August 30, 2017 • 34 mins
People always say money is the root of evil. But are you 100% certain it isn’t Pizza? Will and Mango take a deep dive into a shallow dish (more of a pan really) to discuss pizza wars, mafia ties, and why the proper term for a pizza rat in Australia is a Charlie Cheese. Featuring Scott Weiner from Scott’s Pizza Tours.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango? What's that? Will? All right? So I
have something I need to get off my chest. But
before I do, let me ask you this. Did you
grow up around show biz or Chucky Cheese? I think
we actually had both in Delaware. They were both pretty
popular for breathdays. Seriously, you had both? Alright, Well, we
we only had show Biz near us. And there's only
one thing I actually really remember from going to show biz.
You know, it's like a five or six year old,
(00:22):
and it was the Rock a Fire Explosion Band. You
remember these guys? Yeah, of course, Mitzy Mazzarella, Fast Geronimo
and the Keys. How can you forget? Well, I certainly
won't ever forget them, nor will I ever forget where
I used to stand when I watched them perform. You know,
Showbiz had this huge arcade room, but then you'd walk
around the corner into this dark room where this weird
animatronic band was playing. And I don't think I've ever
(00:44):
been more simultaneously terrified and yet completely mesmerized as I
was when I watched the Rock a Fire Explosion performing. Yeah,
I guess is you weren't alone in that feeling. Well,
so I'd stand in the doorway, and I'd watch them
because for some reason I couldn't get enough of these guys.
And you know, as you mentioned, he had fat s Geronimo,
the gorilla on the keys. He was always arguing with
(01:05):
the guy Rolf de Wolf, the you know, the weird
ventrilocust wolf. You remember this. And then there was Billy
Bob who fortunately he was the brown bear that would
usually keep the piece among the band. And then you
had what was his name? He was beach Bear who
always seemed high and he was on the guitar. And
then Duke LaRue, the want to be astronaut, this idiot
mud who always missed his cue on the drums. Of
(01:27):
course you mentioned Mitzi Mozzarella, the cheerleader who shared my
love of Michael Jackson songs. There's one more. Why am
I forgetting this embarrassing Who was the other one? Yeah?
But wasn't there like a drunk bird? All right? How
can they forget looney Bird, the alcoholic bird who hung
out in that barrel of gasohol? What a crew? I know,
you look back on it and it's so weird, Like
when the world were they thinking with that band? I
(01:49):
don't know, but I loved them, and I was so
scared of them. And you know, I don't know what
it is about dark and weird things that draw us in.
And the thing is, I had no idea there was
an even darker and weirder story playing out for Showbiz
at the time. This was near the end of the
show Biz Versus Chucky Cheese pizza war, which is such
a strange story, and it's just one of the stories
(02:10):
that's made us ask the question does pizza bring out
the worst in people? So that's what we're gonna be
talking about today. Let's get started. Yeah right, Hey, their
(02:36):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and it's always I'm joined by my good friend men
guest Ticketer, and on the other side of that soundproof glasses,
the man with the most angelic voice you've never heard,
our brilliant producer, Tristan McNeil. You ready to talk about
pizza Mango? I am, And I know we've been talking
about doing a pizza themed episode for a while now,
and both of us are huge pizza lovers. I mean,
(02:57):
who's who's not a pizza lover? Which is a good point,
but it was wild as we started digging into the research,
we just found so many stories about the dark history
of pizza, like pizza wars and organized crime, so so
we decided to focus on those. We'll take a little break,
at least from the from the Dark Side to talk
to one of our favorite pizza geniuses. Yeah, that's right.
We'll be talking to Scott Weener, the founder of Scott's
(03:19):
Pizza Tours and and he's actually the world record holder
for the largest collection of pizza boxes. He's super interesting
and he knows more about pizza history than anyone I know.
He's definitely a pizza genius. All right, Well, let's dive
into our topic. And we opened the show by talking
about show biz and the fact that I had no
idea that by walking into one of these I was
unknowingly participating in one of the greatest pizza wars of
(03:41):
all time and probably would have made it that much
more exciting. So why don't we start with that one. Yeah,
that's a good one. I mean, it doesn't get that
much juicier than a battle between the creator of Pong
and the inventor of Whack a Mole. Now, it definitely doesn't.
All right, Well, why don't you give us some of
the background on how both Chucky Cheese and show Biz
got started. So, Hockey Cheese was first, and in fact,
(04:02):
the first one opened in San Jose a couple of
years before either of us was born. This was way
back in nineteen seven and and it was actually started
by Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari. He's also the
creator of Pong. He came up with the idea for
the restaurant because he was spending so much of his
time selling Atari consoles like to arcades. He thought there
(04:22):
might be more money on the other side of the business,
on the arcade end, so he dreamed up this idea
for what would become Chuck E Cheese Pizza Time Theater. Well,
and I thought it was interesting. I mean, I think
both the animatronic performers and the pizza were part of
this concept from from the very beginning. So why why
don't you talk about those for just a minute. Yeah,
they were, and both were kind of brilliant. What's more
appetizing than an animatronic rat? Right? Well, I'm not sure
(04:46):
why he chose a rat exactly, but it is interesting
to hear is thinking on the animatronics. So he knew
parents probably wouldn't be excited to bring their families to
a typical arcade, so he was looking for a way
to bring in some entertainment and make to ask much
about the environment as it was the arcade games. Bushnell
did a really interesting interview with The Atlantic a few
years ago, and in it he says this, the reason
(05:09):
for doing the animals was not for the kids. It
was meant to be a head fake for the parents, right.
And so then he also goes on to talk about
the pizza, and he explains there aren't too many ways
to screw it up. If the dough is good, the
cheese is good, and the sauce is good, the pizza
is good. I didn't have any preconceived idea that I
knew how to run a restaurant, but I knew simple
was better. But both seems smart. I mean, it makes sense,
(05:30):
all right. So what happens next, Well, Bushnell feels he's
onto something and he wants to expand, so he starts
looking for investors and enter Bob Brock, who's chairman of
the Brock Hotel Corporation and a very successful franchise e
of holiday inns. So the two of them started working
together on a deal to rapidly expand the business, and
Bushnell's job was really to figure out how to improve
(05:51):
the animatronics so these things could be in restaurants all
over the country if the rollout went well. All right,
So this is this is around nineteen seventy nine, is
that right? Yeah, And this is actually where the drama starts.
It was right after these big discussions that Brock meets
this young inventor, Aaron Fector, who's also the inventor of
the Whack a Mole, And in weird timing, in Factor
(06:11):
has been working on this animatronic band he called the
wolf Pack five, and Brock felt they were much better
than what Bushnell was doing. All right, So that Brock
gets nervous about this and he's kind of uncertain, I guess,
about the quality of the animatronics in in Chucky Cheese exactly,
so much so that he actually decides to cancel his
deal with Bushnell, and then he strikes a deal with
(06:32):
Factor to make pretty much the same concept and in
the first Showbiz Pizza opened in Kansas City. That's such
a bold move, that's crazy, and you know, it's weird
that they just kept the pizza element as well, like
they didn't seem to try to make it that much different. Yeah,
but if you think back to the Bushnell quote about
why pizza earlier, it's a simple food. So it made
it easier for them to move quickly. And uh, I
(06:54):
guess that's where a rocket fire explosion was born, right
from the very beginning there. And you know, at that time,
I had no idea was watching such a knockoff act.
But if you look at them, they kind of just
look shady, right they do. And I'm guessing it didn't
take long for the lawsuits to come after that, right,
So first Chuck E Cheese suit Showbiz, and then Showbiz
filed the countersuit and it ultimately settled in with Showbiz
(07:16):
agreeing to pay Chuck E Cheese a portion of their
profits for something like fourteen or fifteen years. Well, and
you know, this is an interesting time to be in
this business because you know, we talked about this in
our Weird Summer Travel Guide episode. This was around the
time that the video game market experienced a pretty big crash,
so it was obviously not good for either of these
chains and not at all, and in fact, it hit
(07:38):
Chuck E Cheese so hard that Bushnell eventually had to
file for bankruptcy. And you know, after he was forced
out of the company, Chuck E Cheese was acquired by Chauviz.
So I guess ultimately Mr whack a Mole won the
war here. Yes, so it's fair to say he won
the battle. But in the end they both lost the war.
And how is that? Well, Chauviz wasn't exactly thriving, and
in their efforts to improve the company for Foreman's factor
(08:00):
lost out and he left with the Rock Fire Band,
and so that was the last we saw them in
show biz. Then the whole company rebranded as c EC Entertainment. Well,
and now I see there are more than five hundred
Chucky Cheese locations around the country. Yeah, it's still a
big deal, It definitely is. Well that that's such a
weird but interesting story. All right, Well, let's talk about
(08:21):
another battle where I found some of the trash talking
pretty funny. That was the result of McDonald's attempt to
enter the pizza market, something I didn't really remember. And
this was back in the late eighties. Yeah, that's a
good one. So why don't you take this one all right, Well,
just a little bit of background on this one. And
by the way, there's a great mental flaw story on
this from Jake Rosen, one of our favorite writers there.
So let's go back to the early nineteen eighties. McDonald's
(08:44):
is an absolute giant, and as Jake pointed out, they
owned nearly forty of what was then a forty eight
billion dollar burger market, so incredible. Well, and they were
looking for ways to keep growing from there, and because
they were looking to break into the dinner game and
a much big your way, and the idea of taking
over a meal time was not foreign to them. And
(09:04):
they've done this in the early seventies when they introduced
the egg McMuffin. And you know, despite being mocked by critics,
that McMuffin was a huge success. Well, their customers would
have disagreed. Their customers were really digging them. Well, I mean,
I guess so you're saying they had their eyes on
dinner though, Yeah, you know, they'd conquered lunch and breakfast,
and next was figuring out how to get people into
(09:26):
their locations at night, because for one reason or another,
people saw burgers and their other offerings as more of
a lunch thing, and that's when they started looking at
this rapidly growing pizza market, and so you look at
the late nineteen eighties, they decided it was time to
make a move. Well, it is important to note that,
unlike the McMuffin introduction, that this was not going to
be an easy transition when it came to the layout
(09:49):
of their stores and their kitchens specifically, and this was
honestly something I had not really thought about. So first
they had to develop this super quick cook oven and
it wasn't exactly small, and so you know, in order
to include the oven and other equipment related to it,
they had to remodel their restaurants. And that wasn't actually
the only space problem against something I had not really
(10:10):
thought much about until doing their research here, it was
the windows and their drive through. So think about trying
to fit a full pizza through one of those tiny windows.
So in order to serve the pizza, they'd have to
go back and expand all of them. But but this
didn't stop them from trying, oh not at all, not
at all. I mean, it might have slowed down the
rate at which they tried to do some of their
early testing, but in they began testing in a couple
(10:33):
dozen locations in Indiana and Kentucky, and uh, this is
where the trash talking started, because I really want to
get to the trash. All right, we'll get to the
trash talking. So enter Pizza Hut. So you know, they
had to be at least a little bit nervous. I mean,
they were the giant in the pizza business, but nobody
was bigger than McDonald's, so this was definitely a threat
(10:54):
and they had to be ready with some good trash talking. Well,
if you look back at one of the regional ads,
they warned Powle, don't make a mixtak to get there,
really warning people about that. And then they started talking
about their competitions. Mick frozen dough. That's that's such a
low blow. I kind of like, how whenever you want
to make fun of McDonald's, the go to is just
to add Mick in front of anything exactly. That's why
(11:16):
it's so ridiculous. I mean I I actually, for some
reason started thinking about a brainstorming session at the Pizza
Hut headquarters where they were just like, al right, what
should we put Mick in front of to show those
guys who's boss would be like the one genius. He
just rattles off like, hey, don't make a mistake by
eating a mc frozen pizza because it's the mic worst.
And they were all like, that's brilliant. You don't mess
(11:38):
with the hot that's why they hand the big box.
You can tell. I thought about this a little little
too much. So so was it the trash talking that
ultimately can the pizza for them? Well, I doubt that
had that much to do with it, despite how brilliant
those mick lines were. But but I mean, it's not
like McDonald's isn't used to some portion of the population
(11:59):
mocking their food. And ultimately there were bigger factors beyond
the restructuring of the restaurants that I mentioned earlier. So
I think about prep time. I mean, this was a
big factor. Imagine pulling up to a window and ordering
a couple of burgers for one person and pizza for another.
So they've got the quick burger thing down to a science.
I mean, those suckers are ready in a minute, and
(12:19):
they're waiting for you at the window right as you
pull up. But a pizza, even if it's quick, even
if it only takes five minutes. I mean that feels
like an eternity for people who are used to an
almost instant drive through service. You know. Plus the rest
of their order is just sitting there getting cold as
they're waiting on the pizza. Yeah, you can see why
that would be a problem. Well, and the other issue
was price. I mean it's it's not like pizzas are
(12:41):
expensive and the broader food market, but when customers are
used to spending a buck or two Parode and m
McDonald's and eight item feels expensive. The psychology of this,
you know, the pricing of things. It's weird, but it's interesting. Yeah,
So how did all play out? Well, by the early
nineteen nineties, pizzas were being served in I think about
a third of their locations, but it just wasn't working,
(13:04):
and so they disappeared as quickly as they came. I
mean you might say they were Mick history. I've been
practicing working on. Yeah, I think I need a little
break after that joke. So why don't we get our
pizza genius on the line. All right, Well, Mago, I
(13:32):
know we've been talking about pizza wars, and later on
in the episode, it's gonna get even a little bit darker.
So I thought we should take a break and talk
about some of the fun pizza stuff. We're both huge
pizza fans, and there's obviously plenty of reasons to celebrate pizza.
In fact, I think we'll do another episode in the
not too distant future about all the fun facts about pizza.
But today we've got Scott Wiener on the program. Scott's
(13:54):
an insane pizza connoisseur. He's the owner of Scott's Pizza Tours.
He also consults on pizza part allers, writes a column
for Pizza Today magazine, Sounds Qualified all the pizza. He
judges international pizza competition and holds the Guinness Book record
for the largest collection of pizza boxes. So, Scott, welcome
to Part Time Genius. Thanks so much for having me. Hey,
(14:16):
so so, one of the first things I heard about
you is that you loved pizza so much you decided
to turn that into a career. How do you go
about making pizza your career? And were people skeptical when
you told them that's what you were doing. You know,
I had no idea what it was going to be
like in the beginning. I just thought Hey, wouldn't be
great if I could eat pizza for a living. You know,
(14:37):
I don't know what is it, but I you know,
I was like, well, I can't do a book. Nobody
knows who the heck I am, and I don't know much,
and I can't write a blog because actually at the time,
I had no internet where I lived. And I figured, well,
what if we did something live action? And there's nothing
better than live action doing a tour. So I figured, Oh,
take people around the cool pizzaree is, show them the ovens,
(14:59):
show them the kitch, and we'll eat pizza. I'll explain
what's going on in the kitchen and it'll be like
a live action food TV show. And that was that.
Oh that's awesome. I remember you telling us you kind
of have a strict count of how many pizza slices
you allow yourself every week because you're such a pizza fanatic.
So what do you limit yourself to? So my limit
is fifteen slices per week. It begins Monday morning Slobo
(15:23):
one am, and uh and Sunday night. And you know what,
it's really hard to keep to that low of a
limit because I'm exposed to somewhere between four and ten.
Pizza three is every day, and so you have to
say to eight, pizza three is a day. No, I
can't eat the slice right now. It's really tough. That's
pretty incredible, and you never get sick of it. I
(15:45):
haven't gotten sick of it yet. But I'm always nervous
about it. And that's why I have this limit. It's
just so I don't lose that edge. I want to
stay interested in pizza. And I'm worried that what if
I go overboard one week and you know when you're
a kid and you ate too many jelly beans and
then he's like candy jelly beans anymore. I don't want
to live that life. That's pretty great. So I just
(16:08):
moved to Atlanta, and it's not like New York where
you can get slices on every block, and so I
was wondering, how do you plan the perfect pizza crawl
in the city you don't know. So if I'm planning
a pizza crawl in the city I haven't been to before,
I always start by putting up a post on Twitter
on Facebook, Hey, anybody have ideas for pizzeria's And then
I sort of I called together a lift based on
(16:29):
the most suggestions. I get a cross reference that with
recommendations people have given me on my pizza tours, which
of course I keep a long spreadsheet about that, and
you know, I kind of narrow it down to what
days is a week, or these pizzeria's open, what times
are they open, and I kind of carve out a
little route that makes sense. And I mean, I just
got back from a trip to Detroit last week where
(16:51):
all I did for three days was hit the pizza scene.
And I mean I hit a ton of pizza a
short amount of time, and I couldn't have on it
without intensive preparations. And Detroit it's like a hot scene
for pizza, right, Not right. Only in the past two
years has it really become obvious to everyone outside of
Detroit that they've got their own pizza thing going. You know,
(17:14):
if you asked anybody ten years ago, where do you
get pizza in America, they say, well, it's New York
and it's Chicago. And the people who knew a little
bit better would say, oh, and knew he's in Connecticut.
But now we're starting to see that all these little
regional variations are at least as significant, and I gotta say,
having just eaten them myself, Detroit definitely has it going on.
(17:35):
I know you've been a judge at the World Pizza Cup,
which I have to be honest, isn't something I was
that familiar with. So can you tell our listeners a
little about the World Cup and also how do you taste,
test or judge a pizza? Wow, there are serious pizza competitions.
I mean there's that Pizza World Cup is in Parma, Italy,
and then there's one called the International Pizza Challenge, which
(17:56):
is part of the International Pizza Expo in Law's Days
every year. And judging is tough because, as you can
probably imagine, the more slices you eat, the more they
start to taste the same. So you really have to
you really have to stay sharp. Like I always bring
some palate cleansers, like an apple, I bring some lemon rind.
(18:17):
I always try to have some bubbly water on hand, uh,
coffee beans to to you know, clear my nasal passages.
You know, just to give a whiff and kind of
reset by all factory senses, and you know, you stay
at that and you can have you can sample twenty
or thirty slices of one day and still be able
to tell the difference. You know, when you're when you're
given a slice of pizza, you have to be given
(18:38):
the whole slice, so you can choose your own adventure
with how you bite. And I do. I always do
a bite of the tip and the bite of the lift,
so I'm getting a bite at the center of the
pie and I'm also getting some of the edge crust.
And after those two bites, you know, if I need
to go back for more information and more more reconnaissance,
(18:58):
I can choose my own and bite for where I
go next. But bight of the tip and a bite
of the lip, it's a bad way to start that.
I'm gonna start using that phrase a lot. Say, well,
let's talk about this pizza box collection you have. As
we mentioned, you're the world record holders. So what's your
obsession with pizza boxes and and what are some of
the smartest design ones you have in your collection? Well,
(19:19):
when I started doing these tours in two thousand and eight,
I was so interested in learning as much as I
could about every angle of the pizza world, because it's subjectives.
You like a different pizza than I like and neither
of us are wrong or right, you know. So I figured, well,
let me let me dive into some of these things
that that are that are more objective. Let's let's look
(19:43):
at pizza box part. And I was fascinated by the
fact that we have different generic box designs in different
parts of the country, in different parts of the world,
draw their most mustachioed man a little differently than the other.
So I just thought that that was it was really striking.
And then I started getting more into the technology behind
(20:03):
the box, and I found, you know, there's a great
box in Italy that's lined with this reflective polyester fabric
so that it keeps the pizza hotter on the inside
of the box. It prevents the grease from soaking into
the box itself, which would render it unrecyclable in some municipalities.
(20:24):
So it's a cool box. And then there's one in
India that is unbelievable. It's a breathable box. It has
indirect ventilation that uses the fluting of a corrugated cardboard
box set up to the advantage of getting rid of
steam while maintaining heat and the inside of the box
so cool, all right, Well before we play a little quiz.
(20:46):
I want to make sure our listeners know about Slice
out Hunger. Can you tell us a little bit about this? Yeah,
Slice Out Hunger is a nonprofit that I started right
when I started the Pizza to our company, where we
do fundraising for hunger relief organization all around the country
and we do it through the pizza community. So we
have an annual event that happens in New York where
(21:06):
we have sixty pizzerias in one location, all serving slices
for a buck a pop, and all the money that
we raise gets matched by corporate sponsors and then donated
to local hunger relief organizations. And we also have these
nationwide campaigns where your local pizzeria might have a little
sign and then we know that that Slice out Hunger
this month with our you know whatever it is, our
(21:29):
specialty pizza of the months. Or We're working on a
project coming up for National Pizza Day on February nine,
which will have a simultaneous delivery of pizza in every
state in the United States to a local hunger relief organization, charity,
after school program, senior center, food bank, food pantry. It's
(21:50):
going to be crazy. Wow. Well, thank you for doing
all of that incredible work. And as our way of
saying thanks, we thought we would give you a really
horrible quiz you mine. So what alright? So what's our
quiz called? Today? Mango, We're gonna play a game called
Our Cheesiest Quiz Ever. Okay, so we're gonna give Scott
four cheesy statements and he's going to tell us whether
(22:12):
they're true or faults. You ready, Scott? I yes, I'm ready.
I got no joy? All right? Well, question number one.
When Pizza Hut introduced the Insider Pizza and two thousand,
it became the world's largest user of cheese. Each pie
required about one pound of cheese. Truer Faults. Yeah, that's right.
(22:34):
At the time, Pizza Hut was using more than three
million pounds of cheese each year and purchasing three of
all the cheese produced in the US. All right, one
for one. Number two, moose cheese cost about four hundred
and twenty dollars per pound because milking a moose takes
two hours and must be done in complete silence. Truer Faults.
(22:55):
I love this, but I'm gonna say it's Oh, it's
actually a true moose Yeah, they're notoriously moody and they'll
go dry if they're even slightly deserved. So I didn't
think that was true either when I saw this quiz
when Mango brought it in this morning, So that one
stumped me as well. All right, Question number three Frankie
(23:17):
Easy Cheese Jenkins was a New York City graffiti artist
in the nineteen seventies before he patented and sold his
idea for putting cheese in an aerosol can. True or false.
This is a tough one. I feel like I really
wanted to be true and it could be, but I'm
(23:37):
gonna say it. I'm gonna say it's too good to
be true. It's false. Yeah, you're right. So. Originally known
as snack Me, the product was invented in nineteen and
a Nibisco lab. Alright, so Scott's two for three. This
is for the big prize here. Number four Wisconsin. I
started using provolone and mozzarella to d ice Rhodes as
a way to keep cost of rock salt down. True
(23:59):
or faults? WHOA? This is another one that feels like
it's too good to be true. But all right, I'm
gonna go with my heart on this one, and I'm
gonna give you the answer that I wanted to be,
even though it might not be correct, I'm gonna say
that that is true. Yeah, absolutely right. So the cheese
Brian is a cheaper and greener way to keep traffic
(24:20):
safe and it comes with the added perk of making
towns smell faintly like mozzarella. Alright, so, what's good one today? Yes,
so Scott went impressive three or four, And in addition
to our total admiration, Scott's going to get a copy
of The Jetsons the Great Pizza Hunt Book, which is
the only book about the Jetsons and pizza with a
five star rating on good Reads. All right, well, Scott,
(24:44):
thanks so much for joining us on Part Time Genius.
Thanks for having me, Gay, Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Before the break, we talked about a couple of the
pizza wars from the past few decades, first one with
(25:07):
Chucky Cheese and show Biz and then the trash talking
one between McDonald's and Pizza Hud. But now it's time
to tackle a much more serious topic. We don't get
all that serious very often here at Part Time Genius,
but this is a fascinating case. Yeah, I know, we
wanted to talk about the Pizza Connection trial, right right,
So let me just share a few of the basics
and the numbers involved here. So this was March of
(25:28):
nine seven, and there were seventeen people found guilty of
building a massive international drug ring. It was all orchestrated
by the mafia, and it was managed through this network
of neighborhood pizzeria's all over the country. So it started
with thirty five defendants, nineteen of them ended up standing trial,
and the street value of the heroine they moved was
(25:49):
worth an estimated one point six five billion dollars, which
which is no small operation. No, it definitely wasn't. And
it gets more complex from there. This network was insane.
So there were two primary organized crime groups behind this.
You have the Sicilian Mafia and then you have the
Banano crime family in New York. And the arrest were
(26:09):
not just made in New York and Italy, but in Switzerland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit.
I mean, It's crazy how wide this was. Yeah, and
so I'm guessing in a case this complex isn't fast
to prosecute and investigate, right, No, not at I mean
there was a series of raids of pizzerias and homes
all over the country. This was one morning in nineteen
eighty four, and this happened after four years of an
(26:30):
FBI investigation. Then you have this seventeen months trial. Seventeen months,
I mean, it's one of the longest trials in American history,
and it was at the end of that that these
seventeen people were found guilty. I was on grand jury
for seven months months. I remember that forever. Seventeen months
just feels impossible. Yeah, I can't imagine it. But in
(26:51):
this case, it's not just because it took forever. I mean,
you know, think about the jurors. They were scared for
their lives. It actually ended up being an eleven member
jury because one of the yours was excused after getting
these threatening phone calls. Even the judge admitted to being
worried for his safety. Yeah, and of course they were
the only ones who had to fear for their lives.
I remember reading that one of the suspects was found
(27:11):
dead in the garbage bag before the trial ended, and
another defendant was shot a few times and ended up
pleading guilty from his hospital bed. Yeah, and they're two
really interesting articles in Vice, or rather there was one
on the Vice website and it was called how Mafia
pizzeria drug fronts inspired one of the most complex criminal
trials ever exactly by guy named John Currico, and another
(27:34):
on their Munchie site called The Dark Side of Pie
by Nick Rose, and I would recommend reading both of them.
They were both very interesting. So it's just so wild
that it was called the pizza connection and that it
was largely managed through a huge network of pizzeria. So
I want to tell our listeners why, well, you know.
In the article I mentioned by Nick Rose, he interviews
a few experts on this connection between organized crime and
(27:55):
and pizza. And one of the experts he spoke to
was a guy named Antonio Nick he so, and he's
written several books on organized crime. And when he was
asked why pizzeria's here's what he said. You can do
this with any kind of restaurant, but at the time,
it was just easier to buy a pizzeria and it
was a great opportunity to make money and sell heroin
out of the back door. He then goes on to
(28:17):
say a pizzeria can be a good way to launder
money at the end of the day, you can produce
fake receipts because it's mostly a cash business. If you
have two hundred clients in a given day, a bookkeeper
can punch the receipts so that it says five customers.
And the money that you don't make from selling pizza
you can put in the cash by selling heroin or
(28:37):
drugs and and pay taxes, which is so crazy. And
I guess another advantage of pizza places is their whole
delivery network, right, yeah, that's exactly right. And so they've
got this distribution system that's already in place. You've got
people out delivering pizzas all over the country, you know,
so why not have them deliver heroin? I mean, I
know why they shouldn't deliver heroin, So don't answer that.
But that was their line of thinking. So eventually this
(29:00):
pizza connection spanned all over the country. It even went
up into Canada over time, and they built what was
essentially a monopoly on heroin there. And as a side note,
I noticed that the U. S. Attorney who was prosecuting
the case is a name we'd eventually all know. That's right.
It was none other than future New York City mayor
and presidential candidate Rudolph Juliani, and he was known for
(29:20):
being a tough prosecutor. Yeah, that's right. So this trial happens,
and does it slow down the trafficking of heroin and
the connection with Pizza, Well not really. I mean, just
seven years later, famous original raised Pizza in the heart
of Manhattan was busted for being this big organizing spot
for another major drug ring. And these bus take an
enormous amount of human power and time, and this one specifically,
(29:42):
it took three years and more than two hundred agents
involved in this thing. Yeah, it's crazy. And then fast
forward two thousand eleven, John Porcello, known as Johnny Pizza,
was arrested and what the FBI reports as the biggest
mob raid in its history. But I mean, if I
remember correctly, the actual pizzerias weren't discovered to be a
part of the racketeering. No, but I mean it's still
I mean, the guy was known as Johnny Pizza. There's
(30:05):
some connection there. But by the way, I know, there's
not much funny about these cases. But when the l
A Times reported on this bust, I did enjoy this line.
It said, um many had nicknames that just read like
a Hollywood script. Lumpy Johnny, Pizza, the Bull, Baby, Fat Mush, Jello,
and Meatball among them. At lumpian much. I know, I
love those as well. It's all really strange. And I'd
(30:27):
say while the show biz and McDonald's sties are pretty crazy,
they aren't quite as heavy as all this pizza connection stuff.
Now agreed, But things are about to get heavier because
you you know what time it is? Yeah, backed off time?
(30:49):
All right, I'll go first. So we were talking about
the pizza wars in the first half of the show. Well,
the founder of Dominoes, Tom Monahan, he may not have
been in many all out wars, but he wasn't a
ready to rough up some of his earliest customers if
they tried to skip out on paying. As he said
in his autobiography quote, if someone refused to pay a
driver for an order, I didn't call the police. I
(31:11):
just went and demanded the money. Usually the culprits were
a bunch of college guys who decided to have a
party at my expense, and I didn't hesitate to swing
a punch to persuade them to pay up. That's crazy.
So here's a quick one. Ever, wonder where tombstone pizza
got its name. It's because it was first made in
a bar that was across the street from the cemetery.
(31:31):
You know, I actually have wondered that, but I never
looked at up. So that's that's interesting to know. All right, Well,
I'm not done. Quoting Domino's founder Tom on Ahan, he
also said, from time to time, we'd have a rash
of pizza thefts from parked vehicles while drivers were busy
with customers. I'd hide in the back of the car,
and the next time it went to that neighborhood, I'd
wait for them to try it again. I'd carry a
(31:52):
meat tenderizing mallet or a pop bottle as a persuader.
And that approach, Yeah, always solved the problem. It's just
the problems as simple as that. Okay. So on a
slightly lesson say note, in the nineteen eighties, Chuck E
Cheese decided to expand Australia, but instead decided to be
called Charlie Cheese is pizza Playhouse. And that's because the
word chuck is even more strongly associated with throwing up
(32:15):
there than it is here. Wow. Okay, you know, actually
I think I might try to get that term Charlie
cheese to catch on for throwing somebody Charlie cheese everywhere. Okay,
all right, So did you know back in the nineteen
sixties there was a U. S. Army intelligence unit that
would use fake pizza deliveries to spy on people, namely
reporters and politicians. That's weird. So I want to know
who holds the Guinness World Record for the most expensive
(32:37):
pizza commercially available. It's in my old home of New
York City at Industry Kitchen. The pizza, which takes two
days to make, includes black squid incto, stilton cheese from
the UK, French truffles. Two types of caviare FOA graw
and of course a twenty four carrot gold leaf. Those
for two thousand dollars. All right, that's ridiculous. Of all
the things we've talked about today, that is the most
(32:58):
offensive by far. So that shouldn't be classified as a
pizza at that price actually make You've got me so
riled up, I'm going to have to give you the
fact Doc trophy. Well, while U while will storms off,
I'd like to thank you for listening today and and
if you want to share any favorite pizza fact, hit
us up at part Time Genius at how stuff works
dot com, where find us on Facebook or Twitter, or
(33:21):
call seven Fact Hotline. It's one eight four four pt Genius.
We'll see you next time. Thanks again for listening. Part
(33:41):
Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and
wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil
does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song
and does the MIXI MIXI sound thing. Jerry Rowland does
the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the research Army including a Ston Thompson,
Nolan Brown, and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets
(34:03):
the show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you
like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if
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leave a good review for us. Did we did? We
forget Jason Jason who
Guess what, mango? What's that? Will? All right? So I
have something I need to get off my chest. But
before I do, let me ask you this. Did you
grow up around show biz or Chucky Cheese? I think
we actually had both in Delaware. They were both pretty
popular for breathdays. Seriously, you had both? Alright, Well, we
we only had show Biz near us. And there's only
one thing I actually really remember from going to show biz.
You know, it's like a five or six year old,
(00:22):
and it was the Rock a Fire Explosion Band. You
remember these guys? Yeah, of course, Mitzy Mazzarella, Fast Geronimo
and the Keys. How can you forget? Well, I certainly
won't ever forget them, nor will I ever forget where
I used to stand when I watched them perform. You know,
Showbiz had this huge arcade room, but then you'd walk
around the corner into this dark room where this weird
animatronic band was playing. And I don't think I've ever
(00:44):
been more simultaneously terrified and yet completely mesmerized as I
was when I watched the Rock a Fire Explosion performing. Yeah,
I guess is you weren't alone in that feeling. Well,
so I'd stand in the doorway, and I'd watch them
because for some reason I couldn't get enough of these guys.
And you know, as you mentioned, he had fat s Geronimo,
the gorilla on the keys. He was always arguing with
(01:05):
the guy Rolf de Wolf, the you know, the weird
ventrilocust wolf. You remember this. And then there was Billy
Bob who fortunately he was the brown bear that would
usually keep the piece among the band. And then you
had what was his name? He was beach Bear who
always seemed high and he was on the guitar. And
then Duke LaRue, the want to be astronaut, this idiot
mud who always missed his cue on the drums. Of
(01:27):
course you mentioned Mitzi Mozzarella, the cheerleader who shared my
love of Michael Jackson songs. There's one more. Why am
I forgetting this embarrassing Who was the other one? Yeah?
But wasn't there like a drunk bird? All right? How
can they forget looney Bird, the alcoholic bird who hung
out in that barrel of gasohol? What a crew? I know,
you look back on it and it's so weird, Like
when the world were they thinking with that band? I
(01:49):
don't know, but I loved them, and I was so
scared of them. And you know, I don't know what
it is about dark and weird things that draw us in.
And the thing is, I had no idea there was
an even darker and weirder story playing out for Showbiz
at the time. This was near the end of the
show Biz Versus Chucky Cheese pizza war, which is such
a strange story, and it's just one of the stories
(02:10):
that's made us ask the question does pizza bring out
the worst in people? So that's what we're gonna be
talking about today. Let's get started. Yeah right, Hey, their
(02:36):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and it's always I'm joined by my good friend men
guest Ticketer, and on the other side of that soundproof glasses,
the man with the most angelic voice you've never heard,
our brilliant producer, Tristan McNeil. You ready to talk about
pizza Mango? I am, And I know we've been talking
about doing a pizza themed episode for a while now,
and both of us are huge pizza lovers. I mean,
(02:57):
who's who's not a pizza lover? Which is a good point,
but it was wild as we started digging into the research,
we just found so many stories about the dark history
of pizza, like pizza wars and organized crime, so so
we decided to focus on those. We'll take a little break,
at least from the from the Dark Side to talk
to one of our favorite pizza geniuses. Yeah, that's right.
We'll be talking to Scott Weener, the founder of Scott's
(03:19):
Pizza Tours and and he's actually the world record holder
for the largest collection of pizza boxes. He's super interesting
and he knows more about pizza history than anyone I know.
He's definitely a pizza genius. All right, Well, let's dive
into our topic. And we opened the show by talking
about show biz and the fact that I had no
idea that by walking into one of these I was
unknowingly participating in one of the greatest pizza wars of
(03:41):
all time and probably would have made it that much
more exciting. So why don't we start with that one. Yeah,
that's a good one. I mean, it doesn't get that
much juicier than a battle between the creator of Pong
and the inventor of Whack a Mole. Now, it definitely doesn't.
All right, Well, why don't you give us some of
the background on how both Chucky Cheese and show Biz
got started. So, Hockey Cheese was first, and in fact,
(04:02):
the first one opened in San Jose a couple of
years before either of us was born. This was way
back in nineteen seven and and it was actually started
by Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari. He's also the
creator of Pong. He came up with the idea for
the restaurant because he was spending so much of his
time selling Atari consoles like to arcades. He thought there
(04:22):
might be more money on the other side of the business,
on the arcade end, so he dreamed up this idea
for what would become Chuck E Cheese Pizza Time Theater. Well,
and I thought it was interesting. I mean, I think
both the animatronic performers and the pizza were part of
this concept from from the very beginning. So why why
don't you talk about those for just a minute. Yeah,
they were, and both were kind of brilliant. What's more
appetizing than an animatronic rat? Right? Well, I'm not sure
(04:46):
why he chose a rat exactly, but it is interesting
to hear is thinking on the animatronics. So he knew
parents probably wouldn't be excited to bring their families to
a typical arcade, so he was looking for a way
to bring in some entertainment and make to ask much
about the environment as it was the arcade games. Bushnell
did a really interesting interview with The Atlantic a few
years ago, and in it he says this, the reason
(05:09):
for doing the animals was not for the kids. It
was meant to be a head fake for the parents, right.
And so then he also goes on to talk about
the pizza, and he explains there aren't too many ways
to screw it up. If the dough is good, the
cheese is good, and the sauce is good, the pizza
is good. I didn't have any preconceived idea that I
knew how to run a restaurant, but I knew simple
was better. But both seems smart. I mean, it makes sense,
(05:30):
all right. So what happens next, Well, Bushnell feels he's
onto something and he wants to expand, so he starts
looking for investors and enter Bob Brock, who's chairman of
the Brock Hotel Corporation and a very successful franchise e
of holiday inns. So the two of them started working
together on a deal to rapidly expand the business, and
Bushnell's job was really to figure out how to improve
(05:51):
the animatronics so these things could be in restaurants all
over the country if the rollout went well. All right,
So this is this is around nineteen seventy nine, is
that right? Yeah, And this is actually where the drama starts.
It was right after these big discussions that Brock meets
this young inventor, Aaron Fector, who's also the inventor of
the Whack a Mole, And in weird timing, in Factor
(06:11):
has been working on this animatronic band he called the
wolf Pack five, and Brock felt they were much better
than what Bushnell was doing. All right, So that Brock
gets nervous about this and he's kind of uncertain, I guess,
about the quality of the animatronics in in Chucky Cheese exactly,
so much so that he actually decides to cancel his
deal with Bushnell, and then he strikes a deal with
(06:32):
Factor to make pretty much the same concept and in
the first Showbiz Pizza opened in Kansas City. That's such
a bold move, that's crazy, and you know, it's weird
that they just kept the pizza element as well, like
they didn't seem to try to make it that much different. Yeah,
but if you think back to the Bushnell quote about
why pizza earlier, it's a simple food. So it made
it easier for them to move quickly. And uh, I
(06:54):
guess that's where a rocket fire explosion was born, right
from the very beginning there. And you know, at that time,
I had no idea was watching such a knockoff act.
But if you look at them, they kind of just
look shady, right they do. And I'm guessing it didn't
take long for the lawsuits to come after that, right,
So first Chuck E Cheese suit Showbiz, and then Showbiz
filed the countersuit and it ultimately settled in with Showbiz
(07:16):
agreeing to pay Chuck E Cheese a portion of their
profits for something like fourteen or fifteen years. Well, and
you know, this is an interesting time to be in
this business because you know, we talked about this in
our Weird Summer Travel Guide episode. This was around the
time that the video game market experienced a pretty big crash,
so it was obviously not good for either of these
chains and not at all, and in fact, it hit
(07:38):
Chuck E Cheese so hard that Bushnell eventually had to
file for bankruptcy. And you know, after he was forced
out of the company, Chuck E Cheese was acquired by Chauviz.
So I guess ultimately Mr whack a Mole won the
war here. Yes, so it's fair to say he won
the battle. But in the end they both lost the war.
And how is that? Well, Chauviz wasn't exactly thriving, and
in their efforts to improve the company for Foreman's factor
(08:00):
lost out and he left with the Rock Fire Band,
and so that was the last we saw them in
show biz. Then the whole company rebranded as c EC Entertainment. Well,
and now I see there are more than five hundred
Chucky Cheese locations around the country. Yeah, it's still a
big deal, It definitely is. Well that that's such a
weird but interesting story. All right, Well, let's talk about
(08:21):
another battle where I found some of the trash talking
pretty funny. That was the result of McDonald's attempt to
enter the pizza market, something I didn't really remember. And
this was back in the late eighties. Yeah, that's a
good one. So why don't you take this one all right, Well,
just a little bit of background on this one. And
by the way, there's a great mental flaw story on
this from Jake Rosen, one of our favorite writers there.
So let's go back to the early nineteen eighties. McDonald's
(08:44):
is an absolute giant, and as Jake pointed out, they
owned nearly forty of what was then a forty eight
billion dollar burger market, so incredible. Well, and they were
looking for ways to keep growing from there, and because
they were looking to break into the dinner game and
a much big your way, and the idea of taking
over a meal time was not foreign to them. And
(09:04):
they've done this in the early seventies when they introduced
the egg McMuffin. And you know, despite being mocked by critics,
that McMuffin was a huge success. Well, their customers would
have disagreed. Their customers were really digging them. Well, I mean,
I guess so you're saying they had their eyes on
dinner though, Yeah, you know, they'd conquered lunch and breakfast,
and next was figuring out how to get people into
(09:26):
their locations at night, because for one reason or another,
people saw burgers and their other offerings as more of
a lunch thing, and that's when they started looking at
this rapidly growing pizza market, and so you look at
the late nineteen eighties, they decided it was time to
make a move. Well, it is important to note that,
unlike the McMuffin introduction, that this was not going to
be an easy transition when it came to the layout
(09:49):
of their stores and their kitchens specifically, and this was
honestly something I had not really thought about. So first
they had to develop this super quick cook oven and
it wasn't exactly small, and so you know, in order
to include the oven and other equipment related to it,
they had to remodel their restaurants. And that wasn't actually
the only space problem against something I had not really
(10:10):
thought much about until doing their research here, it was
the windows and their drive through. So think about trying
to fit a full pizza through one of those tiny windows.
So in order to serve the pizza, they'd have to
go back and expand all of them. But but this
didn't stop them from trying, oh not at all, not
at all. I mean, it might have slowed down the
rate at which they tried to do some of their
early testing, but in they began testing in a couple
(10:33):
dozen locations in Indiana and Kentucky, and uh, this is
where the trash talking started, because I really want to
get to the trash. All right, we'll get to the
trash talking. So enter Pizza Hut. So you know, they
had to be at least a little bit nervous. I mean,
they were the giant in the pizza business, but nobody
was bigger than McDonald's, so this was definitely a threat
(10:54):
and they had to be ready with some good trash talking. Well,
if you look back at one of the regional ads,
they warned Powle, don't make a mixtak to get there,
really warning people about that. And then they started talking
about their competitions. Mick frozen dough. That's that's such a
low blow. I kind of like, how whenever you want
to make fun of McDonald's, the go to is just
to add Mick in front of anything exactly. That's why
(11:16):
it's so ridiculous. I mean I I actually, for some
reason started thinking about a brainstorming session at the Pizza
Hut headquarters where they were just like, al right, what
should we put Mick in front of to show those
guys who's boss would be like the one genius. He
just rattles off like, hey, don't make a mistake by
eating a mc frozen pizza because it's the mic worst.
And they were all like, that's brilliant. You don't mess
(11:38):
with the hot that's why they hand the big box.
You can tell. I thought about this a little little
too much. So so was it the trash talking that
ultimately can the pizza for them? Well, I doubt that
had that much to do with it, despite how brilliant
those mick lines were. But but I mean, it's not
like McDonald's isn't used to some portion of the population
(11:59):
mocking their food. And ultimately there were bigger factors beyond
the restructuring of the restaurants that I mentioned earlier. So
I think about prep time. I mean, this was a
big factor. Imagine pulling up to a window and ordering
a couple of burgers for one person and pizza for another.
So they've got the quick burger thing down to a science.
I mean, those suckers are ready in a minute, and
(12:19):
they're waiting for you at the window right as you
pull up. But a pizza, even if it's quick, even
if it only takes five minutes. I mean that feels
like an eternity for people who are used to an
almost instant drive through service. You know. Plus the rest
of their order is just sitting there getting cold as
they're waiting on the pizza. Yeah, you can see why
that would be a problem. Well, and the other issue
was price. I mean it's it's not like pizzas are
(12:41):
expensive and the broader food market, but when customers are
used to spending a buck or two Parode and m
McDonald's and eight item feels expensive. The psychology of this,
you know, the pricing of things. It's weird, but it's interesting. Yeah,
So how did all play out? Well, by the early
nineteen nineties, pizzas were being served in I think about
a third of their locations, but it just wasn't working,
(13:04):
and so they disappeared as quickly as they came. I
mean you might say they were Mick history. I've been
practicing working on. Yeah, I think I need a little
break after that joke. So why don't we get our
pizza genius on the line. All right, Well, Mago, I
(13:32):
know we've been talking about pizza wars, and later on
in the episode, it's gonna get even a little bit darker.
So I thought we should take a break and talk
about some of the fun pizza stuff. We're both huge
pizza fans, and there's obviously plenty of reasons to celebrate pizza.
In fact, I think we'll do another episode in the
not too distant future about all the fun facts about pizza.
But today we've got Scott Wiener on the program. Scott's
(13:54):
an insane pizza connoisseur. He's the owner of Scott's Pizza Tours.
He also consults on pizza part allers, writes a column
for Pizza Today magazine, Sounds Qualified all the pizza. He
judges international pizza competition and holds the Guinness Book record
for the largest collection of pizza boxes. So, Scott, welcome
to Part Time Genius. Thanks so much for having me. Hey,
(14:16):
so so, one of the first things I heard about
you is that you loved pizza so much you decided
to turn that into a career. How do you go
about making pizza your career? And were people skeptical when
you told them that's what you were doing. You know,
I had no idea what it was going to be
like in the beginning. I just thought Hey, wouldn't be
great if I could eat pizza for a living. You know,
(14:37):
I don't know what is it, but I you know,
I was like, well, I can't do a book. Nobody
knows who the heck I am, and I don't know much,
and I can't write a blog because actually at the time,
I had no internet where I lived. And I figured, well,
what if we did something live action? And there's nothing
better than live action doing a tour. So I figured, Oh,
take people around the cool pizzaree is, show them the ovens,
(14:59):
show them the kitch, and we'll eat pizza. I'll explain
what's going on in the kitchen and it'll be like
a live action food TV show. And that was that.
Oh that's awesome. I remember you telling us you kind
of have a strict count of how many pizza slices
you allow yourself every week because you're such a pizza fanatic.
So what do you limit yourself to? So my limit
is fifteen slices per week. It begins Monday morning Slobo
(15:23):
one am, and uh and Sunday night. And you know what,
it's really hard to keep to that low of a
limit because I'm exposed to somewhere between four and ten.
Pizza three is every day, and so you have to
say to eight, pizza three is a day. No, I
can't eat the slice right now. It's really tough. That's
pretty incredible, and you never get sick of it. I
(15:45):
haven't gotten sick of it yet. But I'm always nervous
about it. And that's why I have this limit. It's
just so I don't lose that edge. I want to
stay interested in pizza. And I'm worried that what if
I go overboard one week and you know when you're
a kid and you ate too many jelly beans and
then he's like candy jelly beans anymore. I don't want
to live that life. That's pretty great. So I just
(16:08):
moved to Atlanta, and it's not like New York where
you can get slices on every block, and so I
was wondering, how do you plan the perfect pizza crawl
in the city you don't know. So if I'm planning
a pizza crawl in the city I haven't been to before,
I always start by putting up a post on Twitter
on Facebook, Hey, anybody have ideas for pizzeria's And then
I sort of I called together a lift based on
(16:29):
the most suggestions. I get a cross reference that with
recommendations people have given me on my pizza tours, which
of course I keep a long spreadsheet about that, and
you know, I kind of narrow it down to what
days is a week, or these pizzeria's open, what times
are they open, and I kind of carve out a
little route that makes sense. And I mean, I just
got back from a trip to Detroit last week where
(16:51):
all I did for three days was hit the pizza scene.
And I mean I hit a ton of pizza a
short amount of time, and I couldn't have on it
without intensive preparations. And Detroit it's like a hot scene
for pizza, right, Not right. Only in the past two
years has it really become obvious to everyone outside of
Detroit that they've got their own pizza thing going. You know,
(17:14):
if you asked anybody ten years ago, where do you
get pizza in America, they say, well, it's New York
and it's Chicago. And the people who knew a little
bit better would say, oh, and knew he's in Connecticut.
But now we're starting to see that all these little
regional variations are at least as significant, and I gotta say,
having just eaten them myself, Detroit definitely has it going on.
(17:35):
I know you've been a judge at the World Pizza Cup,
which I have to be honest, isn't something I was
that familiar with. So can you tell our listeners a
little about the World Cup and also how do you taste,
test or judge a pizza? Wow, there are serious pizza competitions.
I mean there's that Pizza World Cup is in Parma, Italy,
and then there's one called the International Pizza Challenge, which
(17:56):
is part of the International Pizza Expo in Law's Days
every year. And judging is tough because, as you can
probably imagine, the more slices you eat, the more they
start to taste the same. So you really have to
you really have to stay sharp. Like I always bring
some palate cleansers, like an apple, I bring some lemon rind.
(18:17):
I always try to have some bubbly water on hand, uh,
coffee beans to to you know, clear my nasal passages.
You know, just to give a whiff and kind of
reset by all factory senses, and you know, you stay
at that and you can have you can sample twenty
or thirty slices of one day and still be able
to tell the difference. You know, when you're when you're
given a slice of pizza, you have to be given
(18:38):
the whole slice, so you can choose your own adventure
with how you bite. And I do. I always do
a bite of the tip and the bite of the lift,
so I'm getting a bite at the center of the
pie and I'm also getting some of the edge crust.
And after those two bites, you know, if I need
to go back for more information and more more reconnaissance,
(18:58):
I can choose my own and bite for where I
go next. But bight of the tip and a bite
of the lip, it's a bad way to start that.
I'm gonna start using that phrase a lot. Say, well,
let's talk about this pizza box collection you have. As
we mentioned, you're the world record holders. So what's your
obsession with pizza boxes and and what are some of
the smartest design ones you have in your collection? Well,
(19:19):
when I started doing these tours in two thousand and eight,
I was so interested in learning as much as I
could about every angle of the pizza world, because it's subjectives.
You like a different pizza than I like and neither
of us are wrong or right, you know. So I figured, well,
let me let me dive into some of these things
that that are that are more objective. Let's let's look
(19:43):
at pizza box part. And I was fascinated by the
fact that we have different generic box designs in different
parts of the country, in different parts of the world,
draw their most mustachioed man a little differently than the other.
So I just thought that that was it was really striking.
And then I started getting more into the technology behind
(20:03):
the box, and I found, you know, there's a great
box in Italy that's lined with this reflective polyester fabric
so that it keeps the pizza hotter on the inside
of the box. It prevents the grease from soaking into
the box itself, which would render it unrecyclable in some municipalities.
(20:24):
So it's a cool box. And then there's one in
India that is unbelievable. It's a breathable box. It has
indirect ventilation that uses the fluting of a corrugated cardboard
box set up to the advantage of getting rid of
steam while maintaining heat and the inside of the box
so cool, all right, Well before we play a little quiz.
(20:46):
I want to make sure our listeners know about Slice
out Hunger. Can you tell us a little bit about this? Yeah,
Slice Out Hunger is a nonprofit that I started right
when I started the Pizza to our company, where we
do fundraising for hunger relief organization all around the country
and we do it through the pizza community. So we
have an annual event that happens in New York where
(21:06):
we have sixty pizzerias in one location, all serving slices
for a buck a pop, and all the money that
we raise gets matched by corporate sponsors and then donated
to local hunger relief organizations. And we also have these
nationwide campaigns where your local pizzeria might have a little
sign and then we know that that Slice out Hunger
this month with our you know whatever it is, our
(21:29):
specialty pizza of the months. Or We're working on a
project coming up for National Pizza Day on February nine,
which will have a simultaneous delivery of pizza in every
state in the United States to a local hunger relief organization, charity,
after school program, senior center, food bank, food pantry. It's
(21:50):
going to be crazy. Wow. Well, thank you for doing
all of that incredible work. And as our way of
saying thanks, we thought we would give you a really
horrible quiz you mine. So what alright? So what's our
quiz called? Today? Mango, We're gonna play a game called
Our Cheesiest Quiz Ever. Okay, so we're gonna give Scott
four cheesy statements and he's going to tell us whether
(22:12):
they're true or faults. You ready, Scott? I yes, I'm ready.
I got no joy? All right? Well, question number one.
When Pizza Hut introduced the Insider Pizza and two thousand,
it became the world's largest user of cheese. Each pie
required about one pound of cheese. Truer Faults. Yeah, that's right.
(22:34):
At the time, Pizza Hut was using more than three
million pounds of cheese each year and purchasing three of
all the cheese produced in the US. All right, one
for one. Number two, moose cheese cost about four hundred
and twenty dollars per pound because milking a moose takes
two hours and must be done in complete silence. Truer Faults.
(22:55):
I love this, but I'm gonna say it's Oh, it's
actually a true moose Yeah, they're notoriously moody and they'll
go dry if they're even slightly deserved. So I didn't
think that was true either when I saw this quiz
when Mango brought it in this morning, So that one
stumped me as well. All right, Question number three Frankie
(23:17):
Easy Cheese Jenkins was a New York City graffiti artist
in the nineteen seventies before he patented and sold his
idea for putting cheese in an aerosol can. True or false.
This is a tough one. I feel like I really
wanted to be true and it could be, but I'm
(23:37):
gonna say it. I'm gonna say it's too good to
be true. It's false. Yeah, you're right. So. Originally known
as snack Me, the product was invented in nineteen and
a Nibisco lab. Alright, so Scott's two for three. This
is for the big prize here. Number four Wisconsin. I
started using provolone and mozzarella to d ice Rhodes as
a way to keep cost of rock salt down. True
(23:59):
or faults? WHOA? This is another one that feels like
it's too good to be true. But all right, I'm
gonna go with my heart on this one, and I'm
gonna give you the answer that I wanted to be,
even though it might not be correct, I'm gonna say
that that is true. Yeah, absolutely right. So the cheese
Brian is a cheaper and greener way to keep traffic
(24:20):
safe and it comes with the added perk of making
towns smell faintly like mozzarella. Alright, so, what's good one today? Yes,
so Scott went impressive three or four, And in addition
to our total admiration, Scott's going to get a copy
of The Jetsons the Great Pizza Hunt Book, which is
the only book about the Jetsons and pizza with a
five star rating on good Reads. All right, well, Scott,
(24:44):
thanks so much for joining us on Part Time Genius.
Thanks for having me, Gay, Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Before the break, we talked about a couple of the
pizza wars from the past few decades, first one with
(25:07):
Chucky Cheese and show Biz and then the trash talking
one between McDonald's and Pizza Hud. But now it's time
to tackle a much more serious topic. We don't get
all that serious very often here at Part Time Genius,
but this is a fascinating case. Yeah, I know, we
wanted to talk about the Pizza Connection trial, right right,
So let me just share a few of the basics
and the numbers involved here. So this was March of
(25:28):
nine seven, and there were seventeen people found guilty of
building a massive international drug ring. It was all orchestrated
by the mafia, and it was managed through this network
of neighborhood pizzeria's all over the country. So it started
with thirty five defendants, nineteen of them ended up standing trial,
and the street value of the heroine they moved was
(25:49):
worth an estimated one point six five billion dollars, which
which is no small operation. No, it definitely wasn't. And
it gets more complex from there. This network was insane.
So there were two primary organized crime groups behind this.
You have the Sicilian Mafia and then you have the
Banano crime family in New York. And the arrest were
(26:09):
not just made in New York and Italy, but in Switzerland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit.
I mean, It's crazy how wide this was. Yeah, and
so I'm guessing in a case this complex isn't fast
to prosecute and investigate, right, No, not at I mean
there was a series of raids of pizzerias and homes
all over the country. This was one morning in nineteen
eighty four, and this happened after four years of an
(26:30):
FBI investigation. Then you have this seventeen months trial. Seventeen months,
I mean, it's one of the longest trials in American history,
and it was at the end of that that these
seventeen people were found guilty. I was on grand jury
for seven months months. I remember that forever. Seventeen months
just feels impossible. Yeah, I can't imagine it. But in
(26:51):
this case, it's not just because it took forever. I mean,
you know, think about the jurors. They were scared for
their lives. It actually ended up being an eleven member
jury because one of the yours was excused after getting
these threatening phone calls. Even the judge admitted to being
worried for his safety. Yeah, and of course they were
the only ones who had to fear for their lives.
I remember reading that one of the suspects was found
(27:11):
dead in the garbage bag before the trial ended, and
another defendant was shot a few times and ended up
pleading guilty from his hospital bed. Yeah, and they're two
really interesting articles in Vice, or rather there was one
on the Vice website and it was called how Mafia
pizzeria drug fronts inspired one of the most complex criminal
trials ever exactly by guy named John Currico, and another
(27:34):
on their Munchie site called The Dark Side of Pie
by Nick Rose, and I would recommend reading both of them.
They were both very interesting. So it's just so wild
that it was called the pizza connection and that it
was largely managed through a huge network of pizzeria. So
I want to tell our listeners why, well, you know.
In the article I mentioned by Nick Rose, he interviews
a few experts on this connection between organized crime and
(27:55):
and pizza. And one of the experts he spoke to
was a guy named Antonio Nick he so, and he's
written several books on organized crime. And when he was
asked why pizzeria's here's what he said. You can do
this with any kind of restaurant, but at the time,
it was just easier to buy a pizzeria and it
was a great opportunity to make money and sell heroin
out of the back door. He then goes on to
(28:17):
say a pizzeria can be a good way to launder
money at the end of the day, you can produce
fake receipts because it's mostly a cash business. If you
have two hundred clients in a given day, a bookkeeper
can punch the receipts so that it says five customers.
And the money that you don't make from selling pizza
you can put in the cash by selling heroin or
(28:37):
drugs and and pay taxes, which is so crazy. And
I guess another advantage of pizza places is their whole
delivery network, right, yeah, that's exactly right. And so they've
got this distribution system that's already in place. You've got
people out delivering pizzas all over the country, you know,
so why not have them deliver heroin? I mean, I
know why they shouldn't deliver heroin, So don't answer that.
But that was their line of thinking. So eventually this
(29:00):
pizza connection spanned all over the country. It even went
up into Canada over time, and they built what was
essentially a monopoly on heroin there. And as a side note,
I noticed that the U. S. Attorney who was prosecuting
the case is a name we'd eventually all know. That's right.
It was none other than future New York City mayor
and presidential candidate Rudolph Juliani, and he was known for
(29:20):
being a tough prosecutor. Yeah, that's right. So this trial happens,
and does it slow down the trafficking of heroin and
the connection with Pizza, Well not really. I mean, just
seven years later, famous original raised Pizza in the heart
of Manhattan was busted for being this big organizing spot
for another major drug ring. And these bus take an
enormous amount of human power and time, and this one specifically,
(29:42):
it took three years and more than two hundred agents
involved in this thing. Yeah, it's crazy. And then fast
forward two thousand eleven, John Porcello, known as Johnny Pizza,
was arrested and what the FBI reports as the biggest
mob raid in its history. But I mean, if I
remember correctly, the actual pizzerias weren't discovered to be a
part of the racketeering. No, but I mean it's still
I mean, the guy was known as Johnny Pizza. There's
(30:05):
some connection there. But by the way, I know, there's
not much funny about these cases. But when the l
A Times reported on this bust, I did enjoy this line.
It said, um many had nicknames that just read like
a Hollywood script. Lumpy Johnny, Pizza, the Bull, Baby, Fat Mush, Jello,
and Meatball among them. At lumpian much. I know, I
love those as well. It's all really strange. And I'd
(30:27):
say while the show biz and McDonald's sties are pretty crazy,
they aren't quite as heavy as all this pizza connection stuff.
Now agreed, But things are about to get heavier because
you you know what time it is? Yeah, backed off time?
(30:49):
All right, I'll go first. So we were talking about
the pizza wars in the first half of the show. Well,
the founder of Dominoes, Tom Monahan, he may not have
been in many all out wars, but he wasn't a
ready to rough up some of his earliest customers if
they tried to skip out on paying. As he said
in his autobiography quote, if someone refused to pay a
driver for an order, I didn't call the police. I
(31:11):
just went and demanded the money. Usually the culprits were
a bunch of college guys who decided to have a
party at my expense, and I didn't hesitate to swing
a punch to persuade them to pay up. That's crazy.
So here's a quick one. Ever, wonder where tombstone pizza
got its name. It's because it was first made in
a bar that was across the street from the cemetery.
(31:31):
You know, I actually have wondered that, but I never
looked at up. So that's that's interesting to know. All right, Well,
I'm not done. Quoting Domino's founder Tom on Ahan, he
also said, from time to time, we'd have a rash
of pizza thefts from parked vehicles while drivers were busy
with customers. I'd hide in the back of the car,
and the next time it went to that neighborhood, I'd
wait for them to try it again. I'd carry a
(31:52):
meat tenderizing mallet or a pop bottle as a persuader.
And that approach, Yeah, always solved the problem. It's just
the problems as simple as that. Okay. So on a
slightly lesson say note, in the nineteen eighties, Chuck E
Cheese decided to expand Australia, but instead decided to be
called Charlie Cheese is pizza Playhouse. And that's because the
word chuck is even more strongly associated with throwing up
(32:15):
there than it is here. Wow. Okay, you know, actually
I think I might try to get that term Charlie
cheese to catch on for throwing somebody Charlie cheese everywhere. Okay,
all right, So did you know back in the nineteen
sixties there was a U. S. Army intelligence unit that
would use fake pizza deliveries to spy on people, namely
reporters and politicians. That's weird. So I want to know
who holds the Guinness World Record for the most expensive
(32:37):
pizza commercially available. It's in my old home of New
York City at Industry Kitchen. The pizza, which takes two
days to make, includes black squid incto, stilton cheese from
the UK, French truffles. Two types of caviare FOA graw
and of course a twenty four carrot gold leaf. Those
for two thousand dollars. All right, that's ridiculous. Of all
the things we've talked about today, that is the most
(32:58):
offensive by far. So that shouldn't be classified as a
pizza at that price actually make You've got me so
riled up, I'm going to have to give you the
fact Doc trophy. Well, while U while will storms off,
I'd like to thank you for listening today and and
if you want to share any favorite pizza fact, hit
us up at part Time Genius at how stuff works
dot com, where find us on Facebook or Twitter, or
(33:21):
call seven Fact Hotline. It's one eight four four pt Genius.
We'll see you next time. Thanks again for listening. Part
(33:41):
Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and
wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil
does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song
and does the MIXI MIXI sound thing. Jerry Rowland does
the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the research Army including a Ston Thompson,
Nolan Brown, and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets
(34:03):
the show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you
like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if
you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could
leave a good review for us. Did we did? We
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