Pizzas pulling in club market punters
/Pizzas have long been a popular drawcard on the club scene but lately they’ve proven more popular than ever, with creative chefs using them to showcase their skills and pull in the punters. Foodservice Rep spoke to two successful club food providores who feature pizza prominently on their menus.
Justin Hope
Justin Hope is executive chef at the SS&A Club (Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s) in the heart of the NSW border town of Albury. He has been at the club for the past eight years and has had pizza on the menu for at least the last five. “Lately we’ve really started pushing them – we now have a designated pizza section in The Social Dining bar and we’re expanding the menu, changing things up a bit.”
The Social’s pizza offering is set to go a little more upmarket, with Justin recently having sourced higher end toppings from a specialised supplier out of Melbourne. “I think when it comes to pizza generally, we’re seeing a shift to quality over quantity,” he says. “People are looking for smoked ham rather than shredded and overly processed, they want Italian style cheeses, tasty smallgoods and San Marzano tomato sugo for the base – which is pretty much what most of the high end pizza places use.”
the social dining & bar features a designated pizza section
“I think when it comes to pizza generally, we’re seeing a shift to quality over quantity”
Justin attributes pizza’s popularity to it being “a meal everyone’s familiar with, and it’s also a value for money proposition. It’s also a versatile choice - you can share it with multiple people, you can have it as an entrée or a main, it’s the perfect get-together meal for family and friends.”
He and his team pride themselves on making their own fresh pizza dough from scratch. “We make big batches and freeze down our dough balls so we don’t have to make them up every day – we’ll bring them back up to temperature, prove them and they’re ready to go for the next day. It’s a point of pride for us knowing we make our own bases and I think that’s a good thing. We’re currently trying to find a really good recipe for a gluten free base, because we are finding more and more people are looking for that.”
At the moment the pizzas are cooked in a Moretti Forni iDeck oven, but with the club currently undergoing renovations, Justin is planning to switch to a conveyor to cope with the anticipated growing demand as trade gets busier. “We expect the bistro area renovation will add another 200 seats, so everything’s ramping up – that’s the case with our functions as well, we’ve recently done up all our functions rooms.
“When you go for quality toppings, you can use less and still end up with a really nice pizza”
“Yes, you can eat anywhere in the club but we know there’s an expectation out there among our patrons for nice dining spaces – on a busy night at the moment we might sell 80 to 90 pizzas, with garlic pizzas and breads on top of that, and it’s only going to grow, so we’re looking for an oven that can handle the added the capacity. We’re aiming to get to around 1000 pizzas a week.”
Justin takes a practical approach to building his pizzas. “You need to be smart about your toppings – the more toppings, the less margin there is, so it’s about finding a balance. When you go for quality toppings, you can use less and still end up with a really nice pizza, as opposed to using cheaper toppings and just loading it up. We’re finding people want quality more than quantity these days – a really nice topping that they’re going to remember, and that’s why we’re trying to take ours to the next level.”
The pizza menu also includes a takeaway component – which Justin says has not been a focus, “but it’s definitely something I’d like to give more attention to in the future as we grow and expand and improve our offering. I have a couple of really experienced chefs set to join us who are going to help with those challenges.”
PePPERONI PIZZA - SS&A CLUB
“Prawn and chorizo is such a fantastic flavour combo and my personal favourite”
Currently there are seven pizzas on the standard menu, and the club is also running a special which has been entered in the Perfect Plate competition. “It’s called the Ibiza Sunset and it’s probably our most popular pizza – a prawn and chorizo pizza which is such a fantastic flavour combo and my personal favourite.”
SS&A CLUB’s IBIZA SUNSET PIZZA has been entered in the perfect plate competition
Appealing to all ends of the spectrum
Yianni Bartelmess
Yianni Bartelmess is F&B Group Executive for The Aster Group, responsible for the food offering at Wests Illawarra which is situated at Unanderra, a suburb of Wollongong on the NSW south coast. The club has two main internal food outlets – the Craft Café and the Artisan bistro. It also includes an offset smoker called Wilbur which serves American barbecue style food and the Hellfire food truck which goes to local festivals and markets and, as Yianni explains, “is a way for us to get our brand and products into markets we wouldn’t otherwise be able to access.”
The club caters to a varied demographic – a lot of empty nesters from the surrounding area along with young families which have moved in more recently. “We try to cater for a multitude of different tastes to appeal to all ends of the spectrum, ranging from $10 lunches up to our $70 waygu which is dried inhouse," Yianni says.
He explains that when Artisan opened several years ago, “we tried to go down the Napoli pizza ropute but we were met fairly quickly with a lot of pushback from customers who wanted more toppings – they thought it was a little bit sparse – and a crispier base than the standard Napoli style which can be quite soft in the middle. So were settled for a slightly darker style pizza – not quite a New York style which can be a little bit blond on the edges, I think you might call it London style as it’s a little darker on top. We use a really thin base, very crispy with strong leoparding on the bottom and a really good undercarriage.”
Like Justin, Yianni makes his own dough from scratch. “All our dough is aged for between 24 to 48 hours – we don’t compromise on the quality, we use Caputo flour as we find that’s the most stable and we ferment our bases. Obviously being a large kitchen with changes in temperature and humidity we’ve got to be highly adaptable based on how the dough is performing on any given day, so everything’s hand stretched and balled to order.”
Pizzas currently make up about 25 per cent of the pizza and there are 10 varieties on offer – including Pepperoni, Hawaiian and Supreme in the classics range, along with more gourmet varieties like Garlic and Potato, and Garlic Prawn and Pesto. “We’re currently running a special for Perfect Plate and our chefs have come up with a Bee Sting Pizza which is pepperoni, chilli crunch and hot honey – we sourced the proper American Cup and Char Pepperoni from Hormel Foods which makes such a difference. We also have a spot for our chefs to try out new recipes – we’ve done tandoori chicken and satay chicken pizzas and we’re currently featuring one with spicy Calabrian spreadable sausage. We’ve also had pizzas that have stayed on the menu for years – our diavola was on for the best part of six or seven years - but you also need to change it up and keep things dynamic and fresh.”
Prior to the establishment of Artisan, the pizza component of the club’s menu had been produced in a deck conveyor oven. “While they were popular, speed of service and overall quality wasn’t quite where we wanted it,” Yianni explains. “We were keen to give people a better product so we tried two different ovens before we found the one we really wanted. Now we have two big stone bake deck ovens. The throughput is great – we can do 10 pizzas at a time and cooking time is about four minutes, so we’re pumping them out. On a busy night we’ll do 60 to 80.”
Artisan seats 290 and customers can also take their meals and eat them anywhere from the big gaming room to the lounge areas. Yianni adds that Craft Café has a separate pizza offering in Detroit style – “they are cooked in rectangular deep pans with a thicker base, cut into squares with the tomato sauce over the top of the cheese which forms a lacy edge around the side of the pan. They’ve been very popular – I think the kitchen wanted to have a crack at making this style and they nailed it, and they’re very appealing as a light meal for a café and a point of difference from what we offer in Artisan.”
“Pizza is such a universal food that the market is massive wherever you go”
Yianni believes the popularity of pizzas is down to their being “a comfort food, a carb and easy to eat – you can modify them to have exactly what you want on them, and they’re delicious! Who doesn’t love that mix of cheese and sauce and bread, all freshly baked? Come on!”
Increased demand for premade bases
While both Justin and Yianni make their own pizzas bases, the ongoing staff and skills shortage has led to an increased demand for premade bases.
Warren Jones of Mission Foods says, “Pizza is such a universal food that the market is massive wherever you go and there’s no doubt many foodservice professionals are looking for a readymade dough option for ease of use and to cut down prep time.
“We therefore developed a range for local operators seeking that convenience - from the café sector to onsite catering to mining services, we want to cut down the labour and time involved to put a pizza together.”
Pizza Bases from Mission Foods
Mission Foods sells standard pizza bases in 7 inch, 9 inch and 12 inch, along with gluten free 9 inch and 12 inch bases which are popular with pizza shops – “they need something pre-prepared because they’re using wheat flour in their facility, so the gluten free base is a strong seller with them.”
To ensure its pizza bases hit the mark, the business invested in a full test kitchen at its Melbourne plant which Warren says “includes all the equipment you’d find in a pizza shop or QSR environment. We developed the formulation and put it through rigorous testing in the back end to make sure it would work in the professional environment.
“We wanted to ensure the base would have that nice fluffiness with a crunch on the bottom – that it doesn’t dry out too fast and also holds up during delivery travel time. We kept testing and testing until we were sure it was the right fit to go out to market.”
“We kept testing and testing until we were sure it was the right fit to go out to market”
On the gluten free front, Warren says Mission Foods gluten free bases are also strong performers: “Our gluten free base is not doughy or heavy, it’s really light and it has a rice crust so it crisps up beautifully. I think its lightness sets it apart from the competition because a lot of gluten free pizza bases are quite heavy.
“Gluten free technology has accelerated at a pretty rapid rate over the past couple of years and the current generation of products coming out are really outstanding – you wouldn’t know they were gluten free.”
