BAKE-IN-BOX PIZZA HOT AT TIDYMAN'S

ROSEANNE HARPER

GREEN ACRES, Wash. -- Tidyman's here has heated up its pizza sales with a new application of cook-in-the-container convenience.

The retailer has developed a pizza customers can bake in a conventional oven without removing from the box it's packed in.

After a "very successful" test in one store, Tidyman's is not about to put a lid on the experiment. To the contrary, the product has just been rolled out to all Tidyman's delis, said Mansour Alzaharna, service deli supervisor for the 10-unit independent.

"Customers loved it immediately," added Linda Miller, deli manager at the unit -- in Post Falls, Idaho -- that began testing the product two and a half months ago. That store, a little over 60,000 square feet, is situated in a resort-lake area.

The bake-in-the-box pies are all added sales, Miller pointed out; the store already did a good business with its 12-inch, chilled pizzas with fresh gourmet toppings.

"We sell 45 to 50 of our 12-inch gourmet pizzas at that store, and now, in addition, we're selling 12 of the bake-in-box ones a day. There are other stores that are selling more now," said Alzaharna.

"I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but for a new product like this it's good, we think, and the ring is good. We're selling them for $8.99 each, compared to $5.99 each for the 12-inch pies," Alzaharna said.

The net profit at the current price point is not as high as it is on the 12-inch, but a planned $1 boost in the retail price will bring profit up as high as on the conventional size, Alzaharna added. He declined to say what the gross or net is on the products.

The pizza-in-a box concept was bred as he watched bakery employees packing up cinnamon rolls. A chance remark by the bakery manager was the spark that set fire to the idea, Alzaharna said.

"She told me that you can heat up rolls right in the box, and I said to myself that maybe a modified version of the box could work for our pizza." He added that people have told him they hate the mess that can ensue when they try to bake a pizza directly on their oven racks.

As it turns out, adapting the concept to the pizza program became a case of modifying the pizza itself, not the box.

"We created a new size pizza to fit the box, a rectangular-shaped pizza that's 10.5 by 13 inches and has a crust an inch thick," Alzaharna said. "Since the box is deep, we needed the pizza to be sitting up there. A regular, thin-crust pizza wouldn't look good to the customer in that box, which is 4 inches high."

The retailer sources its pizza crusts, parbaked, from a regional manufacturer. That manufacturer, at the retailer's request, custom-formulated the crust for the rectangular pizza.

"We made some modifications in the formulation and in the processing of the dough in order to come up with an inch-thick crust that was crispy and light when baked. We didn't want a dense, heavy crust for these," said an official from the manufacturer.

Asked if he had any reservations about the potential success of such a product, the manufacturer said no. "I figured Mansour had done his homework. I never doubted that it would be worth the work to modify the crust for the particular application," he said.

Surprisingly, the box is not specially treated to make it withstand the pizza-baking heat. It's a white, corrugated craft paper box of the type made by a number of packaging firms, Alzaharna said.

Asked if he had ever considered that Tidyman's could be making itself vulnerable to liability claims if the box should catch fire, Alzaharna said, "If the customer follows directions, it won't catch on fire. We tested it in our pizza ovens for a half hour at 475 degrees." The instructions tell customers to bake the pizza in a preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

"Besides giving us extra sales, this has created some excitement. We keep getting positive comments from customers. After we had the crust formulated, we tested it with our staff and then a customer focus group. They said they'd buy it," Alzaharna said.

The bake-in-the-box pizzas are assembled, daily, just as the 12-inch pizzas are, right in front of the customer. A row of the boxed pizzas is displayed right above a colorful display of round, 12-inch, chilled pizzas, ready for baking.