How to Make Money Selling Pizza in New York City

23:16And yeah, it's just one of those products where we have been trying to focus locally because pizza, it does lose its luster the further away you get, right? Traveling when it's stuck in the boxes can be an issue. But, you know, we just make it work and whatever it takes to get it there on time. What are your capacity constraints? Let's say I'm at the office. Someone closes a big sale. It's like, this is great. Let's have a party tonight. Could I call you up? Like, how quickly could I get 30 pizzas from you? 30 if you give us like three hours we'll get it there yeah for sure i mean we've done we've done that and what's the most number of pizzas you can have cooking at one time like and inventory of pizzas that you have already cooked like talk to us yeah yeah i mean we have a pretty decent throughput so you know we've done 50 to 100 pie orders you know and it's all about timing and moisture control you know the way that we design the dough you know it's very efficient on the reheat is what we tend to call.

24:10We're able to get that all out at once. And we feed a lot of desks in Midtown, like, you know, shout out Jerry from Nomura, by the way, and BlackRock and all those guys like, you know, so we're feeding the desk and, you know, once they order from us, it's game over there weekly. Right. So we're used to that kind of, you know, throughput. And it is like Alex alluded to earlier, you know, it's a functional part of our business. We really rely on catering and the offices to really sustain us in this one very, very hyper-local neighborhood. So speaking of hyper-local, do you tailor the menu for that particular location?

24:49Or is pizza like a universal transportable good that can work basically anywhere in New York, at least? 100%. You definitely tailor. So when I designed the dough, I had a lot of things in mind. Like this is a very vertical area. So we limit the amount of blocks we go because by the time you take an elevator up and that guy comes back, this is 30 minutes. You know, like he's gone, right? So that's why as owners, the collective three of us, you could see us running around Midtown East like in carts and cars and U-Hauls. And like we're all pitching in to kind of make this all happen. But what about in terms of the actual menu, like the pizza flavors and design?

25:28Yeah, I mean, yeah, we avoid specific items that don't hold up well in a box or lose their heat. And, you know, it limits like you don't want to do fish, right? You never see fish on pizza, right? It's rare. My dad always ordered anchovy pizza. It was disgusting. Yeah, it's usually the cured stuff, not like, you know, you're not going to get like sea bass on there. Sea bass ceviche pizza. Someone will do that. I'm sure they will. So let's – we talked about this sort of upfront capital cost. Let's try to work the math in the other direction. Like I buy a slice of pizza or I buy 10 slices of pizza.

26:06How much of what I'm paying for is the labor that went into it? How much is it the raw ingredient? And how much is it your upfront capital outlay and the profit you need to make on your risk? Like talk to me about like how you're getting paid back for all these things. What's the math here? So historically, it's been 30, 30, 30, 10, right? Okay. So 30 fixed costs, 30 labor, 30 food costs, and then 10 % profit, right? That's like normal for New York. If you're outside of New York, your profit gets a little bit higher, but you're also not doing as much volume. So you can get like, you know, I mean, Shake Shack's numbers, if you look at it, like 17 % profit margin for them, you know, they're bigger, they can extract more value out of things, get better pricing.

26:47But in New York City, it's a little more cutthroat and you might even get 5 % profit margins or no percent profit at all. And you go out of business, right? Are there items on a pizza restaurant's menu or options that are particularly high margin? Like, you know, there's some X on this, but you really make your money on Y? Oh, yeah. You could have what's called lost leaders, right? Like you have things that attract you to the place, like, you know, steaks have a 50 % margin, right? And when I said the 30-30-10, by the way, it's changed in the last decade. Now your labor costs is 45%. You know, your food costs are where you're trying to save a little bit more money by getting creative with the menu items.

27:26And then your fixed costs, you know, you're trying to limit those as well, but the variables have been through the roof, right? Like the insurance has gone crazy. Yeah. And just in terms of, yeah, the one thing that does attract most people to pizza restaurants is in general, your food cost is pretty good. Like you'll get, But if you're like really humming, you'll get it like close to 20%, which is, you know, most restaurants like our Oxford Cafe and similar QSRs like that, you're at the 30 to 35. So your food cost is the great component. It's now in New York, 10 % was the rule of thumb on rent.

27:58Everyone is now, you know, in the 15 to 17 % range. So there's all these different changes and, you know, what you knew about, you know, your cost structures and you're just searching for new sales any way you can. and you're trying to keep the walk-ins growing. But yeah, it's just managing. There's so many different expenses to manage. But yeah, there's just been a huge change since COVID. Well, this is something that keeps coming up, increased costs in the restaurant business. What levers do you have to pull? What levers are available to you to try to keep those costs down? Because it seems like you need to hire people.

28:32Presumably you need to hire them at a competitive rate. You have a premium pizza product, So you don't want to sacrifice quality. Insurance, I'm guessing, is not that negotiable. What can you do? It's just grow, grow, grow. You know, that's all you can do. I mean, recently I've taken on from all my businesses cold calling. You know, I've been looking at, you know, I'll look at directories of buildings. I'm finding the company names, find the phone numbers, and I'm just calling companies. And it's honestly, we've already netted like 10 to 15 new catering orders. So you just have to keep growing.

29:06That's just what it is. Because, yeah, in terms of food costs, that's a good question. You also need to keep your purveyors honest. You need to have a book of other purveyors to constantly check pricing. Because, yeah, we even, you know, in our restaurants, the Oxford Cafe and the Mill, I mean, we had purveyors that had been serving us for 20 years. And we kind of stopped checking. And all of a sudden you realize even people who are loyal to you are jacking up little prices here and there. So you need to constantly be checking your invoices and doing your due diligence because it's on you to make sure nothing slides by you.

29:38The other thing I'd add, one of the challenges on sort of the vendors and purveyor side is that you've also seen a lot of concentration occur over the last like 10 to 20 years. So it's also a challenge to kind of be able to kind of price and check with different suppliers and things like that. And one of the interesting things that happened with the pandemic, though, is that because everything became so expensive, you did start seeing a lot of jobbers. Basically, people kind of pulling up in the back of the truck, you know, kind of bringing different products and things like that, and often able to kind of undercut the pricing a little bit.

30:12But in general, especially on the supply side, there is a lot of concentration there economically because just the nature of the business now and the regulations and things like that, there's just a lot of economic pressure that results in this concentration. Do you use a lot of third party services or like outsource certain things to middlemen? Because this, again, has come up in a previous conversation, the idea that you're spending more on just the middle guy to get things done. I guess. So yeah, in terms of, yeah, obviously the big one I know is all the third-party delivery services. You know, that's one of those, you have to make them work for you.

30:51Unfortunately, in this past week, they had capped third-party fees at 5 % after the pandemic to help out restaurants. But starting August 1st, those rates are coming back up to 20%. So you'll be at 20 % on that, 4 % on the transaction fee. And then if you're using the third-party services, caviar grub up etc for deliveries they charge another 10 to 15 percent so i look at the prices i charge at my restaurants on my third-party sites were 15 higher than our in-house pricing often because you need it to manage that expense but i can't even imagine where it's going to go again august 1st because people's prices are already crazy and yeah you need to make it work and with the pizzeria we always felt we at least take our deliveries ourself we find you know with pizza, you want like really good control that someone who doesn't work at your restaurant, they're just looking at that as a tip for themselves.

31:44So you want to make sure your pizza is being delivered correctly. But yeah, that that's one of the hardest costs to manage because with deliveries, you're obviously paper, plastic goods, you know, everything that's going out, the costs just go crazy. And yeah, now if they're going to be charging 15 % more again, you know, it really adds up. So that's one thing we've been discussing actually this whole week is how, how much are we going to have to increase prices to like deal with that, you know, that's rock again. To just add to what Evan's saying. So in recent years, like the last two years or so, venture capital has really stopped subsidizing these third party, you know, websites and they're no longer offering these heavy discounts.

32:22And like they basically bought the market, right? They offered this free, you know, you can get it instantaneous lunch. And then now we're actually going to rack up prices. And like, you know, Uber specifically, they did this with the taxis. They put everybody out of business. And then once they own the market, they're like, all right, you know what we're going to take our actual cut yeah i mean they're they are like really parasitic entities i i've they've just disrupted sure yeah it sounds like you've thought them i mean i mean they've really really disrupted the food industry and one of the elements that i feel like you know future historians when they're looking back on this time and really thinking about kind of the American and, you know, what's like the defining aspect of the American.

33:07And it's like, you know, they want convenience and these companies are trying to fulfill that, but operating in such a parasitic manner that they just really, really harm, put themselves in between you and your customer, you know, the restaurant, their customer, and just basically absorb all the, the upside there. And in the process, they're basically just decimating, you know, this industry. And you're also seeing it in the way they're responding where, you know, now they're trying to go fully vertical, right? They're like opening up these ghost kitchens where they have all these weird brands.

33:40The stupidest restaurant names. Yeah. I mean, just like all the – yeah, it's just like the most ridiculous restaurant names. And they're attempting to cultivate this like faux, you know, like local Italian deli. And it's just ridiculous. And but, you know, because they have so much capital behind them, they're able to kind of manage through these concentrated apps like the access. You know, they're able to do that. I don't know how successful they'll be, but it's really harmful. They're asocial. They're really hurting kind of third spaces and where people used to come together. And it's very odd.

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36:27So in light of all of these gigantic companies parasitically extracting value and disrupting community, how are we feeling about socialism these days? Which I only ask, obviously, because we may have a socialist mayor in a few months. Yeah, I mean, nominally socialist, I feel like. Well, it's interesting because I mentioned you guys love making money and you're entrepreneurs. On the other hand, part of his campaign was actually spotlighting small business and bodegas and delis, et cetera. So I'm curious how you're thinking about like. Wait, wait. Are you worried there's going to be a city-owned pizzerias?

37:03Well, you know, Zoram and Donny ran an incredible campaign. He's so energetic. And the one thing we always talk about is that everybody has a point, right? You know, cost of living issues are real. It's hard. And daily life has become much more of a grind than it was before the pandemic, right? So, you know, I think he was addressing, you know, real concerns from people. And, you know. Yeah, but what are you worried about? You know, the one thing, you know, we were talking about this on the way over. You know, if you had not visited New York in two years and, you know, you came back two years later now, you know, the first thing you would say is the city's a lot cleaner and it's actually more functional, seems more functional.

37:43And, you know, there's a lot less prime and kind of disorder. Do you notice it? Because I was going to say, I know the stats are good, but I can't tell like how much am I being influenced by the fact that I read the news and the stats are very good these days. But do you absolutely notice it? I think absolutely. I mean, do you? Someone who like, because I'm commuting all day between the restaurants. I mean, from like 2020 to today, it's like I go on the subway seven, eight times a day, walk around the streets like it is very noticeable. I know, obviously, there's a lot of like there was a lot of trashing New York, you know, during COVID and the election cycles and all that.

38:17But, yeah, it's definitely not at that level that it was. But I do understand. Yeah. When you can pay for eggs or milk and stuff like that, I do understand why people are going in that direction. But also the policies need to be sensible because we already have a crazy budget in the city. And if you keep adding more and more debt, I just don't see how you can pay for all these things he's saying without hurting us down the road. The overregulation is the biggest problem for restaurants moving forward. And I did see he had great campaign points. There was this really stunning video on how he wanted to appoint a small business czar, which I thought really eloquently described, like, the plight that the mom and pop is currently facing, right?

39:02Like, if you're Chipotle, you got, like, 10 guys that can handle regulation and they can just deal with all that stuff. But, like, me, Evan, and Alex, we're, like, just literally trying to just get you food, you know? Yeah, I think the other thing I would say is like, you know, if you look at his campaign proposals on housing and things like that, you know, it's very much kind of trying to manage like a lot of existing programs, you know, from the Adams administration, City of Yes, and different like regulatory making it easier to permitting, things like that. It's not like, you know, he's proposing building a million housing units via NYCHA.

39:39Do you know what I mean? Right. That's why I find like a lot of the conversation about him to be very strange because hyperbolic. Yeah, it's hyperbolic. But also his proposals really aren't, you know, you call them a socialist and he calls himself a socialist. But his proposals are much more kind of like in line with what's kind of the progressive neoliberal paradigm that we've had over the last six years. You know, for example, like, you know, he talks about rent control and things like that. You know, a lot of that was enacted via Cuomo in 2019. Right. Right. There's never been a real honest debate.

40:09Have those reforms that were enacted in 2019, have they worked? And clearly, you know, based on this campaign, they haven't. So what works, what doesn't work? You know, and I also don't think I don't see a lot of foreign journalists coming to New York and saying, wow, this regulatory regime is something we need to we need to bring this to, you know, Tokyo. We need to bring this Vienna. And I've read Vienna and like, you know, nobody says that. You know, so that's kind of I feel like sometimes we're not honest. And, you know, oftentimes also like the debate about having mentioned the city budget is like one hundred twenty billion dollars.

40:43It's massive. Right. You know, so when somebody talks about austerity budgets, it always rings hollow to me because, you know, you're spending a lot of money. It's nearly forty thousand per student for the NYC DOE, but it's not really delivering results. So what does that mean? Like, is it more we're not spending enough? Is it, you know, we're not effective in governance? Like, I think those are the more interesting questions that sometimes, you know, people don't want to discuss because those are hard questions. Pizza and politics. I like this combination. Someone's got to be doing that already.

41:15But if not, it could be a recurring theme. Well, talk a little bit more about the regulatory choke points. Give us a sense, because if I think about regulation of New York restaurants, like, okay, when you're opening, I'm sure there are a lot of hoops to jump through. But then after that, the only thing I can really think of is the health letter that goes up on the window. And frankly, I see a lot of non-As around. So it seems in my mind like maybe this isn't a big deal if you can continue to operate without getting an A. I mean, the one I want to bring up is earlier talking about why we went electric.

41:53If you try to get a new gas service into a restaurant, your restaurant may never wake up. I mean, wake up, may never open with the Con Ed process just for gas. It is actually funny story. I currently in my apartment, our gas line cracked in January and we might not get it back to the following January or February. Right. So that's just one where if you're trying to open up a restaurant, like you might just be sitting there calling Connet every day, just begging for them to let your restaurant operate so you can make your investment back. So that's just one. But yeah, there's just a lot of constant, you know, at one point they put a regulation for you can't keep your doors open.

42:28So air conditioning didn't flow out. You know, obviously the paper straw thing was a big one. So there's constant little annoyances that they just try to put into your business. Why are people's straws still a thing? Trump won. Why did we get rid of that for real? I still get them from time to time. Who is asking for that? I couldn't agree more. It's just these little things that we try to constantly do. And it's just a headache for us with the garbage. It's like, obviously, I'm very happy Mayor Adams tackled it. That's been a huge issue for the city. Wait, do you perceive progress on that? Like when you look at the trash and also the rat situation in New York, which he touts his war on rats a lot, do you perceive, are you able to do some progress?

43:09Joe claims to be a single issue voter on rats. I'm not sure it's true. Pizza rat. No, do you notice the kind of stuff? I mean, I think it's just very good to just containerize garbage, you know, especially, so I was just in Europe and Portugal and they have these beautiful garbage cans where it's a shoot underground, then they come and get it. Like, I would love to just stop seeing garbage bags everywhere, you know, and it's, you know, we just need to clean up the streets a little bit, right? So it's good. Yeah. I also want to add to that because when COVID happened, they basically opened up the regulation for every three-letter agency.

43:44So while you're seeing a lot more of the grade pending signs from the health department, I mean, I'm more concerned about the fire department and the Department of Transportation because the way that they tackle the outdoor dining has been ridiculous. There's a hundred new steps to doing outdoor dining, whereas I used to just have to fill out a form, send in a check, and it get renewed every year. Now I have 11 pending tickets from the Department of Transportation for various reasons. That's a shame. I'm a big fan of outdoor dining, and I wish there was more of it in New York, despite the rat problem.

44:21In terms of additional pressures on the business, there's another one we should probably talk about. Again, situation is kind of in flux. We're recording this on July 8th. But tariffs, right? I assume as a pizza place, maybe you're importing some tomatoes from Italy or I don't know, fancy flour from France, which I know is a thing. Is that expected to impact your business at all? One area where it definitely has impacted is just paper and plastic. A lot of paper and plastic materials that go into kind of branding and things like that do come from abroad. It's just become more expensive in the U.S.

45:00to produce those types of things. So, you know, you're importing a lot of different products. The bulls that you see at different spots come from, you know, Vietnam or China or some other areas and, you know, the pulp bulls. And so that's one area where clearly, you know, for a lot of restaurants, they are impacted. You know, obviously, there's, you know, it's been kind of a ridiculous couple of months with the back and forth. But that's definitely an area where I think a lot of restaurant operators are concerned and will actually ultimately be impacted by it. So it is a global supply chain. And like, here's an example, right?

45:34Like, what do you associate the food product of Switzerland to be? Cheese. Cheese. Okay. Chocolate. How many miles do you think is the local cocoa bean from Switzerland? A lot. A lot, yeah. Yeah, like 1 ,200 miles. But cheese is local. Cheese is local, yeah. How would you assess the sort of current cyclical state of the New York City economy? People, I don't think, have ever been more divided and confused about just the trajectory of whether we're talking about the national economy or anything else. You could have people pointing to signs like, look, things are booming right now. And other people will have very compelling arguments like things are slowing down.

46:11Fed's got to cut and stuff. Like right now, July 8th, how are things feeling? I mean, I can start. I know we all have opinions on it. I mean, just back to why we started this business, we always believed New York would come back. Obviously, we took a huge risk in the middle of COVID. And, you know, right now we are seeing it's always good and bad signs, right? Obviously, we just came out of a big holiday cycle, you know, between Memorial Day, Juneteenth and Fourth of July. And, you know, we are seeing more catering, which is great, obviously, in an area like Midtown East. It's very nice to see the foot traffic, you know, Monday through Thursday back again.

46:44So, you know, we're feeling very optimistic entering this fall. Fridays are gone for good, huh? So that was one thing we didn't bring up earlier. You know, one of the big issues trying to manage your expenses is that Friday, at least in New York. You know, I don't know about other cities or in the suburbs, but losing that Friday, you know, that Friday, you know, you're down to... People probably don't eat more lunch on Monday through Thursday to compensate for the fact that they're not ordering up. Exactly. Like when you're doing your basic, you know, modeling for your restaurant, losing one whole weekday a week, right?

47:12It adds up. But I will say we are feeling way better entering this fall than the previous years. You know, just we've had a couple months where it's like, wow, this is, you know, we had two months that were up 25 % at Zeno's from last year, which is fantastic. So feeling good on that end. But, you know, we're always on edge, right? It's like, we don't know what's going to happen with certain expenses and we're going to keep pushing. But yeah. So, yeah, to speak to that, the wealth effect, right? People can avoid coming into Manhattan on Friday, but also during the summer when you have Labor Day, Memorial Day, you know, the three big holidays, they're gone the week before and the week after.

47:48So you're essentially, New York City is turning into a little bit of a ghost town. Oh, because they're really rich these days because of the stock market, so they're taking longer vacations around the holidays? Is that what you're saying? It's all the points. They're buying pizza in the Hamptons. Exactly. That these are becoming longer holidays than they used to be. Longer holidays. That's really interesting. You can see it in the sales. Wow. Yeah, I think that's kind of part of the problem where before the pandemic, a lot of these, being in the restaurant industry, it was very predictable. You kind of had like a sense of where each week would be and how to manage.

48:18You know, that was just kind of like second nature. And now with kind of remote work and, you know, how people approach work as well, you know, it's a much bigger challenge to kind of manage the business and predicting and, you know, being able to kind of steady sales. On the city as a whole, it's kind of interesting, like Midtown East, the Plaza District, as Manhattan was moving upwards and north, you know, what made that area that area was the transportation network, right? It's like a nexus of transportation. You have Grand Central, all the subway lines crossing there. And it's a real crossing of the whole tri-state area.

48:55Eastside Access obviously was the big project that brought LIRR into Grand Central. Hopefully they figure out how to actually properly utilize that. And that's kind of why we're bullish long-term on that specific part of the city. It draws people from all over the region. And ultimately, that's what's going to allow it to thrive again and, you know, replicate kind of the where it was pre-pandemic. If you were opening Xenos again, or if you could go back in time and do it over, is there anything you'd do differently? Oh, that's a heavy one. Yeah, I mean, back to the question earlier, it's like when you're picking the location, you're looking for office clients, tourists, locals, and you're trying to balance all those things, obviously, and then against the cost of the rent.

49:46We obviously found an area where we did not have a lot of competition we felt was going to give us a chance to really— And you just found that by typing pizza in Google Maps and zooming out looking for a lack of red dots? That's crazy. On the very most basic level, yeah. Yeah, you need to check what's around you. And we like the space. It obviously was a great space over there and we knew the area. But for example, one thing we've lost in this area is tourists because four or five of the big hotels in the area have shut down since COVID. So obviously looking back, you can't predict that. And I do think if we had another chance, it's like, I mean, we love this space, but maybe do you need to go find an area that's a little bit more touristy?

50:27but like how can you predict that? And then the one thing we were discussing, which is interesting, is obviously pizza and bars usually go together, right? But you are seeing people are drinking less now. So are those areas not as good as they used to be? I don't know. Evan, Alex, and James, that was fantastic. That was the conversation I hoped to have. I didn't even know we were going to get pizza out of it, but that was a lot of fun. We learned a lot. And thank you all so much for coming on OddLoss. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Shout out to Chris Hatch, by the way. Oh, yeah, Chris Hatch, by the way, who we've had on the podcast a couple of times.

51:01He introduced me to James, and then I also met Alex by going to the Oxford Cafe. So all coming together here. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks so much.

51:22Tracy, actually, my stomach does not feel that bad. I did not know that about like, oh, you ferment for a long time, then eat the gluten, and then you don't feel as heavy. I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know that either. Although I have to confess, the whole lunchtime heaviness thing is, I have never had that problem. I never understood it. Do you think I have a gluten? I'd be so embarrassed. Like, I don't want to judge people. I've always like, what if I'm one of those gluten people? Well, maybe you'll feel better if you actually take it into account. But that was really fun. I have empathy now.

51:54upon realizing that I'm one of those gluten people. All right. Well, okay. So we talked about pizza and politics, Sicilian with a side of socialism. Yeah. Marinara and the macro economy. Were you writing all these down? Yes, I was, actually. I love your fastidiousness about dropping puns and alliteration. Terrible puns. Thank you. Whenever you get an opportunity. But no, I did think that was really fun. And I like entrepreneurs. They're optimistic. They have to be, don't they? That's right. I am thinking about like a couple of themes that keep coming across in these couple of episodes we've done on the sort of restaurant or wholesale food business.

52:33Yeah. And that's the idea of a lot of the cost increases coming from that sort of middle layer of third-party services, whether it's because you have to outsource something like distribution or it's because you have to use something like an app, a food delivery app that charges an enormous amount of money to both the customer and the restaurant, apparently. I feel like I need to impress this on people who are not in New York. The food app charges in New York are outrageous. I stopped, by the way. I never get it. I actually started, I'm real old fashioned. I walk to the store and pick up my food after ordering it online.

53:07That's Lindy. Yeah, it is Lindy. Yeah, no, it's insane. It's completely insane. All right. Well, we could probably talk about pizza for a long time. But we have more pizza in the control room right now. So rather than continuing to talk about it, I want another slice. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the All Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Allaway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Go check out their restaurants. Alex and Evan and James, they all have Zeno's. And also, I swear, I kind of want to do it.

53:40The Oxford Cafe on, I guess, 60th Street is the best chopped salad in the system. At one point, I wanted to do an episode on their chopped salad because it's its own great logistic story. So go check out the Oxford Cafe if you're in the area. Follow James Shields on Twitter at James A. Shields. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armin, Dashiell Bennett at Dashpot, and Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash Odd Lots. We have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg slash Odd Lots.

54:12And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we talk about the business of carbs, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

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