I truly think Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa Johns suck.  Sorry, I just do.  Frozen cheese, dough made in a factory and vacuum packed “vegetables” just don’t qualify as “better ingredients” in my book!

I had Dominos a couple weeks ago (market research, baby!) and frankly, it was lame.  Hardly any “cheese” or toppings, a handful of dried out chicken nuggets in a box and the tiniest cup of dipping sauce I’ve ever seen in my life.  It was a fast delivery, I’ll give them that.  I was also impressed that my $5 pizza ended up costing me about $35.

Now, when I say they suck, I’m not saying that they suck as people or even as a business.  They are very financially successful businesses run by smart business people.  I know a lot of Domino’s people who are good people – really good people.  Just not feeling it on the quality of their food.

I started Toppers Pizza to rebel against that whole “food that’s fast has to be fast-food” idea.   I was determined to prove that Toppers could offer fast carry out and delivery AND made-from-scratch dough, fresh mozzarella and bold flavors on an innovative menu that people would love.  We do it better today than we ever did!

I meet people all the time that still don’t know that we make our dough from scratch in our restaurant kitchens every day.  Shame on me for not telling that story better!  Our pizza and our Topperstix are incredible because of the ingredients we use and the way we cook.

If you made a loaf of bread or your own pizza crust at home, it would look a lot like how we do it in our restaurants.

We mix it from quality ingredients in small batches.  We let each ball of dough rise for about 24 hours until that magnificent yeasty flavor has filled the entire crust and it is in the perfect state for pizza making.

Then – and only then – do we punch down the dough ball, hand form the crust, lovingly apply just the right amount of our wonderful and aromatic pizza sauce (still made from our original recipe), then cover it with 100% Wisconsin mozzarella cheese that was never frozen and doesn’t have stuff in it like “modified food starch, whey protein concentrate, and natural flavors” (yeah, I got that off their website).

This is what we do people!  Could we save some time and money if we bought frozen cheese with weird shit in it instead?  Yeah, I suppose we would.  Then who would we be?  Cheese is what pizza’s all about, and in any case, I’m from Wisconsin.  You think I’m disrespecting pizza or cheese?  Think again.

I want to be clear.  Just because we do it one way at Toppers and they do it another doesn’t make them bad people!  That’s capitalism baby!

But the difference is real.  Check it.

I’m having pizza tonight.

Pizza lover,  Scott