Pizza by the pound

I love local businesses. I'll try to support them whenever I can. Not because they grow things locally and they don't haul peppers from Chili. But because I can relate to the underdog. The guy trying to sell against big box stores and chains with marketing and advertising budgets bigger than their life time income. I'm intrigued by the business models they employ. How they can be unique in a world of so many choices.

Today I got my second recommendation to try a new local pizza shop in town called "Nola's Joint". They serve gourmet pizza rumored to be the best tasting pizza around, maybe anywhere. In fact my friend said "At this point I'm so addicted to the stuff that I don't really care how long the line is"

Quality by itself might be enough to make them succeed, especially against the giant chains cranking out eatable disks of bread and cheese by the millions. However Nola (assuming that's the owner) chose to sell her prized pizza by the pound.



The more I think about it the more I think buying pizza by the pound is the dumbest idea ever. Another friend relayed his experience of waiting in a long slow moving line as each person tried to figure out how to get what they wanted. This sounds like a lose/lose situation since all the customer knows is they want 2 slices of pizza and a coke and has no clue how much it might weigh or how much it will cost. Additionally, the restaurant is bound to be left with odd shaped small scraps they can't sell. It must take awhile for workers to know how to cut exactly 1 lb of pizza based on each variety of toppings. Who exactly is this business model helping?

Everyone I know is OK with a pizza being cut into 8 equal pieces. If Nola wanted to give customers more control, then she could sell 1/2 slices. I don't know of any place selling half slices but it might be nice to get a slice and a half some days.

This is like buying a car by volume - "I'll take one blue car with 16.3 cu. feet of space inside please"

How many pounds of pizza do you normally eat?