Greg Getzinger fancied himself in a David and Goliath situation as the owner of a small pizzeria in Akron, Ohio, surrounded by pizza giants like Donato's and Papa John's. But Getzinger was able to defend his sales with a brilliant idea: position himself in schools. "It's been my experience that it's the children who tell the parents where to buy pizza," he said.
He started supplying pizza to a local private school and a weekly pizza lunch program. The school wanted to sell Getzinger's 14-inch pizza by the slice, so employees divided the pizza into fourths. The school's concession stand, which he also supplied, made the same pizza into six slices.
But a problem arose. The foodservice director reported that the students complained of unequal-sized slices. Then he found that many schools won't even let operators bid on supplying pizza if their slices aren't equal.
Getzinger searched for a flexible tool that would help him portion out his slices and found an opportunity to be the first to market such a product.
He came up with the Portion PadL, sort of like a pizza stone made out of NSF-approved Richlite. The platform has pre-portioned slices to cut along, plus several rings of sizes. Getzinger said the Portion PadL is custom designed to clients' pizza sizes and shapes, and can be designed for sheet pizzas as well. Getzinger said he's made a name for himself with the product.
"I started increasing my commercial sales and became known as the pizza shop that could help schools, churches and private businesses develop a successful pizza-by-the-slice fundraiser program," he said.
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