What's the Best Type of Pizza for Your Shop?
When you are creating the menu for your pizza shop, one of the first questions that you have to ask is what type of pizza are going to serve. This means more than just the toppings and combinations. You will need to make a choice about whether you are going to serve classic New York style pizza, Chicago style pizza, or California-style pizza. There are plenty of other variations of pizza out there, but these three are the hottest places from where most pizza styles have emerged. Before you make your decision, take the time to learn about these different pizza styles.
New York Style Pizza
New York style pizza has a thin crust and is cut into large pieces that fold easily. It is traditionally hand-tossed, moderately topped with southern Italian-style marinara tomato sauce and liberally sprinkled with mozzarella cheese. It enjoys its greatest popularity in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Chicago Style Pizza
Chicago style pizza, known as deep-dish pizza, has a thick crust which is formed up the sides of a deep-dish pan. It reverses the order of traditional ingredients, using crust, cheese, filling, and then sauce on top. Some versions are stuffed with all types of toppings. You won’t be able to fold a piece of Chicago style pizza, in fact, you will need a knife and a fork to eat it. The deep dish style found Chicago is going to be a heavier pizza than the New York pizzas and will be considered more of a meal by customers.
California Style Pizza
California style pizza refers to pizza that uses a combination of the New York style thin crust with very non-traditional toppings. Fresh produce, chicken, tacos, goat cheese, Thai sauces and hundreds of other ingredients make up the types of toppings found in California style pizza. If you choose this style of pizza for your shop, you will never run out of variations to offer your customers.
Which Pizza is Right for Your Shop?
Years ago, the Midwest was the most predominant place to find Chicago style pizza, but that’s no longer the case. You will find that there are many places throughout the country that offer this style, so they can be part of your menu no matter where you live. New York style pizza remains the most popular option around, partially due to the fact that it is a classic - what people think of when they conjure up an image of pizza and it's the easiest to grab on the run, or prepare for fresh, fast delivery. The California style of pizza seems to work best in a pizza restaurant, where customers can choose from a large assortment of fresh produce and unusual toppings and combinations that you can't find anywhere else.
When deciding which pizza route to go, first consider the other restaurants in your area and the type of food that people in your town prefer. If you are in a large metropolis with numerous pizza shops, you may want to try and open a non-traditional California style pizza shop. If you are in the Chicago area or other places in the Midwest, you might find that the traditional New York style pizzas won't work and you will need to stick to the traditional Chicago-style pizza.
In the end, it all comes down to your own taste. Which do you prefer? Your taste is the most important thing that matters because you are likely to put more passion into the type of pizza that you actually love.