How to Make Money Selling Pizza in New York City

Everybody knows that New York City has a ton of pizzerias. And yet, new ones are opening up all the time. Why do we need more? And how is there still money to be made? On this episode, we speak with Alex Xenopolous, Evan Xenopolous, and James Shields, three restaurant entrepreneurs that recently opened up Xeno's Pizza, a shop close to the Bloomberg offices in Manhattan. We talked about everything from location scouting, to the cost of ingredients, to oven technology, the state of New York City, and how any given establishment differentiates their brand in the hopes of making money by selling what on the surface looks like an abundant, commoditized market. Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-01/5-top-new-york-city-restaurants-to-try-right-now-summer-2025 Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 3:07Joe Weisenthal?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

• 3:12Tracy Alloway?

  And I'm Tracy Alocke.

• 3:14Joe Weisenthal?

  We are.

• 3:15Tracy Alloway?

  Eating pizza.

• 3:16Joe Weisenthal?

  We are recording this July 8th and we've done back to back to back episodes and we haven't had time for lunch. So I too, I'm going to eat this bite of pizza.

• 3:27Tracy Alloway?

  It's really good.

• 3:27Joe Weisenthal?

  We're eating really good pizza in the studio. It's really good. People are probably wondering what's going on, why we're, all right, one second, I'm gonna swallow my food. But I swear we're not going to be sounding like we're eating pizza the entire time.

• 3:41Tracy Alloway?

  Speak for yourself.

• 3:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay. Tracy, a few months ago, I noticed a new pizza restaurant had opened up in the East Village. And I thought to myself, what kind of person looks at the East Village and thinks, you know what, this neighborhood needs a new pizza restaurant. And I've always been sort of, I've been vexed by that question for a long time.

• 3:59Tracy Alloway?

  Wait, it's a saturated market, but on the other hand, isn't like pizza in New York a slam dunk? Everyone loves pizza. We come here for pizza, don't we?

• 4:09Joe Weisenthal?

  I guess that's true. It just seems like there is a lot of pizza in the East Village. And opening up a new pizza place, it's very capital intensive. There's the stoves. There's the risk. There's the brand. There's all these things. I would not have the guts to open up a new pizza restaurant. I would just assume that the market, I would just take the it's saturated view. Maybe you have the more, maybe you would be the more optimistic and entrepreneurial.

• 4:32Tracy Alloway?

  You can't go wrong with pizza.

• 4:33Joe Weisenthal?

  It's New York City. I guess I could see it both ways, but I did find it striking. And it is of course, one of the most ubiquitous businesses that you see at the ground level in New York City. Great pizza city. And I don't really know anything about the business of pizza.

• 4:46Tracy Alloway?

  No, and we just spoke to a bakery business that is getting into the pizza business. So this is a really nice segue and natural evolution of the conversation.

• 4:56Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, I want to know how you make money selling a slice of pizza in New York City. I'm really excited. We actually have three perfect guests in the studio today. They brought us pizza. So there is a disclosure that we have to get out of the way, which we are eating the pizza that they brought us. So if you listen to this episode and you think like we've been like, you know, painfully bought off or whatever, then this, then that's why it's because I had some pizza. But it's also an interesting one because A, this pizzeria is right by Bloomberg. So that's another excuse for why we're doing this one. But also two of the owners of the restaurant also own a deli or cafe near Bloomberg that I go to for lunch all the time, the Oxford Cafe. I don't really like eating pizza for lunch, if I'm being honest. It's a little heavy, but I love a chopped

• 5:40Joe Weisenthal?

  salad. And the Oxford Cafe, which is very close to Bloomberg, in my opinion, is the best chopped salad operation in the entire city or that I've been to. No, for real. And so I'm sort of curious about that, how you differentiate there. So I just want to learn about like lunchtime food, including pizza.

• 5:56Tracy Alloway?

  Let's do it.

• 5:57Joe Weisenthal?

  Our three guests, I'm going to introduce them. We're going to be speaking with James Shields. He is a restaurateur here in New York City. He involved in multiple things, but he is a co-founder of Zeno's Pizza, which is on 52nd Street between second and third. And then we're also going to be speaking with the other Zeno's co-founders, Alex Xenopolous, who also owns the Oxford Cafe, and his brother, Evan Xenopolous. So they're all involved in multiple things and Evan and Alex and Oxford and James and pizza, et cetera. And we are going to learn how to make money selling a slice of pizza. So I'll throw this out, James or anyone else, but James, I'll start with you.

• 6:31Joe Weisenthal?

  Why did you think there was capacity or a reason when you looked at this location at 52nd Street between Second and Third to think, you know what? This area could use another pizza place?

• 6:41Speaker 07

  Sure. I mean, for us, it was clear during the pandemic, there was a great clearing event where a bunch of, you know, established places went out of business and midtown specifically, that area, 52nd Street and that corridor, it was a bit of a pizza desert and it's not the same as like the East Village or the West Village or Times Square or something like that, where if you open up shop, you're going to immediately be in a knife fight. So this was a green space for us and, you know, me and Alex and Evan kind of had this chance meeting through a friend of ours, you know, they were looking for someone to do something with their pizzeria, which they had established at the mill. And we got to talking and we knew a space that was right across the street and it just

• 7:26Speaker 07

  immediately clicked and we're like, we have a partnership here. We're going to make an honest go of it. Let's throw some money in here and make this happen.

• 7:33Tracy Alloway?

  Okay. My first question is pineapple on pizza, yea or nay?

• 7:38Speaker 07

  Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to talk, since I've been making pizza and I'm,

• 7:42Tracy Alloway?

  This is the important stuff.

• 7:44Speaker 07

  Exactly. So this is all near and dear to my heart. So I'm okay with pineapple and ham on pizza. It depends on the type. If you try to put it on Neapolitan, that's sacrilegious and then you're going to get like, you're going to get your, you know, pizza making card revoked. But if you do it on like a New York slice or maybe in a Sicilian, then you know what? You're, you're in okay territory and we can, we can give you a pass.

• 8:06Tracy Alloway?

  I don't know how you guys are going to react to this, but at my local pizza place in Connecticut, they do a Hawaiian with cherries on top of it and it is so good.

• 8:15Speaker 07

  So I've done it with sopressata and ricotta. And if you drizzle some of that like maraschino cherry juice on it, it just ties the whole thing together because you get that salty, that sweet and you get a little bit of that like heat too.

• 8:29Speaker 08

  I do find that question kind of interesting because,

• 8:31Joe Weisenthal?

  This is Alex, by the way.

• 8:32Speaker 08

  Oh, sorry. This is Alex. Because, you know, Italians do eat prosciutto with melon, right?

• 8:37Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 08

  So that it does have a similar profile to ham and pineapple. So, you know, I've always found it like an interesting kind of cultural.

• 8:45Tracy Alloway?

  I don't know why it became so controversial. It seems like a natural match.

• 8:48Joe Weisenthal?

  No, there's a meme of like some Italian guy looking at a pineapple on pizza like, get away from that nonsense. And then you see is the prosciutto wrapped on melon. It's like, oh, amazing delicacy. Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 09

  Yeah, I personally, I'm a traditionalist. I just, when we were like partnering up on this, our aim was how do we make the best plain slice as well, right? And that's, I feel, one of the most important characteristics in New York. So I've never been a big pineapple pizza person, but you know, how do you get to that best plain slice is kind of one, that was one of our big motivating factors when we met up and, you know, trying to figure that out.

• 9:22Joe Weisenthal?

  And that was Evan speaking, by the way. All right, let's talk about that. So you guys, Evan and Alex, you have background in other restaurants. I mentioned the Oxford Cafe, which I highly recommend. When you thought about, okay, you want to partner and get involved in the pizza opportunity. We've established that this area is a pizza desert. How do you think about like this sort of where in the market, high end to low end, et cetera, is optimal? And what are the categories of the market that exist?

• 9:47Speaker 08

  You know, it's a good question. You know, one of the elements that, like James mentioned earlier, we had a pizza section in our place on 52nd and Lex, The Mill. And, you know, before the pandemic, a large component of that section's business was catering. So when we were looking at this specific location, we signed the lease before the Omicron variant. And obviously there were issues kind of with people coming back to the office afterwards and things like that. So part of the, when we were looking at this location was the thinking was that we would have a lot more catering, higher price point transactions that was kind of sustained the business versus doing solely kind of by the slice operations. Because that is a lower ticket price, involves a lot of transactions to really get the volume

• 10:31Speaker 08

  and sales that you need to kind of, you know, cover all the costs. And I'm sure we'll discuss kind of the elements of the business. So I think what you've been seeing the last couple of years with a lot of costs across the board, you know, for food and beverage, it's become so much more difficult to operate. Everything's become more expensive. You're relying on third party services, you know, different digital applications that all take a couple of points from your business, right? So, you know, you're seeing A transition in New York in terms of pizza where people are trying to go up the food chain to a higher price point to be able to kind of cover those expenses. So you're seeing a lot of kind of traditional mom and pop places close, dollar slice shops, even really good ones that had, you know, a lot of, you know, had a good reputation.

• 11:16Speaker 08

  You're seeing a lot of those struggle as well. So you're seeing a big transition, whereas I'd say, you know, 10 to 15 years ago, you know, you'd almost never see a pizzeria close. I mean, it was just really, really unusual. Now you're seeing kind of a lot of new entrants, a lot of people exiting. So there's a churn that in the business that just didn't exist.

• 11:36Tracy Alloway?

  How does pizza actually move up in terms of pricing? Cause I imagine, you know, I love pizza, but it is in some ways a humble product and there are limited things you can do to it. So if you're trying to charge more money for pizza by making it, I don't know, like luxury pizza.

• 11:53Speaker 07

  Gold leaf and caviar?

• 11:54Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah. Does that work? What do you do?

• 11:57Speaker 07

  No, there's a window, right? And the way that Zeno's is, is kind of positioned within the marketplace is we're premium product, premium price. So like, we want to be on the higher end and we also want to use the best, freshest quality ingredients that you're going to find in our marketplace, right? Cause we want to stand behind what we, we want to eat, you know, really good, healthy, fresh food every day, right? And that, that even goes to like, that facilitates the process that we go through. So we ferment our dough for 48 hours, right? Most sliced joints in, in New York City are like 24 hours. And why, why is that different, right? It makes the product a little more healthy because the yeast are essentially digesting the gluten and kind of softening the dough for your stomach to process, right?

• 12:39Speaker 07

  So it's, it's something that doesn't sit in your stomach, you know, and you feel that when you eat our slice, you know, you don't leave the place being like, ugh, you know what I mean?

• 12:48Joe Weisenthal?

  This is why, I didn't realize this. This is why I don't really usually eat pizza, cause I don't want to feel that in the middle of the day, but I didn't realize that this could be addressed by going more premium.

• 12:55Speaker 07

  Brother, let me put you on the spot. How do you feel right now after you eat that slice?

• 12:58Joe Weisenthal?

  I've eaten two slices since we've started talking. I feel okay right now.

• 13:03Speaker 07

  All right.

• 13:03Joe Weisenthal?

  Wow, this is really, I learned something.

• 13:05Speaker 07

  Yeah. Eye opening, right? And this, this goes to the economics of like, you need additional storage in your walk-in, you need to process this a couple of days beforehand. So that means if you get an order, you know, 24 hours, you're already 24 hours behind in the process, right? So like the logistics of this is, is quite impressive to manage on a scale that we do it at.

• 13:25Joe Weisenthal?

  What else makes a difference in terms of ingredient costs and whether it's cheese, whether it's tomato sauce, like what is the difference between your slice and a dollar slice?

• 13:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I'd say cheese is the most expensive cost center that we have, more than meat, more than any other thing, right? But you've seen inflation across the board and also like it ties into tariffs and things like that. We have, you know, Italian based products that, you know, like canned tomatoes and that kind of thing that do get impacted. But cheese by far is the biggest cost center.

• 13:57Tracy Alloway?

  One of the more random experiences I have had in my life is talking to a pizza salesman in, I think it was Tanzania of all places, like a door to door pizza oven salesman. And one of the things I internalized from that conversation was pizza ovens are really, really tricky. It seems very difficult to like get them exactly right. So I'm curious how much equipment costs factor into the business and how careful you have to be about that sort of initial capital investment.

• 14:28Speaker 09

  Yeah, I can jump in on that. This is Evan. So we opened the restaurant actually three years ago this Sunday, so three years ago. But

• 14:36Speaker 07

  Let's go.

• 14:37Speaker 09

  We were looking at the equipment, just as an example. So our oven now, it's Pizza Masters. Everyone's using it. Everyone's going electric now, which is definitely a big trend and the city's obviously going against, you know, gas powered grills and ovens and things like that. But we bought our oven three years ago. It was $32,000. It is now, I think, $45,000.

• 14:58Tracy Alloway?

  Wow.

• 14:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, probably more.

• 14:59Speaker 09

  Just as an example of what

• 15:01Tracy Alloway?

  I see one for $91,000.

• 15:04Speaker 09

  Oh, that's, that's the five deck. We're at, we're at a three deck, so we're a little bit less than that. But yeah, so you're looking at that and then it's just all the extra equipment. That's where it gets daunting, you know, to open up and we're only a thousand square foot restaurant. If you're doing like a fine dining restaurant, you can even imagine, you know, what, what the kitchen equipment is going to. And yeah, so you're trying your best to, you know, make a business plan, keep your costs in order, but you know, you're getting low boys, fridges, our pizza shredder Low boys fridge lower to the ground, but you have a counter on top of it under Beneath, there's just fridge storage. Just as an example, our shredder costs $5,000. So you can see how all these little things you keep adding into the business just keep adding and adding and adding. And you're trying to get the restaurant open as fast as possible.

• 15:48Speaker 09

  We had a hiccup during our construction as we needed a smoke hog, which is the ventilation. Precipitor. Precipitor. And ours got like backordered and we got delayed four months just waiting for one piece of equipment, which we could not open our business without.

• 16:03Tracy Alloway?

  Wasn't that the plot of an actual Bear episode? It was something with the ventilator, right?

• 16:07Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 16:08Tracy Alloway?

  I'm sure it was.

• 16:08Speaker 09

  The Bear season two was perfect when they were building out that restaurant in the chaos as you're going through it. Um, and yeah, go ahead, Alex. That was my former life.

• 16:16Speaker 08

  You mentioned earlier, kind of like when you're looking at a restaurant and the type of, uh, so I mean, the ideal situation is what's called black iron, where you're essentially exhausting out through an exhaust and you have an exhaust fan. And, and you know, the city is very specific about those types of buildings where you can do that versus, you know, in this situation, the type of, we have a precipitor that basically cleans the exhaust air and is vented out onto the street, right? So typically, if you have like open windows, things like that, you're not allowed to have normal kind of like black iron exhaust. But yeah, during the pandemic, a lot of different types of critical equipment were just non-existent. And, you know, even for example, a walk-in box.

• 16:57Speaker 08

  At some point, I remember during the pandemic, people were tearing down old restaurants and selling the old walk-in box. Just, you know, 15 year old panels, you know, and just like selling it because people couldn't find them. And it was just a rat race to try to find this equipment. Or, or also electric equipment, you know, breakers, things like that were on backorder from China. And I know there's been some episodes on some of those issues on Odd Lots. But, you know, for, for restaurants where, you know, time is money, you're trying to, you know, build a team, get out ahead of, you know, the rent and things like that. And, you know, it was just a nightmare trying to pull it together.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  What's next for virtual assets? I'm Jacob Grease, host of Economy Scale, a series exploring growth in key global sectors. And in this episode, we're diving into the digital forces shaping finance. Sean McHugh from Dubai-based Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has this to say.

• 18:04Speaker 10

  We're seeing a lot of institutional players come in, digital asset dedicated hedge funds, high-frequency traders and that sort of thing, and folks who service institutional clients.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  As more capital enters the market, adaptive regulation is likely to become increasingly key. Reece Merrick of Ripple says.

• 18:21Speaker 11

  A lot of regulators globally would like to keep the industry at arm's length. That's the opposite here. I think also what you'll find is that regulation and frameworks can come out, but some of them are maybe a slight iteration on some 80-year-old policy and not actually in line with what the technology can do and offer. And again, that's very different in Dubai.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. This series is brought to you by Bloomberg Media Studios and the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism.

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  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute, brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Businessweek's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 19:32Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company. And Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute, brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

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• 21:20Joe Weisenthal?

  How big of a challenge is labor? And how skilled is pizza labor? Like, do they still have to twirl the dough? Like, is that a thing? Or is that just like for show at some restaurants? Talk to us about the labor component of the business.

• 21:32Speaker 07

  So it depends on the the segment of pizza. So like New York Slice and Sicilian and things like that. The labor bar is a little bit lower, but for us, it's still very high end. Like we'll take probably at least thirty candidates. We'll trial probably ten of them and then one guy might stay three months and one guy might stay two years. Who knows? For wood fired and coal fired, like I have a wood fired that's down in the West Village. That is such an artisanal product that to have a guy that actually knows what he's doing can take six months to train and then three years to understand. And then another five years to really understand, you know, like it takes a lifetime and you're just constantly learning.

• 22:15Tracy Alloway?

  I actually wanted to ask you about this, but why did you decide to go electric with this particular oven versus coal or wood?

• 22:23Speaker 07

  Great question. So it was a mandate by the building that we're in because we're in a, you know, a high rise, right? But it also has the added benefit that the current is more consistent because you're drawing the power and you're heating the product more consistently than a flame, which might ebb and flow in terms of temperature. So our oven is more similar to like a Tesla than it is to actually like an oven. It's got a lot of electronics in it and we saw that firsthand when we literally tore it apart on the street, the sidewalk, disassembled it, moved it through the door, because it's a huge piece of equipment, and then reassembled it within the space. It was so impressive. The pictures are incredible.

• 23:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Just to zoom back up, let's say Tracy and I wanted to open up a pizza restaurant. How much money do we have to have? Do we realistically, both in terms of like putting down money for rent, but then the full, like what kind of operations is this to get into?

• 23:14Speaker 09

  If you're talking about ours, you know, we did a thousand square feet. The biggest mistake all restaurateurs make is they just don't have enough working capital after they open the doors. So I would say to be safe, you're looking at minimum four hundred thousand, but probably in the five to six hundred K range, just to give you that extra cushion. Cause you know, I've been working with my, you know, my family's had restaurants in New York since the eighties. And I, you know, started in oh nine, you would make your pay back in like eighteen months. Now we're looking with the way. The expenses are, you know, insurance is up twenty, thirty percent since pre-COVID labor. You're looking at a three-year time horizon often, so. And it takes so long sometimes for someone because we're not a national, right? So we're not getting that automatic like press.

• 23:56Speaker 09

  So just as a mom and pop, you know, you often need more time to get the marketing out there. So yeah, five hundred to six hundred thousand seems like, right? A good spot for like a thousand square feet, but yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, and this is in the QSR segment, the quick serve restaurant. If it was full service, you're looking at, you know, seven hundred to a million. It gets up there pretty, pretty quickly.

• 24:18Speaker 08

  Yeah, because I mean, it's just more involved, like, let's say in that space. You know, obviously the equipment and those types of needs, the working capital needs are more because the staffing needs are more expensive, but also just the finishes. Like anything now, these days, you know, services are so expensive, you know, whether it's electric, plumbing, like all these different inputs that go into building a restaurant are just that much more expensive and, you know, I think that's just kind of the way it is now post pandemic. These types of services are just very expensive. So, you know, for a restaurant, your cost of the build out is that much more expensive just because of that reality.

• 24:53Tracy Alloway?

  How does distribution work for you guys? Because I imagine this might be another big capital investment. And it's something that came up when we were speaking to the baker earlier. He pointed out that it's not just about making the bread. You actually have to deliver it to your customers. When I think about pizza, I think about pizza boxes. I think about pizza boxes coming directly to my door, usually around midnight or something like that. How do you actually get the pizza out to customers?

• 25:21Speaker 09

  I've kind of been involved in a lot of that, but yeah, it's like you just move heaven and earth and you just need to get it there any way you can. So obviously, best cases, you know, we're really focusing locally. We, you know, love all the office clientele in the area and we've been doing a lot of like quick deliveries. But, you know, we're looking at orders throughout the city and like, there's been days where we'll rent a U-Haul and just fill it up with pizza boxes and get it down there.

• 25:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 09

  Um, I've brought in, you know, my personal cars. I'm originally from New Jersey, but had my personal car one day and we had like. Last minute, like huge order. I'm just driving through the city in my personal car, you know, so subways, any way you can get it. And yeah, it's just one of those products where we have been trying to focus locally because pizza, it does lose its luster the further away you get, right? Traveling, when it's stuck in the boxes can be an issue, but you know, we just make it work and whatever it takes to get it there on time.

• 26:14Joe Weisenthal?

  What are your capacity constraints? Let's say I'm at the office, someone closes a big sale. I was like, this is great. Let's have a party tonight. Could I call you up? Like, how quickly could I get 30 pizzas from you?

• 26:25Speaker 09

  30? If you give us like, three hours, we'll get it there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've done that.

• 26:31Joe Weisenthal?

  And what's the most number of pizzas you can have cooking at one time? Like, and inventory of pizzas that you have already cooked? Like, talk to us.

• 26:37Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have a pretty decent throughput. So, you know, we've done 50 to 100 pie orders, you know, and it's all about timing and moisture control. You know, the way that we design the dough, you know, it's very efficient on the reheat is what we tend to call. We're able to get that all out at once. And we feed a lot of desks in midtown, like, you know, shout out Jerry from Nomura, by the way, and Black Rock and all those guys, like, you know, so we're feeding the desk. And, you know, once they order from us, it's game over. They're weekly, right? So, we're used to that kind of, you know, throughput. And it is like Alex alluded to earlier, you know, it's a functional part of our business. We really rely on catering and, you know, the offices to

• 27:21Speaker 07

  really sustain us in this one very, very hyper local, you know, neighborhood.

• 27:26Tracy Alloway?

  So, speaking of hyper local, do you tailor the menu for that particular location? Or is pizza like a universal, transportable good that can work basically anywhere in New York, at least?

• 27:40Speaker 07

  Hundred percent. You definitely tailor. So, when I designed the dough, I had a lot of things in mind. Like, this is a very vertical area. So, we limit the amount of blocks we go because by the time you take an elevator up and that guy comes back, this is 30 minutes. You know, like, he's gone, right? So, that's why as owners, the collective three of us, you could see us running around midtown east, like in carts and cars and U-Hauls. And like, we're all pitching in to kind of make this all happen.

• 28:06Tracy Alloway?

  But what about in terms of the actual menu, like the pizza flavors and design?

• 28:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, we we avoid specific items that don't hold up well in a box or lose their heat. And, you know, it limits like you don't want to do fish, right? You never do. You never see fish on pizza, right? It's rare.

• 28:24Tracy Alloway?

  My dad always ordered anchovy pizza. It was disgusting.

• 28:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's usually the cured stuff, not like, you know, you're not going to get like sea bass on there. Sea bass ceviche pizza.

• 28:35Tracy Alloway?

  Someone will do that. You know they will.

• 28:37Speaker 07

  I'm sure they will.

• 28:39Joe Weisenthal?

  Let's, we talked about this sort of upfront capital cost. Let's try to work the math in the other direction. Like, I buy a slice of pizza or I buy 10 slices of pizza. How much of what I'm paying for is the labor that went into it? How much is it the raw ingredient? And how much is it your upfront capital outlay and the profit you need to make on your risk? Like, talk to me about like how you're getting paid back for all these things. What's the math here?

• 29:01Speaker 07

  So historically, it's been 30, 30, 30, 10, right?

• 29:06Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay.

• 29:06Speaker 07

  So 30 fixed costs, 30 labor, 30 food costs, and then 10% profit, right? That's like normal for New York. If you're outside of New York, your profit gets a little bit higher, but you're also not doing as much volume. So you can get like, you know, I mean, Shake Shack's numbers, if you look at it like 17% profit margin for them. You know, they're bigger, they can extract more value out of things, get better pricing. But in New York City, it's a little more cutthroat and you might even get 5% profit margins or no percent profit at all. And you go out of business, right?

• 29:37Joe Weisenthal?

  Are there items on a pizza restaurant's menu or options that are particularly high margin? Like, you know, there's some X on this, but you really make your money on Y?

• 29:47Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, you could have what's called lost leaders, right? Like you have things that attract you to the place, like, you know, steaks have a 50% margin, right? And when I said the 30, 30, 10, by the way, it's changed in the last decade. Now your labor cost is 45%. You know, your food costs are where you're trying to save a little bit more money by getting creative with the menu items. And then your fixed costs, you know, you're trying to limit those as well. But the variables have been through the roof, right? Like the insurance has gone.

• 30:15Speaker 09

  Crazy. Yeah, and just in terms of, yeah, the one thing that does attract most people to pizza restaurants is in general, your food cost is pretty good. Like you'll get, if you're like really humming, you'll you'll get it like close to twenty percent, which is, you know, most restaurants like our Oxford Cafe and similar QSRs like that, you're at the thirty to thirty five. So your food cost is the great component. It's now in New York, ten percent was the rule of thumb on rent. Everyone is now, you know, in the fifteen to seventeen percent range. So there's all these different changes and you know what you knew about, you know, your cost structures and you're just searching for new sales any way you can and you know, you're trying to keep the walk-ins growing.

• 30:55Speaker 09

  But yeah, it's just managing it. There's so many different expenses to manage, but yeah, there's just been a huge change since COVID.

• 31:01Tracy Alloway?

  Well, this is something that keeps coming up, increased costs in the restaurant business. What levers do you have to pull? What levers are available to you to try to keep those costs down? Because it seems like, you know, you need to hire people, presumably you need to hire them at a competitive rate. You have a, you know, a premium pizza product, so you don't want to sacrifice quality. Insurance, I'm guessing, is not that negotiable. Like, what can you do?

• 31:28Speaker 09

  It's just grow, grow, grow. You know, that's all you can do. I mean, recently I've I've taken on from all my businesses, cold calling. You know, I've been looking at, you know, I'll look at directories of buildings and finding the company names, finding the phone numbers, and I'm just calling companies and it's honestly, we've already netted like ten to fifteen new catering orders. So you just have to keep growing. That's just, that's just what it is. Cause yeah, in terms of food costs, that's a good question. You also need to keep your purveyors honest. You need to have a book of other purveyors to constantly check pricing. Cause yeah, we even, you know, I've been in our restaurants, the Oxford Cafe in the mill. I mean, we had purveyors that had been serving us for twenty years and we kind of stopped checking and all of a sudden you realize even

• 32:09Speaker 09

  even people who are loyal to you are jacking up little prices here and there. So you need to constantly be checking your invoices and doing your due diligence because it's on you to make sure nothing slides by you.

• 32:21Speaker 08

  The other thing I'd add, one of the challenges on sort of the vendors and purveyor side is that you've also seen a lot of concentration occur over the last like 10 to 20 years. So it's also a challenge to kind of be able to kind of price and check with different suppliers and things like that. And one of the interesting things that happened with the pandemic, though, is that because everything became so expensive, you did start seeing a lot of jobbers, basically people kind of pulling up in the back of the truck, you know, kind of bringing different products and things like that, and often able to kind of undercut the pricing a little bit. But in general, especially on the supply side, there is a lot of concentration there economically because just the nature of the business now and the regulations and things like that,

• 33:05Speaker 08

  there's just a lot of economic pressure that results in this concentration.

• 33:09Tracy Alloway?

  Do you use a lot of third-party services or like outsource certain things to middlemen? Because this, again, has come up in a previous conversation, the idea that you're spending more on just the middle guy to get things done.

• 33:23Speaker 09

  Okay, so yeah, in terms of, yeah, obviously, the big one I know is all the third-party delivery services, you know, that's one of those, you have to make them work for you. Unfortunately, in this past week, they had capped third-party fees at 5% after the pandemic to help out restaurants, but starting August 1st, those rates are coming back up to 20%. So you'll be at 20% on that, 4% on the transaction fee, and then if you're using the third-party services, Caviar, Grubhub, et cetera, for deliveries, they charge another 10 to 15%. So I look at the prices I charge at my restaurants on my third-party sites, we're 15% higher than our in-house pricing often, because you need it to manage that expense, but I can't even

• 34:08Speaker 09

  imagine where it's going to go again August 1st because people's prices are already crazy. And yeah, you need to make it work. And with the pizzeria, we always felt we at least take our deliveries ourself. We find, you know, with pizza, you want like really good control of that. Someone who doesn't work at your restaurant, they're just looking at that as a tip for themselves. So you want to make sure your pizza's being delivered correctly. But yeah, that- That's one of the hardest costs to manage because with deliveries, you're obviously paper, plastic goods, you know, everything that's going out, the costs just go crazy. And yeah, now if they're going to be charging 15% more again, you know, it really adds up. So that's one thing we've been discussing actually this whole week is how, how much are we going to have to increase prices to like deal with that, you know, that shock again?

• 34:52Speaker 07

  To just add to what Evan's saying. So in recent years, like the last two years or so, venture capital has really stopped subsidizing these third-party, you know, websites and they're no longer offering these heavy discounts and like, they basically bought the market, right? They offered this free, you know, you can get it instantaneous lunch. And then now we're actually going to rack up prices and like, you know, Uber specifically, they did this with the taxis. They put everybody out of business and then once they own the market, they're like, all right, you know what? We're going to take our actual cut.

• 35:21Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, they are like really parasitic entities. I've, they've just disrupted.

• 35:29Speaker 09

  Sure.

• 35:31Joe Weisenthal?

  It sounds like you've thought about this before.

• 35:34Speaker 08

  I mean, I mean, they've really, really disrupted the food industry. And one of the elements that I feel like, you know, future historians, when they're looking back on this time and really thinking about kind of the American and, you know, what's like the defining aspect of the American? And it's like, you know, they want convenience and these companies are trying to fulfill that, but operating in such a parasitic manner that they just really, really harm, put themselves in between you and your customer, you know, the restaurant and their customer and just basically absorb all the, the upside there. And in the process, they're basically just decimating, you know, this industry. And you're also seeing in the way they're responding where, you know, now they're trying to go fully vertical, right? They're like opening up these ghost kitchens

• 36:19Speaker 08

  where they have all these weird brands and.

• 36:22Joe Weisenthal?

  The stupidest restaurant name.

• 36:24Speaker 08

  Yeah. I mean, just like all the, yeah, it's just like the most ridiculous restaurant names. And they're attempting to cultivate this like faux, you know, Italian, like local Italian deli. And it's just ridiculous. And. But because they have so much capital behind them, they're able to kind of manage through these concentrated apps like the access, they're able to do that. I don't know how successful they'll be, but it's really harmful. They're asocial. They're really hurting kind of third spaces and where people used to come together and it's very odd.

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• 40:41Joe Weisenthal?

  So in light of all of these gigantic companies parasitically extracting value and disrupting community, how are we feeling about socialism these days? Which I only ask, obviously, because we're in, you know, we may have a socialist mayor in a few months.

• 40:58Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean nominally socialist. I feel like.

• 41:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Sure. Well, it's interesting because I mentioned you guys love making money and you're entrepreneurs. On the other hand, part of his campaign was actually spotlighting small business and Yeah. bodegas and delis, etc. So I'm curious how you're thinking about like.

• 41:12Tracy Alloway?

  Wait, are you worried there's gonna be a city owned?

• 41:15Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 08

  Well, you know, Zohar Mhamdani ran an incredible campaign, so energetic. And the one thing we always talk about is that everybody has a point, right? You know, cost of living issues are are real. It's it's hard. And daily life has become much more of a grind than it was before the pandemic. Right? So, you know, I think he was addressing, you know, real concerns from people and, you know.

• 41:41Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah. But what are you worried about?

• 41:42Speaker 08

  You know, the one thing I'll, you know, we were talking about this on the way over. You know, if you had not visited New York in two years and, you know, you came back two years later now. You know, the first thing you would say is the city's a lot cleaner and it's actually more function. Seems more functional and, you know, there's a lot less prime and kind of disorder.

• 42:01Joe Weisenthal?

  Do you notice it? Because I was gonna say, I know the stats are good, but I can't tell like, how much am I being influenced by the fact that I read the news and the stats are very good these days?

• 42:09Speaker 08

  No.

• 42:09Joe Weisenthal?

  But you absolutely notice it?

• 42:10Speaker 08

  I I think absolutely. I mean, do you? Yeah.

• 42:12Speaker 09

  Someone who like, cause work, I'm commuting all day between the restaurants. I mean, from like 2020 to today, it's like, I go on the subway seven, eight times a day, walk around the streets like it is very noticeable. I know. Obviously, there's a lot of like, there was a lot of trashing New York, you know, during COVID and the election cycles and all that. But yeah, it's definitely not at that level that it was. But I do understand, yeah, when you can pay for eggs or milk and stuff like that. I do understand why people are going in that direction. But it also, the policies need to be sensible because we already have a crazy budget in the city. And we, you know, if you keep adding more and more debt, you know, I just don't see how you can pay for all these things he's saying.

• 42:55Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 09

  Without hurting us down the road.

• 42:56Speaker 07

  The the overregulation is the biggest, the biggest problem for restaurants moving forward. And I did see, you know, he had, he had great campaign points. There was this really stunning video on how. He wanted to appoint a small business czar, which I thought really eloquently described like the plight that the mom and pop is currently facing, right? Like, if you're Chipotle, you got like ten guys that can handle regulation and they could just deal with all that stuff. But like me, Evan and Alex, we're like just literally trying to just get you food, you know?

• 43:28Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think the other thing I would say is like, you know, if you look at his campaign proposals, let's say on housing and things like that. You know, it's very much kind of trying to manage like a lot of existing programs that, you know, from the Adams administration. City of Yes and different like regulatory, making it easier to permitting, things like that. It's not like, you know, he's proposing building a million housing units via NYCHA. Do you know what I mean?

• 43:53Speaker 07

  Right.

• 43:53Speaker 08

  That's why I find like a lot of the conversation about him to be very strange because. Hyperbolic. Yeah, it's hyperbolic, but also his proposals really aren't, you know, you call them a socialist and he calls himself a socialist. But his proposals are much more kind of like in line with what's kind of the progressive neoliberal paradigm that we've had over the last six years. You know, for example, like, you know, he talks about rent control and things like that, you know, a lot of that was enacted via Cuomo in 2019, right? And there's never been a real honest debate. Have those reforms that were enacted 2019, have they worked? And clearly, you know, based on this campaign, they haven't. So what works, what doesn't work, you know, and I also don't think, I don't see a lot of foreign journalists coming to New York and saying,

• 44:37Speaker 08

  wow, this regulatory regime is something we need to, we need to bring this to, you know, Tokyo, we need to bring this. Vienna, yeah, Red Vienna, like, you know, nobody says that.

• 44:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 44:47Speaker 08

  You know, so that's kind of, I feel like sometimes we're not honest and, you know, oftentimes also like the debate about, Evan mentioned the city budget, it's like a hundred twenty billion dollar, it's massive, right? You know, so when somebody talks about austerity budgets, it always rings hollow to me because, you know, you're spending a lot of money. It's nearly forty thousand per student for the NYC DOE, but it's not really delivering results. So what does that mean? Like, is it more, we're not spending enough? Is it, you know, we're not effective in governance? Like, I think those are the more interesting questions that sometimes. You know, people don't want to discuss because those are hard questions.

• 45:23Tracy Alloway?

  Pizza and politics. I like this combination.

• 45:27Joe Weisenthal?

  Someone's gotta be doing that already, but if not, it could be a recurring theme.

• 45:31Tracy Alloway?

  Well, talk a little bit more about the regulatory choke points. Like, give us a sense. Because if I think about regulation of New York restaurants, like, okay, when you're opening, I'm sure there are a lot of hoops to jump through. But then after that, the only thing I can really think of is the the health letter that goes up on the window. And frankly, like, I see a lot of non A's around. So it seems in my mind like maybe this isn't a big deal if you can continue to operate without getting an A.

• 46:02Speaker 09

  I mean, the one I want to bring up is earlier talking about why we went electric. If you try to get a new gas service into a restaurant, your restaurant may never wake up. I mean, wake up, may never open with the Con Ed process just for gas. It is actually funny story. I currently in my apartment, our gas line cracked in January, and we might not get it back to the following January or February. So that's just one where if you're trying to open up a restaurant, like, you might just be sitting there calling Con Ed every day, just begging for them to let your restaurant operate so you can make your investment back. So that's just one. But yeah, there's just a lot of constant, you know, at one point, they put a regulation for you can't keep your doors open so air conditioning and flow out.

• 46:43Speaker 09

  You know, obviously, the paper straw thing was a big one. So there's constant little annoyances that they just try to put into your business.

• 46:50Joe Weisenthal?

  Why are people's straws still a thing? Trump won. I thought like, why did we get rid of that? For real. Like, how are they? I still get them from time to time. Like, who is asking for that?

• 47:00Speaker 09

  I couldn't agree more. It's just like, it's just these little things that we try to constantly do. And it's just the headache for us. Like, you know, with the garbage, it's like, obviously, I'm very happy Mayor Adams, you know, tackled it. That's been a huge issue for the city.

• 47:12Joe Weisenthal?

  Wait, do you perceive progress on that? Like, when you look at the trash and also the rat situation in New York, which he touts his war on rats a lot, do you perceive, are you able to?

• 47:22Tracy Alloway?

  Joe claims to be a single issue voter on rats. I'm not sure it's true.

• 47:27Speaker 09

  Pizza rat.

• 47:28Joe Weisenthal?

  No, do you notice the kind of stuff?

• 47:29Speaker 09

  I mean, I think it's just very good to just containerize garbage, you know, especially. So I was just in Europe in Portugal, and they have these beautiful garbage cans where they, it's a chute underground, then they come and get it. Like, I would love to just stop seeing garbage bags everywhere, you know, and it's, you know, we just need to clean up the streets a little bit, right? So it's good.

• 47:49Speaker 07

  I also want to add to that because when COVID happened, they basically opened up the regulation for every three-letter agency. So while you're seeing a lot more of the grade pending signs from the Health Department, I mean, I'm more concerned about the Fire Department and the Department of Transportation because the way that they tackled the outdoor dining has been ridiculous. There's 100 new steps to doing outdoor dining, whereas I used to just have to fill out a form, send in a check, and it get renewed every year. Now I have 11 pending tickets from the Department of Transportation for various reasons.

• 48:27Tracy Alloway?

  That's a shame. I'm a big fan of outdoor dining and I wish there was more of it in New York despite the rat problem, Jerry. In terms of additional pressures on the business, there's another one we should probably talk about. Again, situation is kind of in flux. We're recording this on July 8th, but tariffs, right? I assume as a pizza place, maybe you're importing some tomatoes from Italy or, I don't know, fancy flour from France, which I know is a thing. Is that expected to impact your business at all?

• 48:59Speaker 08

  One area where it definitely has impacted is just paper and plastic. A lot of paper and plastic materials that go into kind of branding and things like that do come from abroad. It's just become more expensive in the US to produce those types of things. So, you know, you're importing a lot of different products. The bowls that you see at different spots come from, you know, Vietnam or China or some other areas and, you know, the pop bowls. And so that's one area where clearly, you know, for a lot of restaurants, they are impacted. You know, obviously there's, you know, it's been kind of a ridiculous couple of months with the back and forth, but that's definitely an area where I think a lot of restaurant operators are concerned and will actually ultimately be impacted by it.

• 49:43Speaker 07

  So it is a global supply chain and like, here's an example, right? Like, what do you associate the food product of Switzerland to be?

• 49:51Tracy Alloway?

  Cheese.

• 49:52Speaker 08

  Chocolate.

• 49:52Speaker 07

  Cheese, okay. Chocolate. How many miles do you think is the local cocoa bean from Switzerland?

• 49:58Tracy Alloway?

  Hmm, a lot. A lot, yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, like 1,200 miles.

• 50:02Tracy Alloway?

  But cheese is local.

• 50:03Speaker 07

  Cheese is local, yeah.

• 50:05Joe Weisenthal?

  How would you assess the sort of current cyclical state of the New York City economy? People I don't think have like ever been more divided and confused about just the trajectory of whether we're talking about the national economy or anything else. You could have people pointing to signs like, look, things are booming right now. And other people will have very compelling arguments like things are slowing down, Fed's got to cut and stuff. Like right now, July 8th, how are things feeling?

• 50:28Speaker 09

  I mean, I could start, but I know we all have opinions on it. I mean, just back to why we started this business, we always believed New York would come back. Obviously, we took a huge risk in the middle of COVID. And, you know, right now, we are seeing, it's always good and bad signs, right? Obviously, we just came out of the big holiday cycle, you know, between Memorial Day, Juneteenth, and 4th of July. And, you know, we are seeing more catering, which is great, obviously, in an area like Midtown East. It's very nice to see the foot traffic, you know, Monday through Thursday back again. So it's, you know, we're feeling very optimistic entering this fall.

• 51:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Fridays are gone for good, huh?

• 51:02Speaker 09

  So that was one thing we didn't bring up earlier. You know, one of the big issues trying to manage your expenses is that Friday, at least in New York. You know, I don't know about other cities or in the suburbs, but losing that Friday, you know, that Friday, we're, you know, you're

• 51:14Joe Weisenthal?

  And people probably don't eat more lunch on Monday through Thursday to compensate for the fact that they're not ordering on Friday.

• 51:19Speaker 09

  Exactly. Like, when you're doing your basic, you know, modeling for your restaurant, losing one whole weekday a week, right? It adds up. But I will say, we are feeling way better entering this fall than the previous years. You know, just, we've had a couple months where it's like, wow, this is, you know, we had two months that were up 25% at Zeno's from last year, which is fantastic. So feeling good on that end, but, you know, we're always on edge, right? It's like, we don't know what's going to happen with certain expenses, and we're going to keep pushing. But, yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 07

  So, yeah, to speak to that, the wealth effect, right? People can avoid coming into Manhattan on Friday, but also during the summer, when you have Labor Day, Memorial Day, you know, the three big holidays, they're gone the week before and the week after. So you're essentially, New York City's turning into a little bit of a ghost town.

• 52:05Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay, so they're really rich these days because of the stock markets, so they're taking longer vacations around holidays? Is that what you're saying?

• 52:10Speaker 07

  It's all the points.

• 52:11Tracy Alloway?

  They're buying pizza in the Hamptons.

• 52:15Joe Weisenthal?

  That these are becoming longer holidays than they used to be? That's really interesting.

• 52:18Speaker 07

  You could see it in the sales.

• 52:19Joe Weisenthal?

  Wow.

• 52:21Speaker 08

  That's kind of part of the problem where before the pandemic, a lot of these being in the restaurant industry, it was very predictable. You kind of had like a sense of where each week would be and how to manage, you know, that was just kind of like second nature. And now with kind of remote work and, you know, how people approach work as well, you know, it's a much bigger challenge to kind of manage the business and predicting and, you know, being able to kind of steady sales. On the city as a whole, it's kind of interesting, like Midtown East, the Plaza District, as Manhattan was moving upwards and north, you know, what made that area that area was the transportation network, right? It's like a nexus of transportation. You have Grand Central, all the subway lines crossing there,

• 53:05Speaker 08

  and it's a real crossing of the whole tri-state area. East Side Access obviously was the big project that brought L I double R into Grand Central. Hopefully, they figure out how to actually like properly utilize that. But, you know, and that's kind of why we're bullish long-term on that specific part of the city. It's, you know, it draws people from all over the region, and ultimately, that's what's going to allow it to thrive again and, you know, replicate kind of the where it was pre-pandemic.

• 53:34Tracy Alloway?

  If you were opening Zeno's again, or if you could go back in time and do it over, is there anything you'd do differently?

• 53:42Speaker 09

  Wow, that's a, that's a heavy one. Yeah, I mean, back to your, you know, the question earlier. It's like, when you're picking the location, you know, you're looking for office clients, tourists, locals, and, you know, you're trying to balance all those things, obviously, and then against the cost of the rent. We obviously found a, you know, area where did not have a lot of competition, we felt was going to give us a chance to

• 54:06Joe Weisenthal?

  And you just found that by typing pizza in Google Maps and zooming out, looking for a lack of red dog? That's crazy.

• 54:11Speaker 09

  Yeah, when you're looking, you need to, yeah, you need to check what's, what's around you. And we liked the space. It, you know, obviously was a great space over there, and we knew the area. But, for example, one thing we've lost in this area is tourists, because four or five of like the big hotels in the area have shut down since COVID. So obviously, looking back, you can't predict And I do think if we had another chance, it's like, I mean, we love this space, but like, maybe do you need to like, go find an area that's a little bit more touristy, but like, how, how can you predict that? And then the one thing we were discussing, which is interesting is obviously pizza and bars usually go together, right? But you are seeing people are drinking less now. So are those areas not as good as, you know, they used to be? I don't know.

• 54:55Joe Weisenthal?

  Evan, Alex and James, that was fantastic. That was the conversation I hope to have. I didn't even know we were going to get pizza out of it, but that was a lot of fun. We learned a lot. And thank you all so much for coming on Outlaws.

• 55:07Speaker 07

  Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Shout out Chris Hatch, by the way.

• 55:11Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh yeah, Chris Hatch, who we've had on the podcast a couple of times. He introduced me to James and then I also met Alex by going to the Oxford Cafe. So all coming together here. Thank you guys so much.

• 55:22Speaker 07

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 55:23Tracy Alloway?

  Thanks so much.

• 55:36Joe Weisenthal?

  Tracy, I actually, my stomach does not feel that bad. I did not know that about like, oh, you ferment for a long time, then eat the gluten and then you don't feel as heavy. I didn't know any, I didn't know anything about that.

• 55:45Tracy Alloway?

  I didn't know that either, although I have to confess, the whole lunchtime heaviness thing is I have never had that problem. I've never understood it.

• 55:53Joe Weisenthal?

  Do you think I have a gluten? I'd be so embarrassed. Like I, I don't want to, I don't want to judge people who like, I've always like, what if I'm one of those gluten people?

• 56:02Tracy Alloway?

  Well.

• 56:03Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, I have a gluten.

• 56:03Tracy Alloway?

  Well, maybe you'll feel better if you actually take it into account, but that was really fun.

• 56:07Joe Weisenthal?

  I have empathy now upon realizing that I'm one of those gluten people.

• 56:11Tracy Alloway?

  All right. Well, okay. So we talked about pizza and politics, Sicilian with a side of socialism.

• 56:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Tracy Alloway?

  Marinara and the macro economy.

• 56:20Joe Weisenthal?

  Were you writing all these down?

• 56:21Tracy Alloway?

  Yes, I was actually.

• 56:23Joe Weisenthal?

  I love your fastidiousness about dropping puns and alliteration.

• 56:27Tracy Alloway?

  Terrible puns. Thank you.

• 56:28Joe Weisenthal?

  Whenever you get an opportunity. But no, I did think that was really fun. And I like entrepreneurs. They're optimistic. They have to be, don't they?

• 56:37Tracy Alloway?

  That's right. I am thinking about like a couple of themes that keep coming across in these couple of episodes we've done on the sort of restaurant or wholesale food business.

• 56:46Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 56:47Tracy Alloway?

  And that's the idea of a lot of the cost increases coming from that sort of middle layer of third-party services, whether it's because you have to outsource something like distribution, or it's because you have to use something like an app, a food delivery app that charges an enormous amount of money to both the customer and the restaurant, apparently. I feel like I need to impress this on people who are not in New York. The food app charges in New York are outrageous.

• 57:15Joe Weisenthal?

  I stopped, by the way. I never get. I actually started, I'm real old fashioned. I walk to the store and pick up my food after ordering it online.

• 57:21Tracy Alloway?

  That's Lindy.

• 57:22Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah. It is Lindy. Yeah, no, it's insane. It's completely insane.

• 57:27Tracy Alloway?

  All right. Well, we could probably talk about pizza for a long time.

• 57:30Joe Weisenthal?

  But we have more pizza in the control room right now. So rather than continuing to talk about it, I want another slice.

• 57:35Tracy Alloway?

  All right. Shall we leave it there?

• 57:36Joe Weisenthal?

  Let's leave it there.

• 57:37Tracy Alloway?

  This has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

• 57:42Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart. Go check out their restaurants. Alex and Evan and James, they all have Xenos. And also, I swear, I kind of want to do another, the Oxford Cafe on, I guess, 60th Street is the best chopped salad in the system. We could, at one point, I wanted to do an episode on their chopped salad because it's its own great logistics story. So go check out the Oxford Cafe if you're in the area. Follow James Shields on Twitter, at James A. Shields. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez, at Carmen Arman, Dashell Bennett, at Dashbot, and Cale Brooks, at CaleBrooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com/oddlots, where we have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.

• 58:26Tracy Alloway?

  And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we talk about the business of carbs, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

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