Pizzas
mushroom
as snack
favorite
PAGE 8
- - M - - U A y 1
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by Phyllis Malamqd
There've been French fries and goulash and Wienerwurst
and chile con carne. But of all the foreign foods introduced
into the American melting pot, none has caught on quite so
spectacularly as that tangy, tasty, piping-hot dish from
Italy-pizza.
Spreading like a glob of melting mozzarella, the pizza-parlor
business has grown into a booming $3.5 billion industry from
coast to coast in recent years. In the process, the Neapolitan
delicacy may have lost some of its Italian character, but it has
become as American as chop suey.
Purists may sneer at the pineapple-and-Canadian-bacon
"Hawaiin Delight" pizza served at Shakey's on Hollywood's
Santa Monica Blvd. But watch the sneer fade as franchise
owner William Tilley tells hsvw he netted $77,000 In his first
11 months In business. In fact, the 400-outlet Shakey'i chain
grossed a whopping $73 million last year on sales of more than
23 million pizzas. ,
No matter how you slice it, that isn't pepperoni. Pizza now
runs second only to hamburgers as America's favorite quick
snack and, according to a Gallup poll, it is ahead among young
people.
If Thomas Cicciarelli, executive director of the North
American Pizza Association (NAPA) in Ann Arbor, Mich., has
his way, the aromatic pie will soon by No. 1 .
The association is cheerfully assaulting the burger and fried
chicken stands with slogans like "Ban the Bun" and a
projected comic strip called "Super Pizza" in which Peter
Pepperoni and Mary Mozzarella outwit the evil Harry
Hamburger and Charley Chicken. An association T-shirt
proclaims "Pizza Makes Me Passionate."
The pizza phenomenon got its start when servicemen
returning from Italy after World War II brought back an
appetite for "pizza pie" (the word "pie" is actually redundant
because pizza means pie in Italian). But the pizza didn't really
catch on until chains started forming in the late 1950s. -
The Pizza Hut enterprise, started 13 years ago in Wichita,
Kan., now has 698 red brick huts around the country and
abroad. Chairman Dan Carney attributes the pizza-parlor
boom to "personal involvment. You can pick it up with your
fingers. And you can have a beer without feeling you're in a
bar or something."
But the Shakey's chain, which is based in Englewood,
Colo., has mixed in some showmanship with the basic appeal
of the pizza to build its business. The motto of the chain,
header: by former Robert Kennedy aide Joe Dolan, 49, is
"family food and fun."
The typical Shakey's has silent movies, Gay '90s piano and
banjo music, and a "kiddie korral" where youngsters can
watch the cooks throw lumps of dough at the window and
twirl the disks in the air to form a nickel-thin crust. The menu
offers 21 varieties, including the "Jalapene" (with Mexican
chilies) and the "bullfighter's special" (with Spanish sausage)
and one with Louisiana shrimp.
These kinds of unorthodox recipes, interestingly, don't sell
at all well in areas that have large Italian populations. Dolan
explains that most traditional Italian pizzas are bland and that
Italians find the American chain variety too spicy.
Newtweak Feature Service
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ELASTIC BAND 12:00-12:30
WHITLE 12:50-1:30
-BUMPY ACTION 1:30-3:00
miMur AMn pi iMfH 3.no-J.'3fi
I Jf I MIX tmdf I w I M 'V I I V w -i WAS
TOUCHSTONE 4:30-6:00
MAN VS MAN 6:00-7:30
SONGBIRD 7:30-9:00
sponsored by:East Union
THE. DAILY. NEBRAS KAN
FRIDAY, MAY .5, 1972
