Article
2019's top pizza reads: century-old pizzeria restoration to futuristic pie prep
The final year of the 2010s had Pizza Marketplace readers looking back nearly a century to learn about restoring historic buildings for pizzerias, as well as into one possible pizza future where pie assembly is managed by artificial intelligence via an automated pizza assembly line.
Photo: Edited iStock.
December 27, 2019 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group
Over a year that had pizza brand leaders tossing and turning to acquire and actively benefit from an array of game–changing technological innovations, a feature with a focus on bygone days captured the most readers on this website during 2019. The story, Bavaro's: Building a pizza brand on history, revolved around a Florida pizza restaurateur's struggles to acquire, gut and renovate a nearly 100-year-old Sarasota building into one showstopping pizzeria with all the charm and history of Old Florida.
Dan Bavaro's account of his brand's struggles to get the building up and running again, this time as a place for great pies as opposed to 1920s Florida courts and judges, turned out to be the most-read Pizza Marketplace feature in 2019.
But as what might be a sign of the nation's somewhat split state of mind these days, just two down the list of most-read stories at No. 3, was a feature about the razor's edge technology involved in an AI-operated pizza assembly line that spews out hundreds of customized pies hourly with nary a complaint or — according to its producer — mistake.
Between those historic and futuristic top reads was one of the business's most-talked about brands of the last several years, Papa John's, in a story about a major sweep of hires, releases, promotions and job changes at the highest levels of that Louisville-based organization. At No. 2 on the most-read features list was November's feature regarding major moves at the top of the brand. In fact, Papa John's relative high-interest with this site's readers was also evident in the fact that the brand was the subject of the No. 8 and No. 10 most-read features of the year on Pizza Marketplace.
Other subjects in the top 10 most–read articles were largely centered on some of the hot operational subjects of the day, including labor, packaging and delivery. The remaining seven stories of the top 10 features were:
5. Is time up for 3rd-party delivery's customer experience problems?
6. Restaurateurs struggle for alternatives to single-use packaging
7. Mountain Mike's scales to new heights in art of family as customer
8. Schnatter: Morale, pizza quality down at Papa John's
9. 1000 Degrees Pizza on wrangling 25 delivery providers into better business
10. Commodities Report: August 2019 bids adieu to pizza brands with a kiss ... especially for Papa John's
6. Restaurateurs struggle for alternatives to single-use packaging
7. Mountain Mike's scales to new heights in art of family as customer
8. Schnatter: Morale, pizza quality down at Papa John's
9. 1000 Degrees Pizza on wrangling 25 delivery providers into better business
10. Commodities Report: August 2019 bids adieu to pizza brands with a kiss ... especially for Papa John's
Plant-basedEquipment & SuppliesCustomer Service / ExperienceFast Casual Executive SummitBusiness Strategy and ProfitabilityPCI ComplianceRestaurant Franchising & Innovation SummitPizza IngredientsLeadershipPOSOnline OrderingRestaurant Design / LayoutFranchisingOperationsMarketingFood & BeveragePaymentsDeliveryPapa Johns
About S.A. Whitehead
Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.
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