exciting enough or I have it too late in the night (and/or after too many drinks) to have payed enough attention to blog about it. So this won’t be a review so much as a look at what chain pizza is and the role that plays in the pizza world.
The first thing that comes to mind when I think about chain pizza is consistency. Pizza Pizza for example has approximately 500 locations in Canada. Pizza Nova has approximately 120 locations. Move from province to province, city to city, location to location and you’ll find the variation in the final product limited if noticeable at all. That is a feat worthy of some praise in itself. You have to think of the sheer amount of product that has to stay consistent. All of the vegetables/meats/cheese need to be the same. Processed the same way to look and taste the same. And this is before we even begin talking about dough. A living, breathing thing that changes based on humidity, temperature and even altitude! Beyond that there is the task of training 4,000 people a year (many of which I’m sure could care less about the “art” of pizza making) to make pizza that needs to stay consistent over hundreds of locations.
In any large scale operation you are sacrificing quality. It’s just a fact. At a small, owner operated pizzeria that puts out quality you have people who can oversee the creation of ingredients and dough down to smallest of details. Someone to make fresh sausage. Someone who hand cuts vegetables either daily or to order. You can micromanage a place like that. You can’t micromanage 500 locations. There isn’t a chain pizza ‘Sausage Czar’ who can make sure you have fresh sausage in all locations every single day. It’s a physical impossibility. For that reason there are ingredients added like nitrate to keep certain products good for longer. Would I take this over a beautiful sausage pie from Libretto? Shit no. Would I take it after one beer too many at midnight on a work night? Hellz yes I would. And I did - yesterday. Obviously, my point being is that sacrifices need to be made when working on a scale like this.
Now, all of that being said the places that have been around for decades do take pride in their product (contrary to what many people think). I’m often impressed at the quality of the finished product (maybe not individual elements) that comes to my door. For example the Pizza Nova pie below had a surprisingly pliable yet sturdy crumb. I was able to fully fold a slice without breaking it yet it was strong enough to hold all of the ingredients on top. The crust was chewy with a little crisp to it. The underside and crumb were light and fluffy yet held the weight of the toppings just fine. The thing you need to remind yourself is these companies hire professional chefs to test recipes. Highly paid, professional chefs. This isn’t the same dough recipe they came up with in the 60s and stuck it out. The ingredients and their time in transit to locations, baking time and temperature, layering of ingredients for minimal sogging among hundreds of other details I’m sure I can’t even imagine are taken into account by these people. It’s science. A pizza science! Again, while you won’t be getting the same calibre of product where one person or a small group of people oversees every pie it’s quite impressive the quality you get given the circumstances.
Now, you may be asking “Why eat it at all? Why not just get a good pizza.” For one, you can’t get a good pizza at midnight on a work night. Not without a trek. Or not without waiting for an hour and half only to get a soggy mess of a pie (ahem, King Slice). Only with chain pizza can you call and half an hour later receive a pie that is still relatively fresh and looks and tastes exactly like the last time you had it. Also, on a scale of 500 locations they are buying product in massive bulk which equals to a massive savings to both the company and you the consumer. Do you think you can walk into a great, artisinal pizzeria and get 2 medium pizzas, 4 toppings, 4 pops and some sort of cake or brownies for $20? HELL no. Will it be as good as the nice little artisinal shop? Also, no. But when you combine the consistency, the price, the speed of delivery and frankly the reasonable quality given the size of the operation; it’s totally worth it (in my eyes at least).
Another interesting tidbit I learned recently is how these companies optimize their recipes. How they build a pizza that time and time again people come back for. Big companies are constantly working with focus groups to fine tune their products. Big chains know the people they are trying to target and those people are not the artisan loving types. They also aren’t targeting the small group of people who could care less about food. They want everyone in the middle because believe it or not these “median tasters” make up 70% of the population. They actually have these strips that were invented in the 30s by scientists at DuPont to weed out the “supertasters” and the “nontasters”. They contain a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide. Genetically we are all predisposed to have a certain level of taste and so we all have different reactions to this chemical. Supertasters find the taste revolting and so how quickly you remove the strip from your mouth is dependant on your predisposed level of taste. It is for this reason that chain pies, at least the big ones who’ve been around for a long time, have such unoffensive pizza. All of the elements of the pizzas are designed to please that 70% of people in the “median taster” range. Do I get that rush of excitement in my chest when I bite into a chain pie the way I do at some of my favourite pizzerias? Shit no. But is it displeasing? Unpleasant? I don’t think so. These pies are designed with as much thought as pies at high end pizzerias, it’s just that their target audience has a different palate.
So my point in all of this is this... calm down with your chain pizza hate (maybe not you in particular but I hear it from my foodie friends constantly). Should we wax poetic about buffalo chicken pizzas? Good lord, no. But many, nay, most people who like to say things like “Oh, ‘Chain X’ is disgusting” are doing so because of what they think they know or have been told about chains. We know we’re not getting artisan pies, we know there are corners cut, we know there are preservatives we’d like to do without but you know what? Get off your high horse. You don’t hear Pizza Pizza calling Libretto, Queen Margherita or Pizza e Pazzi their competition. Because they aren’t. It’s the same reason McDonalds isn’t going head to head with some of the artisan burger joints in town. As much as this blog takes pizza seriously, it’s nothing to be taken too seriously. It’s fucking pizza. At it’s most elemental it is toppings on bread. Grab a slice, have a beer and let’s all stop being so cynical (myself included).
UPDATE:
So apparently Pizza Nova doesn't have professional chefs on staff. Their recipes are made by the same guys since 1963. Now we know.
Another interesting tidbit I learned recently is how these companies optimize their recipes. How they build a pizza that time and time again people come back for. Big companies are constantly working with focus groups to fine tune their products. Big chains know the people they are trying to target and those people are not the artisan loving types. They also aren’t targeting the small group of people who could care less about food. They want everyone in the middle because believe it or not these “median tasters” make up 70% of the population. They actually have these strips that were invented in the 30s by scientists at DuPont to weed out the “supertasters” and the “nontasters”. They contain a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide. Genetically we are all predisposed to have a certain level of taste and so we all have different reactions to this chemical. Supertasters find the taste revolting and so how quickly you remove the strip from your mouth is dependant on your predisposed level of taste. It is for this reason that chain pies, at least the big ones who’ve been around for a long time, have such unoffensive pizza. All of the elements of the pizzas are designed to please that 70% of people in the “median taster” range. Do I get that rush of excitement in my chest when I bite into a chain pie the way I do at some of my favourite pizzerias? Shit no. But is it displeasing? Unpleasant? I don’t think so. These pies are designed with as much thought as pies at high end pizzerias, it’s just that their target audience has a different palate.
So my point in all of this is this... calm down with your chain pizza hate (maybe not you in particular but I hear it from my foodie friends constantly). Should we wax poetic about buffalo chicken pizzas? Good lord, no. But many, nay, most people who like to say things like “Oh, ‘Chain X’ is disgusting” are doing so because of what they think they know or have been told about chains. We know we’re not getting artisan pies, we know there are corners cut, we know there are preservatives we’d like to do without but you know what? Get off your high horse. You don’t hear Pizza Pizza calling Libretto, Queen Margherita or Pizza e Pazzi their competition. Because they aren’t. It’s the same reason McDonalds isn’t going head to head with some of the artisan burger joints in town. As much as this blog takes pizza seriously, it’s nothing to be taken too seriously. It’s fucking pizza. At it’s most elemental it is toppings on bread. Grab a slice, have a beer and let’s all stop being so cynical (myself included).
UPDATE:
So apparently Pizza Nova doesn't have professional chefs on staff. Their recipes are made by the same guys since 1963. Now we know.
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