Operations
Zoli's brings traditional New York pizza to Dallas
Zoli's pizza was born out of the Neapolitan craze -- some people just didn't like it, so owner Jay Jerrier sought to create a brand serving traditional red-sauce pizzas. Zoli's has two locations in the DFW area.
January 16, 2023 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group
Zoli's Pizza in Dallas was built on the back of its sister pizzeria, Cane Rosso. While Cane Rosso's traditional Neapolitan-style pizzas were popular with some guests, others didn't care for it. Founder Jay Jerrier looked for a brand that could please those who didn't like Cane Rosso.
"This was back in 2011, 2012 where Neapolitan pizza wasn't everywhere," Jerrier said, "so there were a lot of people who just hated Cane Rosso. It was so floppy and wet and soft or whatever. We had this old deck oven in the kitchen at Cane Rosso and we just experimented with New York-style pies. We started getting really good at baking big, crispy slices that you could fold and didn't droop."
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And thus Zoli's was born as a counter-service concept in 2013. Jerrier and his team found a tiny spot in Bishop Arts in Dallas and starting doing whole pies, slices, Grandma-style and Sicilian pizzas, chicken Parmesan rolls and stromboli — all the foods found in traditional New York-style pizzerias.
Zoli's was only in that location for a couple of years before the land was sold to a developer and the brand decided to move locations in 2016. Two years later, Jerrier and his team finally found a new building for Zoli's, where it was opened as a much bigger full-service concept in an area of northern Dallas called Addison.
The brand expanded into pastas, pizzas, sandwiches, salads and desserts.
"We have what is regularly written up as one of the best burgers in Dallas," Jerrier added, "which is a big accomplishment in such a meat-heavy town."
He said he grew up in Massachusetts where he and his family visited a lot of red-sauce traditional Italian places, which is what he wanted to do with Zoli's second coming. He hired a chef from a more upscale dining background, who also was one of Dallas' best burger guys, Jerrier said, so a double cheeseburger was put on the menu and became one of the most popular items and gets plenty of press.
A second Zoli's opened on the Ft. Worth side of the region a couple of years ago. Both are owned by Jerrier.
The menu
"I love our Neapolitan-style pizza, but this is the stuff I grew up on up in the Northeast," Jerrier said, adding that his wife likes the lightness of Cane Rosso's Neapolitan pizza a little better. "I love the big, cheesy Zoli's slice. Whenever I go to Zoli's, I just get a plain cheese pizza."
Dough is made in house. Jerrier has considered using a commissary, and it's on his "to do" list. To date, he's been able to consolidate his operations in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.
The build-your-own pizza is tops but is closely followed by the Christian Pescroni pizza, which features tomato sauce, double pepperoni and jalapeno pesto, and is named after an acclaimed chef who is a friend of Jerrier's.
Old-school zucchini fries are also popular and are served with a spicy jalapeno ranch dip. Instead of mozzarella sticks, they offer Nuggz, fried mozzarella cubes served with marinara.
The award-winning double cheeseburger is made with a chuck-brisket-short rib blend, American cheese, farmhouse cheddar and horseradish pickles and is served with a proprietary sauce.
A favorite dessert includes the Gooey Butter Cake served with whipped cream and raspberries.
"We got creative with the things we wanted to do on that menu," Jerrier said. There's no microwave and only a small freezer at Zoli's, and everything is made in-house, including the dough, sauce, focaccia bread, zucchini sticks, and they cut and bread the mozzarella bites.
"The dough – it's a complicated, multi-day process," Jerrier added. "We have a lot of different dough processes going on every day. … We do everything in-house because I've never found any vendor that could do it the exact way we want with the same kind of quality. We make hundreds of pizzas a day and we really want pizza one to be as good as pizza 200, and unless we have our hands in the process, we don't feel like that can happen."
Pizza accounts for 55 to 60% of sales. Jerrier wants the same attention and care put into the other items on the menu as they do the pizza.
Operations
To maintain consistency as Zoli's has grown, Jerrier said he has built up his corporate staff, including a chief culinary officer and a team of corporate executive chefs whose job it is to make sure the brand's food is reciped and plated properly. Videos of how to make the items and corporate menu sheets are available. There are people on staff to train pizzaiolos on pizza making at each location.
"Not only do we make sure everything's consistent the way we want it now, we're also tweaking things for the future," Jerrier added.
Hiring, like most restaurants, has been a challenge, and it's not just hourly employees. Zoli's is starting to get some good hourly people coming back, with pizzamakers making $20 an hour, but it seems as if the brand is always training someone new, Jerrier added. Even on the corporate side, with director-level positions, they were having people not showing up for interviews for a $90,000-a-year job.
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The price fluctuations on foods and goods are also starting to settle down. "With 10 operating restaurants (between all three of his brands) we buy in massive quantities," Jerrier said.
And more diners are eating in, requiring the brand to rely less on third-party delivery.
Jerrier said they're always looking for new opportunities and locations. He'd like to open another Zoli's in Dallas and perhaps one in the suburbs. The DFW area is growing, and Jerrier is making sure the real estate makes sense before jumping in.
"We're always looking for more spaces, but I'm a little gun shy about opening any spaces just because of how long it takes to get anything done now," Jerrier admitted. "We've just been improving on what we've got and tweaking our dough recipes, getting our menus fine-tuned, doing all our costing, getting the right people in the right spots. The pandemic was a great opportunity for us to just reset.
"We want to make sure that customers have a great time when they come to our restaurants, so we want our restaurants to be fun, we want our restaurants to not be overly expensive and we just really want people to have a good time."
About Mandy Wolf Detwiler
Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the managing editor at Networld Media Group and the site editor for PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com. She has more than 20 years’ experience covering food, people and places.
An award-winning print journalist, Mandy brings more than 20 years’ experience to Networld Media Group. She has spent nearly two decades covering the pizza industry, from independent pizzerias to multi-unit chains and every size business in between. Mandy has been featured on the Food Network and has won numerous awards for her coverage of the restaurant industry. She has an insatiable appetite for learning, and can tell you where to find the best slices in the country after spending 15 years traveling and eating pizza for a living.
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