In our Aloha blog we mentioned the companywide contest we hold to sharpen our managers and crew. While the winning General Managers were whisked away to Maui and the Associate Managers flown to San Francisco (blog coming soon), the crew for the winning location is rewarded as well. This year our Ballinger location took top honors and we took them out for a little celebrating. We gave everyone a paid day off and staffed the store with crewmembers from other locations as well as our operations team. The Ballinger crew was tasked with deciding how they wanted to celebrate. We started the outing with a barbecue at Terrace Creek Park. General Manager Brian Youngdahl set up a barbecue feast and crewmembers Kayley Gordon, Katy Rice and Molly Wakenshaw showed us that they could bake pies other than pizza pies. They were fabulous! We enjoyed some Frisbee golf, ladder ball and corn hole (supplied by former GM Tyrone Fabroa) before heading off to bowl a couple games. It was great weather for a barbecue and a fun time overall. I have a lot of appreciation for the Ballinger crew for being such a solid team. Thanks for all of your hard work!

Ballinger's Tyrone Fabroa with fiancee Erin,
Magnolia's Justin Wehrell, Driver Manager
Sasha Mitronovas and Edmonds' Adria Ferris

From time-to-time we hold a contest between all of our stores. This helps to keep us sharp and gives crew and managers something to focus on.

This year we pushed on crew development as well as product quality, resulting in one of our most competitive contests to date.

Tyrone shows his skills on the surf board.

With such a tight race, Ballinger Way’s victory was sweet. Their win earns a party for their crew. While they get an extra vacation day to go have fun, the operations staff will take over their store making sure pizzas get out to Shoreline’s hungry customers.

Sasha, Justin, DM John Clifford, Adria, Erin,
Tyrone, Pagliacci Support Central's Audrey
Middleton and Sand Point's Brandon Steele

Managers from the top performing stores get a reward too – a vacation with their peers. It’s a good thing they all get along so well! Recently the General Managers from the top four stores (Ballinger, Edmonds, Sand Point and Magnolia) all went to Hawaii for a little fun in the sun and surf.

The group enjoyed some amazing snorkeling (yes, we saw sea turtles!), surfing lessons and a scenic drive around Maui.

Dinners were mixed between Hawaiian fare and barbequing fish and octopi caught on snorkeling/spear fishing excursions.

All of us who went had a great time hanging out with each other and weren’t even bothered when our flight to Seattle was cancelled and we had to stay an extra day!

Next up, the winning Associate Managers trek down to San Francisco to spend some time by the Bay. They’ll be flying off in a few short weeks. Check back to see how their trip went.

It’s been a while since we’ve participated in summer festivals. Our involvement came to a screeching halt when our mobile oven gave out on us a few years ago. The only exception being West Seattle Summer Fest. Since the event takes place right outside our doors, we didn’t need a mobile oven. We just set up a booth right outside our door and used our normal ovens.

This year we bought a new double deck oven and put it on wheels. We took it for a test drive at the West Seattle event last weekend, knowing we could always fall back on our full set of ovens in the kitchen.

It was a smooth ride. Now we’re ready to take it on it’s first solo road trip to the Bellevue Arts Fair on July 23-25. Hope to see you there!

Every 4th of July we take an oath to turn off the pizza ovens and celebrate our country’s independence along with everyone else. After all, everyone is firing up the grill. No one wants pizza. So we take advantage of our day off by throwing our annual company picnic. And no…we don’t serve pizza. We fire up a grill (or two…or three), just like everyone else.

While the weather was nothing like what we’ve experienced the rest of this week, we faced the cooler temps at Golden Gardens, grilled a bunch of proteins and put on our annual Pizzalympic games.

Who folds the fastest box in all of Pagliacci? Emory Liu from Miller Delivery Kitchen. Who tossed the fastest 17” pizza? Adrian Aramburu from Bellevue Pizzeria. Who tossed the biggest dough in 45 seconds? Brady Madsen from 85th Street. What location rocked the teamwork in our crazy relay race? Ballinger Way Delivery Kitchen. What location muscled their way to tug-of-war champs? Lake City Way pulled out the win and will reign supreme until next year.

Sure signs of spring include sunshine, cherry blossoms, birds chirping and invasion of Peeps. In honor of Easter we hold a Peeps contest where we challenge our crew to sculpt, build or create a peepscape. They can use as many or as few Peeps as they choose and add whatever accessories they like. Their only limitation is their own imagination. Previous winners have included a scene from The Wizard of Oz, a castle, and a ransom note with photos of peeps in a Robot Coupe delivered with a container of peeps parts. Every year the competition gets a little fiercer. This year was the stiffest competition yet. But in the end, it was University who used the force to overthrow the rest of the Pagliacci Empire with their Return of the Jedi scene. Enjoy these photos of this year’s entries.

In November, Will Haas, one of our drivers at the Magnolia Delivery Kitchen, approached me about doing a food drive. There were plenty of businesses and organizations holding food drives over the holidays, so Will suggested that we hold one later in the winter when food banks would be running low again.

We picked the Olympics as the time to have our food drive.  While hometown athletes ski, skate and luge into the hero spotlight, this seemed like a great time for us to all be hometown heroes by donating food to local organizations.

From February 12-28, we will be collecting non-perishable food items to benefit Northwest Harvest.  Food can be dropped off at any of our locations or given to one of our delivery drivers upon order delivery.

Northwest Harvest buys white rice and beans in bulk.  They encourage other food donations like:

Courtesy of Red Cross.

I, like all of you, have witnessed the news footage from Haiti over the past few weeks.  Total devastation.  You can’t help but be moved by the images in the press.

As I was deliberating what we should do as a company, several of our employees had similar thoughts.  Devesh Kumar, a driver from Miller Delivery Kitchen, was the first to approach me about what Pagliacci could do as a company.  The whole Sand Point Delivery Kitchen crew talked about donating their tips to aid relief efforts.  Jason Cheung, the University Pizzeria General Manager, sent out an email to all of our managers asking if their crew was interested in donating tips for a day and if Pagliacci would match their donations.  Our crew really wanted to help and so did I.

Last Friday we decided that this Thursday, January 28^th, we would donate all of our profits to the Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund.  We are also matching all of our employee contributions.  In addition, we are working with our vendors to get them to donate the food and packaging that we use that day to help support our effort.

A big thanks to our friends out there broadcasting, printing, blogging, posting, tweeting and just simply talking about this event to help spread the word.  And thank you for ordering pizza on Thursday!

Every year we close early on a Sunday or Monday night in December to throw a holiday party for our crew.

For years Sunset Bowl played host to our parties.  Our shenanigans were usually the talk of the bowling alley for the next year – bobbing for smelt in our Survivor competition for Jingle Bell Jungle Boogie Bowl in 2001, Gong Show performances during That ‘70’s Bowl in 2003, Spam carving contest at our Holiday Hula Bowl in 2004 and our Road Warrior Green Machine race in the parking lot for our Holiday Punk Bowl in 2007.  Since Sunset Bowl closed in 2008, we turned to Chop Suey to host our last two holiday parties.

As you can tell from the names of our parties, we always pick a theme and build our party around it (which is captured for the year in the crew photos on each location page of our website – 2009 will be up soon).  This year’s party was Holiday Masquerade.  We sent out kits to our stores for crew to make their own masks.  Many did.  Many made appearances with other means of masking their faces including face paint, gas masks and paper bags.  At the end of the night we crowned Justin Wehrell, GM from Magnolia, our Masquerade King for best mask and Ben McIsaac, cook and driver at Miller, Karaoke King.  Can’t wait for next year’s party!

Every year we challenge our crew to show off their creativity in a pumpkin carving contest. The carving contest doesn’t necessarily mean the pumpkin has to be carved. We receive all types of carved, painted, shaved, decorated and sculpted submissions. One year we even received a living submission. One of our crew was rolled in to our office looking like a scarecrow with pumpkin head only to get up and start walking around when we least expected it. The pumpkin entries span from the cute to the down right creepy and even gross. Every year it’s harder and harder to pick a winner. This year Bellevue Pizzeria edged out 145th Street Delivery Kitchen by 1 point. Here are our most creative pumpkins.

Jared Gamble from Edmonds wins our box folding competition.

How does Pagliacci celebrate the 4th of July?  By declaring independence from our pizza ovens of course. 

It has become a tradition to shut down on the 4th of July and throw a picnic for our crew.  We usually take over a spot at Golden Gardens in Ballard.  As soon as our signs go up, people in the park begin asking us if we are selling pizza.  While we think every day is pizza day, there are a few times when pizza just doesn’t suit the holiday.  The 4th is all about barbecue.  And that’s what we do for our crew.  A lot of it.  Burgers, cheeseburgers, veggie burgers, chicken, hot dogs and sausages.  After fueling up and socializing, we have our crew show off in our annual Pizzalympics. 

The first event was Fastest Box Folding.  The goal is to be the fastest person to fold three boxes.  In an event that is usually dominated by drivers, this year’s winner was a cook – Jared Gamble from Edmonds Delivery Kitchen.

The next event was Fastest Toss.  Cooks had to toss out pizza dough to 17” without tearing a hole in it before anyone else.  Mike Baxley, General Manager of 145th, proved he is the fastest dough tosser in the west.  At least this year.

Cooks had a second chance to prove themselves in the Biggest Dough event.  They had 45 seconds to toss out the biggest dough without tearing a hole in it.  Sam Kosala from Ballinger took home the ribbon.

Kenmore shows their might in our tug-of-war.

Then it was on to the team events, starting with our relay race.  Every year our relay race changes.  This year the first leg of the relay required one person to fold a box blindfolded.  The second leg required two people to toss a pizza together with one hand behind their backs (our version of a three-legged race).  It works fine pounding and spreading out the dough on the table.  The challenge was that they had to toss the dough in the air at least once and the dough had to be 15” before it was put in the box.  The final leg of the race involved just one person who spun around 10 times with his or her head on a baseball bat before attempting to deliver the boxed pizza dough to the finish line.  Edmonds emerged victorious.

The finale was a good old-fashioned tug-of-war.  It came down to 85^th verses University in the finals.  It could have gone either way.  In the end, University toppled the competition. 

Looking forward to next year!