Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 20, 1993 TAG: 9309200023
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HOLLACE WEINER FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
DATELINE: SAN SABA, TEXAS LENGTH: Long
Like frontier circuit riders, Dan and Sadie Lewis are traveling the back roads of Texas, bringing a slice of urban America to remote small towns.
But unlike peddlers of an earlier era, they don't hawk patent medicine or snake oil. They're pushing pizza.
Every Tuesday, the couple park their portable pizza parlor in Junction, a hill country town of 2,654. On Wednesday evenings, they fire up their 600-degree ovens in Ozona, another county seat (population 3,100) about 100 miles farther west in arid sheep- and goat-raising country.
If it's Thursday, their 24-foot trailer must be in San Saba, a central Texas community of 2,626 where streets are shaded with pecan trees and pickup drivers line up to order pepperonis with extra cheese.
"Everybody's just waiting for Thursdays to get here so they can buy pizza," said Lisa Botello, a convenience-store assistant manager who treats her family of four to the "Classic," a $13 pizza topped 2 inches high with four meats and five veggies. "We no longer go out of town, 36 miles to Llano for pizza."
Rather, they drive to the vacant gas station at Main and Wallace streets where the aroma of melted mozzarella and Italian sausage fills the air from 5 to 8 p.m.
While chatting with neighbors and gathering gossip on the latest traffic accident at the town's only red light, they scan the menu painted on the white trailer, pay from $4 to $13 in cash, then wait 20 minutes for a small, medium or large.
"People don't want to drive 70 miles round-trip for pizza when they can buy it at the corner once a week," said Dan Lewis, a former U.S. government meat inspector who now rolls pizza dough Tuesday through Thursday, then takes a four-day weekend.
"This is still in the experimental stages," adds the entrepreneur as he flattens a ball of pre-mixed dough in a homemade pizza press. "We are kind of trailblazers."
Indeed, Lewis, who is 50-something, and his 40-year-old wife are among a growing number of traveling chefs creating a pizza circuit out of isolated towns with 3,200 or fewer souls. Towns that size and smaller, Lewis said, have been bypassed by franchise pizza operations.
A spokesman for a major pizza chain, though surprised at the circuit-rider pizza business, confirmed Lewis' analysis.
"The demographics of pizza is so tremendous, they ought to have a good shot at it," said Jeff Rogers, president and chief executive officer of Pizza Inn, the 428-store chain. "Eighty percent of the American public eats pizza once a week."
The Pizza Inn executive said that his company won't locate in a town unless the trading area draws 20,000 to 25,000 consumers.
The Lewises set their sights lower. During a recent three-hour stint in San Saba, they filled 56 orders - a steady flow compared to their peak day last spring when they baked, boxed and sliced 96 pizzas.
Balanced against the initial $15,000 expense of transforming a used trailer into a mobile kitchen, the Lewises term their venture a success.
"We work 12 hours a week," says Dan Lewis, not counting the time to drive 430 miles between the towns and the couple's home outside Menard. "It beats the hell out of working 80 . . . if we both worked."
The Lewises, married 19 months, launched their mobile pizza parlor in March after consulting with a couple who have targeted a similar pizza market in a handful of west Texas towns.
Two other families with whom The Lewises park on private property, which requires no permit. Rent is generally paid off with a pizza. the Lewises go fishing took an interest in their culinary trailer. They are outfitting rolling kiosks of their own with an eye toward passing the Parmesan in south Texas.
"There are a lot of pizza trailers following carnivals," Sadie Lewis said as she arranged 69 slices of pepperoni on a 12-inch pizza.
But carnival kiosks have it harder, she said. They sell by the slice and sometimes need health and vending permits if they operate on public land.
The Lewises park on private property, which requires no permit. Rent is generally paid off with a pizza. Because their piping-hot orders are assembled from frozen, prepackaged, pre-inspected products, no further health inspection is needed, she said.
Though novices in the world of pizza, the Lewises have years of culinary expertise. Sadie Lewis, a former cake decorator and Dairy Queen fry cook, ladles on the pizza toppings and keeps an eye on the oven, which can hold up to 18 pizzas.
Her husband, a deer skinner who makes jerky during hunting season, mixes the pizza sauce from California crushed tomatoes, chopped bell peppers, onions and a seasoning mix high on oregano.
"Ain't nothing you buy says `Italian' on it isn't made with oregano," Dan Lewis says. "Oregano is the bottom line."
Taking orders in each town is a local high school student who knows by name every customer who comes to the window. In San Saba the job belongs to Heather Land, 16, who earns $15 for the evening and pays for the pizza she inevitably takes home.
The Lewises estimate that 2 percent of each town's population patronizes their trailer.
Among the regulars in San Saba are Melissa Menchaca, 16, and Susie Salas, 24, carhops at Storm's Restaurant, a local hangout for burgers, shakes, fish strips and fries. When the dinner crowd disperses at Storm's, the cook sends the carhops out for pizza to go.
Last but not least to drive up for pizza was Gilbert Gomez, a garage manager whose face and clothes were smudged with grease and grime. As dusk settled over Main Street, Gomez paid $8 for a medium pepperoni. He gazed wistfully at the white trailer with the red menu on the side and the aproned couple baking his order.
"If I ever hit the lottery, I would buy me a pizza house and do away with the garage," the mechanic said.
by CNB