Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: My friend Katie made business cards for me because she
Speaker 2: knew that I was, you know, trying to figure out
Speaker 2: the next step, and she wanted to make sure that
Speaker 2: whatever was written on the business card as my job,
Speaker 2: as my career, was something that was true and honest.
Speaker 2: And so the card says Scott Wiener, pizza enthusiast.
Speaker 1: Scott Wiener enjoys pizza more than anyone I've ever met.
Speaker 1: For a long time, his love of pizza was just
Speaker 1: a hobby until he created his dream job, taking people
Speaker 1: on tours of pizza rhas across New York City.
Speaker 2: I had never run even a practice pizza tour. I'd
Speaker 2: never run any tour. I'd never been a tour guide.
Speaker 2: I had a license, and I knew I like to
Speaker 2: talk about pizza.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, what happens when you follow your passion
Speaker 1: to extraordinary lengths, and that passion is pizza. Quick disclaimer,
Speaker 1: this episode may make you very hungry. I'm maya shunker
Speaker 1: and this is a slight change of plans, a show
Speaker 1: about who we are and who we become in the
Speaker 1: face of a big change. On a recent trip to
Speaker 1: New York City, my friends suggested that instead of going
Speaker 1: out to dinner at a restaurant, we should take a
Speaker 1: pizza tasting tour instead. I didn't even know that was
Speaker 1: a thing. That any tour that involves food is clear
Speaker 1: yes in my books. Scott was our tour guide and
Speaker 1: he ushered us onto a bus that took us to
Speaker 1: three pizzerias across Manhattan. He taught us about the history
Speaker 1: of the restaurants and the origin stories of different types
Speaker 1: of pizzas, all as we scarfed down slice after slice.
Speaker 1: Scott also introduced us to the team of pizza makers
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. They're called pizza yolos. When I casually
Speaker 1: mentioned that I enjoy shredded mozzarella on my pizza more
Speaker 1: than the fancier fresh mozzarella slices, one of them made
Speaker 1: me a special pie on the spot and then lightly
Speaker 1: judged me for my preference. Scott called it the Maya Pia.
Speaker 1: I found Scott's passion for pizza so inspiring. I was
Speaker 1: watching someone in their element doing something they really really
Speaker 1: loved and they had found a way to make it
Speaker 1: their career. Many of our conversations on the show are
Speaker 1: about people face unexpected change. Today, I wanted to hear
Speaker 1: from someone who wasn't thrown a giant curveball, but who
Speaker 1: decided to throw one himself. Scott's enthusiasm for crust, sauce,
Speaker 1: and cheese goes way back in college when he was
Speaker 1: touring with his band. He was eating pizza in cities
Speaker 1: across the country, and he wanted a way to keep
Speaker 1: track of his reviews so that he could share them
Speaker 1: with his friends back home.
Speaker 2: I would report back, oh yeah, we went to this
Speaker 2: great pizzeria, or oh yeah, I was in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: We actually found this really cool New York style pizzeria.
Speaker 2: So it really became a joke that, oh, I should
Speaker 2: keep a pizza journal. And my friend Michelle took one
Speaker 2: of those empty journal books, like a sketchbook, and she
Speaker 2: took paint pens, and she wrote Scott's Pizza Journal, and
Speaker 2: then on the first page she wrote like a rubric
Speaker 2: for scoring the pizza. And then on every single page
Speaker 2: she wrote by hand, date, name of pizzeria, who was
Speaker 2: I with cost, you know, like by hand, every single
Speaker 2: one of them.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Okay, So for folks who can't see
Speaker 1: it has adorable little drawings of pizzas on the cover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are all like stickers. She had a little
Speaker 2: I think it fell apart, but she created a little
Speaker 2: sticker satchel in the back of the notebook.
Speaker 1: So you can put like five stars four stars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's funny that you say that because it
Speaker 2: wasn't a number of stars. And that's actually really significant
Speaker 2: because I'm far less interested in ranking pizzerias. I'm way
Speaker 2: more interested in the philosophy that all pizza has its
Speaker 2: place and that it really just turns into, well, what's
Speaker 2: the right situation for that pizza. So Michelle took that
Speaker 2: into account when she wrote the score sheet, which the
Speaker 2: lowest score is a little yellow smiley face, and the
Speaker 2: description she wrote is all pizza can at least make
Speaker 2: you smile, even when it's nothing special. That's the lowest rating.
Speaker 1: What are the other ones?
Speaker 2: And then we get a large happy face, which is
Speaker 2: some pizza makes you very happy than a gold star,
Speaker 2: which is the standard to which most pizza should be held.
Speaker 2: And then there's hearts, and that's some pizza you can
Speaker 2: fall in love with. So these are just different elements.
Speaker 1: That's kind of beautiful.
Speaker 2: I love it, Yeah, and it really I think this
Speaker 2: was a reflection on my personal philosophy. But it also
Speaker 2: really helped shape my philosophy even more because I was
Speaker 2: more interested in writing a commentary about what I was
Speaker 2: doing in my life that day at that moment. Who
Speaker 2: was I with? Oh, we're in Kansas City. We got
Speaker 2: a flat tire. Oh, I had this great milkshake, and
Speaker 2: we got this great pizza, which was good enough for today,
Speaker 2: but it wouldn't have been good if the sun was up.
Speaker 2: It was good as an after dark pizza. You know,
Speaker 2: Like the reviews are not so much qualitative reviews. They're
Speaker 2: really contextual stories.
Speaker 1: So you're revisiting parts of your life, like it's bringing
Speaker 1: you back, yeah, to things, the things you were going through.
Speaker 1: Can you, I mean, since you have the Pizza Journal
Speaker 1: with you, do you mind reading an excerpt for us?
Speaker 1: Can you give us a taste? Sorry, this whole interview
Speaker 1: will be peppered, peppered with lots of puns. Sorry slight
Speaker 1: change listeners.
Speaker 2: Look, if you don't like pizza puns, you don't have
Speaker 2: to listen.
Speaker 1: Actually, please still listen.
Speaker 2: O'm kidding. So I don't remember when this happened, but
Speaker 2: a while back I did go through the books, or
Speaker 2: a friend of mine did and kind of dog eared
Speaker 2: some of the best entries. So I have some from
Speaker 2: volume two because I have I think six or seven
Speaker 2: of these books.
Speaker 1: Does it have a pizza stain on it? Or is
Speaker 1: that coffee? Okay, there's something on there.
Speaker 2: This is definitely tomato sauce.
Speaker 1: Tomato sauce, Okay, no doubt.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let me read you this one. We'll see
Speaker 2: how it goes. This is Tuesday, August twenty. First, it
Speaker 2: looks like it was two thousand and six. Okay, So
Speaker 2: it's ten pm. It's in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and it's
Speaker 2: at a place called Gino's. I had a cheese pizza
Speaker 2: and I've given it a red star, and next to
Speaker 2: it it says a go to pie, especially at two am. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I just saw the first line.
Speaker 1: Dramatic reading, Scott, dramatic reading.
Speaker 2: Listen. I don't know if I've said it out loud recently,
Speaker 2: but I love pizza. This place reminds me of why
Speaker 2: I love quote average pizza reas ouch harsh. Gino's is
Speaker 2: pretty standard in that it's big, floppy, consistent across the pie.
Speaker 2: But it's a great example of a standard pie because
Speaker 2: it's so darn tasty. The sauce is just fruity enough
Speaker 2: to notice, and the cheese is sweet and tasty. As
Speaker 2: for the crust, it's nice and snappy in the center,
Speaker 2: but dobe and puffy at the cornichone. That's the edge crust.
Speaker 2: I was delighted to discover a good deal of my
Speaker 2: slice's sweetness in the crust. Between the texture, flavor, and
Speaker 2: location of Gino's, I would be delighted to happen upon
Speaker 2: it when in search of a slice. This isn't a
Speaker 2: delicate flavor blast, but it is just the right thing
Speaker 2: to satiate yourself when hunger strikes.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: This is more of like a hard review.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so after your time with these bands comes to
Speaker 1: an end, you did try your footing in a few
Speaker 1: other jobs. Do you mind setting the scene for me
Speaker 1: at this point in your life, like, what were you
Speaker 1: up to, where were you living, what were you craving
Speaker 1: that you weren't getting from the day job that you
Speaker 1: were in at the time.
Speaker 2: So I had a couple of different jobs at the
Speaker 2: same time. The main job was that I was the
Speaker 2: assistant Cultural Affairs coordinator for the City of Hoboken, New Jersey,
Speaker 2: and that town is this really cute one square mile town,
Speaker 2: super walkable, super flat. And we had a lot of
Speaker 2: cultural events happening in the city, so parades, concerts, a
Speaker 2: lot of concerts for little kids, because there were a
Speaker 2: lot of young families in that town. But I hated
Speaker 2: the atmosphere of working in a building where I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: It was on the anniversary of my first year working
Speaker 2: there that somebody came up from HR and they said, oh, hey, congratulations,
Speaker 2: it's your first anniversary here, only twenty four more years
Speaker 2: to go, and you can retire with your full pension.
Speaker 2: It was the most depressing thing I've ever heard, because
Speaker 2: I was twenty five, twenty six maybe, and while that
Speaker 2: was the first and only job I've ever had that
Speaker 2: had a steady paycheck and health benefits, it was the
Speaker 2: most depressing just because everybody in the building. I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: It's like on the office there's all these characters, you know,
Speaker 2: they all hate working there, and they all are getting
Speaker 2: up walking toward the door, so that exactly at five
Speaker 2: o'clock they're stepping across the threshold. Anyway, So I think
Speaker 2: it might have been the day or two after that
Speaker 2: first anniversary that I put in my two weeks notice.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just
Speaker 2: knew I didn't want to do those things that I
Speaker 2: was currently doing. This is where I mean luck really
Speaker 2: brings it up here is I had the luxury of
Speaker 2: quitting that job because I was in a living situation
Speaker 2: that was rent free. And that living situation was that
Speaker 2: I was living aboard an old, decommissioned Ellis Island ferry
Speaker 2: boat where I was working part time as their caretaker,
Speaker 2: which meant that I could live on board for free
Speaker 2: in exchange for doing about twenty hours of work every
Speaker 2: week like scraping, painting, cleaning. And I had taken that
Speaker 2: job because I wanted to live close to where I worked,
Speaker 2: but I could not afford to live in Hoboken even
Speaker 2: though I worked for the city, so I was living
Speaker 2: sort of off grid. We didn't really have electricity, we
Speaker 2: definitely didn't have internet. And I just knew that I
Speaker 2: had a free place to live, so I could quit
Speaker 2: the job because I had a little bit of a cushion.
Speaker 2: So I quit the job and I told myself, I said,
Speaker 2: you got six months. I'll give you six months before
Speaker 2: you have to start applying for more jobs. But I
Speaker 2: figured with six months of letting my mind not concentrate
Speaker 2: on a career, I knew I would find some kind
Speaker 2: of a path that I'd go on.
Speaker 1: And so how did the Pizza's a tour company idea
Speaker 1: come into being?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So during that six months that I gave myself
Speaker 2: to just go on my mental quest to find my
Speaker 2: next career, I didn't know what job I wanted to do,
Speaker 2: but I knew that I loved visiting pizzerias and writing
Speaker 2: about them in my pizza journal. So I started taking
Speaker 2: my friends on little adventures to go to the Bronx
Speaker 2: to visit six pizzerias in a day, or go to
Speaker 2: Brooklyn and visit those L and B Spomoni Gardens and Totono's.
Speaker 2: So I started going on these little adventures, and maybe
Speaker 2: two or three months into that break from work was
Speaker 2: my birthday. It was my twenty sixth birthday. Every year,
Speaker 2: to celebrate my birthday, which is by the way, in October,
Speaker 2: which is National Pizza Month, we always celebrate my birthday
Speaker 2: aka scott Toberfest by doing very important. We always celebrate
Speaker 2: it by doing an educational experience. So one year, we
Speaker 2: did a brewery tour in Pennsylvania. Like museum, it's always educational.
Speaker 2: I'm not in the going to bars really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this was even before the pizza thing. Like
Speaker 1: you always made your birthday an educational experience.
Speaker 2: Scott Toberfest is to be celebrated by learning. So that's
Speaker 2: why for the birthday, I said, oh, well, everybody wants
Speaker 2: to go on these pizza crawls with me. Let's just
Speaker 2: rent a school bus. We'll pack all my friends and
Speaker 2: family who want to go. I'll give the driver a
Speaker 2: map of where I want them to take us, and
Speaker 2: we'll just hit up cool spots. I'll bring my megaphone
Speaker 2: and I'll give everybody a little pizza lecture on the bus.
Speaker 2: Still have the megaphone, you do?
Speaker 1: I love the megaphone.
Speaker 2: It's funny. I found there's a video on YouTube of
Speaker 2: that birthday crawl and you can see me like making
Speaker 2: announcements in the megaphone, just saying stuff about, oh, this
Speaker 2: place uses a coal fired oven.
Speaker 3: There with beautiful glows, with delicious fresh mazilla.
Speaker 1: They import all their ingredients from Italy.
Speaker 2: I want you to taste it. You'll know what the deli
Speaker 2: is and I gave everybody a little goodie bag with
Speaker 2: a notebook, a pen, some care and pallet cleansers. You know,
Speaker 2: I wanted it to feel like a real fun adventure.
Speaker 2: And it was so fun this pizza crawl that at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, my friends all knew that
Speaker 2: I had just quit the job. They knew that I
Speaker 2: was on my vision quest. They were like, this was
Speaker 2: so fun. You got to do this for random strangers.
Speaker 2: You're going to sell tickets. This is your new career.
Speaker 2: My friend Katie made business cards for me because she
Speaker 2: wanted to make sure that whatever was written on the
Speaker 2: business card as my job, as my career, was something
Speaker 2: that was true and honest. She knew that whatever I
Speaker 2: ended up doing, I would always at my heart be
Speaker 2: a pizza enthusiast. And so the card says my name
Speaker 2: on top, it says Scott Wiener, pizza Enthusiast, and it
Speaker 2: had my hotmail email address, and it had my phone number.
Speaker 2: And that was her birthday present to me. And she
Speaker 2: didn't write pizza expert, pizza connoisseur. She knew that I
Speaker 2: wasn't into that sort of elevated talk that a pizza
Speaker 2: enthusias you can never take that away from somebody.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans, and if you feel the need to order
Speaker 1: a pizza at this point, you've got at least a
Speaker 1: minute to make that happen. After months of weighing his options,
Speaker 1: Scott eventually pulled together a business plan to start a
Speaker 1: pizza tour company. His first step was to find an
Speaker 1: actual pizza place that he could partner with and bring
Speaker 1: people to on his tour. He managed to convince the
Speaker 1: owners of Lombardi's, a classic New York City pizza joint
Speaker 1: that's also one of the oldest in the country, and
Speaker 1: he's still not sure why they said yes.
Speaker 2: I have no idea, because I never would have said
Speaker 2: yes to myself. I was living on a boat. I
Speaker 2: probably hadn't showered. I'm sure I was wearing a sweater
Speaker 2: with holes in it. I bet I hadn't shaven in months.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're going to pitch a business to somebody,
Speaker 2: you clean up and dress nice. I was not in
Speaker 2: that mode. So I think maybe because nobody ever approached
Speaker 2: them about that sort of thing. You know, like you're
Speaker 2: a restaurant, you're there to sell food, that's your business.
Speaker 2: But you also have a great story. But you can't
Speaker 2: waste too much time in your business telling that story
Speaker 2: because it could get in the way of selling the
Speaker 2: food and paying your rent. So I pitched to them
Speaker 2: this idea of filling in the blanks. I'm gonna bring
Speaker 2: people in maybe thirty minutes before you open to the public.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna show them around and point out what's
Speaker 2: so special that a normal customer would never see. And
Speaker 2: then we're gonna sit down and eat. And it's going
Speaker 2: to be a way of shepherding people through an experience
Speaker 2: that doesn't start and end with the food. It takes
Speaker 2: into account the entire context, the story, the family, the
Speaker 2: people behind the food, and the equipment behind the food.
Speaker 2: Where at the end of the day, you're not going
Speaker 2: to be able to just say, oh, that pizza was
Speaker 2: a five out of ten or something. You're gonna have
Speaker 2: a better appreciation for what the place represents more than
Speaker 2: just selling a disk of dough, sauce and cheese.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then when it's said with the infectious energy
Speaker 1: of Scott Wiener, I guess it gets the job done
Speaker 1: because I've met you in first and I've done your
Speaker 1: pizza tour, and I fell more in love with pizza
Speaker 1: throughout the evening, So I understand. So Scott, can you
Speaker 1: bring me back to the first day in which you
Speaker 1: opened your business? So what's it called? What's the scene?
Speaker 1: How many people have signed up for your bus tour?
Speaker 1: I want to know all the details. Just bring me
Speaker 1: back to that morning.
Speaker 2: April twenty seventh, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's your business called?
Speaker 2: Scott's Pizza Tours. Let me just start by saying the
Speaker 2: reason that I picked that name was a I was
Speaker 2: the only person who is running the tours.
Speaker 1: So that's a fine way, Scott or bust everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah and b I wanted people to understand that it
Speaker 2: was my perspective. So this is not something called famous
Speaker 2: Original New York Pizza Tours Incorporated. I didn't want it
Speaker 2: to have this generic thing that assumed itself to have
Speaker 2: any kind of expertise. I wanted to be clear that
Speaker 2: this is a perspective. This is my perspective, Scott's Pizza Tours.
Speaker 1: So there's a humility in that title, like that's what
Speaker 1: you're trying to convey. I'm not trying to be an
Speaker 1: expert here. I'm not trying to tell I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to prescribe to people what they should like. It's just
Speaker 1: my point of view, is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's funny because I actually think when you
Speaker 2: name a business after yourself, it feels like the opposite
Speaker 2: of humility. But my intention was to let people know, hey, hey, hey,
Speaker 2: this is just my you know, because I knew people
Speaker 2: were going to come at me on it. Hey, I've
Speaker 2: been eating pizza longer than you've been alive. Hey, you're
Speaker 2: not even Italian, you know. I knew I would get that,
Speaker 2: and I knew that I had to maintain that. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is just my perspective. I want to make sure
Speaker 2: you know that. So that's on day one. That was
Speaker 2: what it was called Scott's Pizza Tours. The whole plan
Speaker 2: was to use a yellow school bus and to go
Speaker 2: out on Sundays. So this is where I'm not a
Speaker 2: good business person. A school bus has a lot of overhead.
Speaker 2: You've got to rent the buzz okay, the driver. If
Speaker 2: it started as a normal tour operator, I would have
Speaker 2: done a walking tour, which has almost no overhead. So
Speaker 2: I said yellow school bus because when I was a
Speaker 2: kid I always walked to school. I never got to
Speaker 2: ride the bus, but I would see that on TV shows.
Speaker 2: So whenever we had the bus, the yellow school bus,
Speaker 2: it was to go on a field trip. So I
Speaker 2: have this association with a yellow school bus and escape
Speaker 2: from school building but still like learning something kind of cool,
Speaker 2: so yellow school bus. Nice. Twenty five people signed.
Speaker 1: Up, and that was just word of mouth or were
Speaker 1: you doing any marketing emails?
Speaker 2: I sent emails to all my friends and family. Everybody
Speaker 2: who signed up was somebody I knew, or who knew
Speaker 2: somebody I knew. Also from being in bands, I knew that, oh,
Speaker 2: you got to send out press releases. See if somebody's
Speaker 2: going to review your record or preview your show or whatever.
Speaker 1: Interesting, so you leverage the skill that you had built
Speaker 1: as a musician.
Speaker 2: Exactly, I sent out press releases. I remember waking up
Speaker 2: on the boat and I got a call from somebody
Speaker 2: from New York Daily News and they said, we got
Speaker 2: your press release and we want to show up and
Speaker 2: cover the tour today.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I was horrified, and my initial response was, no, this
Speaker 2: is your.
Speaker 1: First day open that the New York dealis wanted to
Speaker 1: come and be on the Okay, Wow, so.
Speaker 2: Okay, Maya, I have to just make sure that the
Speaker 2: picture is very clear. I had never run even a
Speaker 2: practice pizza tour. I had done the birthday thing with
Speaker 2: my friends, but I'd never run a pizza tour. I'd
Speaker 2: never run any tour. I'd never been a tour guide.
Speaker 2: I had a license, and I knew I like to
Speaker 2: talk about pizza. But I knew that on that day
Speaker 2: I was a fool.
Speaker 1: My gosh, Scott, I love it. Actually, I could talk
Speaker 1: about living on the edge. This is great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I said no right away. I know
Speaker 2: what was going on in my head, which was, I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's my first time doing this, I've never
Speaker 2: done it. If it's awful, it's gonna be awful forever,
Speaker 2: and it's gonna get this coverage. I just thought, no,
Speaker 2: don't do it. Let me get better. But then I
Speaker 2: realized that it was kind of the same thing that
Speaker 2: held me back for a few months after my friends
Speaker 2: told me, oh, you should do a pizza tour as
Speaker 2: a business, and I just figured in that moment, wait,
Speaker 2: this is the opportunity. I'm just going to make a
Speaker 2: rule for myself that I'm not going to say no
Speaker 2: to anything that, just say yes and then make it happen,
Speaker 2: just make it work. So I said yes. They showed
Speaker 2: up with a photographer and the journalist, and I remember
Speaker 2: I set up the tables inside. Lombardi's was our first stop.
Speaker 2: And the way the tour worked is I had all
Speaker 2: the tables set up because I made everybody a goodie bag,
Speaker 2: just like at my birthday party, and I put them
Speaker 2: out on the tables and I went outside to meet
Speaker 2: everybody and I said, Hey, everybody, welcome, and I just
Speaker 2: the second before I stepped out, I remember I reminded
Speaker 2: myself that I've never done this before. I don't know
Speaker 2: what the heck I'm I about to talk about. And
Speaker 2: I kind of said to myself, like, I'll see you
Speaker 2: in four and a half hours. Good luck, you know,
Speaker 2: just switch the brand and go into the tour mode
Speaker 2: and see what that even means. And I remember I
Speaker 2: went out, and I don't remember any detail about that tour.
Speaker 2: I just remember that when it ended, it was the
Speaker 2: same adrenaline rush that I would have after playing a
Speaker 2: great show with my band. The daily news piece. I
Speaker 2: learned this early that the way that the press works
Speaker 2: is they see it in the daily news, and then
Speaker 2: the local Fox affiliate wants to cover it, and the
Speaker 2: local the PIX and NBC, and so I started getting
Speaker 2: calls from other news outlets who want to do a
Speaker 2: shoot with a camera crew on a tour. So then
Speaker 2: I was calling up everybody I knew, can you pretend
Speaker 2: like you're on a pizza tour with me tomorrow, you know,
Speaker 2: because they wanted to cover it, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not doing a tour until next Sunday. So I
Speaker 2: just remember drumming up all these like press tours because
Speaker 2: I was getting feedback from press agencies.
Speaker 1: Is there a moment you remember from those early days
Speaker 1: or early months where you thought, damn this this is
Speaker 1: what I'm supposed to be doing. Like the puzzle pieces
Speaker 1: are fitting together, things are lining up, I'm hitting my stride.
Speaker 1: This is the right job for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember maybe three or four months in. By that point,
Speaker 2: we were doing a tour on Sunday and then a
Speaker 2: walking tour on Wednesday, and I might have even added
Speaker 2: a walking tour on Friday by then. But I remember
Speaker 2: my mom would call me every Sunday at four o'clock.
Speaker 2: My tours ended at three point thirty, and she knew
Speaker 2: that at four o'clock I would be walking toward the
Speaker 2: path train and go back to the boat. And I
Speaker 2: would always give her the recap. And I remember a
Speaker 2: few months in saying I was in a groove today,
Speaker 2: I was in a trance. Like it all worked. It
Speaker 2: all made sense because I never sat down and wrote
Speaker 2: a script like tour companies usually they write scripts, they
Speaker 2: have beats that they hit, it's sort of wrote, but
Speaker 2: our concept is to not do any of that. I
Speaker 2: wanted to be really on the fly. So sometimes that
Speaker 2: means it's not great. It's like going to see a
Speaker 2: comedy show, you know, like sometimes it just like doesn't work.
Speaker 2: But then there's some times where the magic is just there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I would have those moments, and once it started
Speaker 2: to happen a few times in a row, I remember
Speaker 2: saying to my mom, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: going to increase doing this. Which the more that I
Speaker 2: would do of the pizza tour, the further away I
Speaker 2: got from applying for a quote real job. And then
Speaker 2: I don't remember the no. I do remember the moment
Speaker 2: that I really like put all my chips in that
Speaker 2: one number was when I moved off the boat when
Speaker 2: I realized it's time to start paying rent, and like,
Speaker 2: can I pay my bills using revenue from this business?
Speaker 2: And I remember going to sleep at first night in
Speaker 2: that room and just like looking in this what I
Speaker 2: would now consider to be like a problematic situation of
Speaker 2: like a gross apartment. But I remember being so giddy
Speaker 2: that like, Wow, this pizza thing is paying for this
Speaker 2: palace which is on dry land and has electricity on internet.
Speaker 2: That was the moment that I was like, Okay, this
Speaker 2: is the career.
Speaker 1: Wow, tell me how things are today? So what is
Speaker 1: Scott's pizza tour?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How many employees do you have? How many years have
Speaker 1: you been around now? Scott?
Speaker 2: So on April twenty seventh, twenty twenty three, it will
Speaker 2: be fifteen years old. Wow? So wowow as we talk
Speaker 2: right now, I'm up against the fifteenth anniversary.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: And now I have actually I have seven other tour guides,
Speaker 2: one director of operations who deals with all the scheduling
Speaker 2: and private tours and all that. There's a tour out
Speaker 2: right now that I'm not running, which is still bizarre
Speaker 2: to me. We run about fifteen tours per week. We've
Speaker 2: had one hundred and ten thousand people on our tours,
Speaker 2: lectures or online pizza classes. Over the past fifteen years.
Speaker 2: We've been featured in TV shows and morning programs The
Speaker 2: Tonight Show All Right to.
Speaker 4: Decide the winning pizza. We have a special guest serving
Speaker 4: as our master Pizza Judge. He's the founder of Scott's Pizza.
Speaker 4: The tours runs a pizza theme nonprofit Slice Out Hunger.
Speaker 4: Please welcome Scott Pletter.
Speaker 1: You've had a documentary made about you. Scott.
Speaker 2: The documentary, Yeah, that was wild. That was a friend
Speaker 2: of a friend was a filmmaker and we met at
Speaker 2: dinner at some point and he said, Hey, can we
Speaker 2: follow you around for a little bit and just see
Speaker 2: what happens? And then the next thing I know, they
Speaker 2: were coming to Italy with me the Pizza Expo in
Speaker 2: Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Scott, what have you found over the years?
Speaker 1: Makes for a really great pizza tour.
Speaker 2: I really love it when I'll get a call or
Speaker 2: a text. I got a text from my friend Felix
Speaker 2: and we were on a tour and he said, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm making pizza at the Puppy Cafe today, bring your
Speaker 2: group by. And I was like, the puppy Cafe in
Speaker 2: the East Village where you can go and pet puppies
Speaker 2: and drink coffee and you're gonna make pizza there.
Speaker 1: Sorry, a puppy cafe, like a cafe that has puppies
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 2: That you can pet the puppies while you're drinking the coffee.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Okay, so maya, I know that it sounded too good
Speaker 2: to be true.
Speaker 1: Yeah it did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it's true. So we rerouted the tour
Speaker 2: and we went there, and I have the bus vote
Speaker 2: on uh, do you want to go to a puppy
Speaker 2: cafe and eat pizza there? That's like a pop up,
Speaker 2: a limited edition pop up that doesn't always happen, where
Speaker 2: we could talk to the guy about the pizza he
Speaker 2: makes one on one like when we talk to the
Speaker 2: person who's making the pizza and get some real deep experience.
Speaker 2: That's the best. But over the years, I've realized that
Speaker 2: the thing that people enjoy most about the tour is
Speaker 2: the sense of discovery and not the facts. And once
Speaker 2: they look at something like pizza that's so simple and
Speaker 2: so universal, and once they realize that there's more to
Speaker 2: it than what's on the surface, that moment of discovery
Speaker 2: is the thing that resonates the most with me. And
Speaker 2: when I see that look in their face that they say, oh,
Speaker 2: never look at pizza again, same way, That's what I
Speaker 2: love because and I've only really developed this thought in
Speaker 2: more recent years, which is that I see the Pizza
Speaker 2: Tour as this sort of subversive way to teach people
Speaker 2: about the fact that everything is layered and every person
Speaker 2: is layered, and that they might think they know a
Speaker 2: person or a thing or a sport or music or whatever,
Speaker 2: but that everything is way more complex and has a
Speaker 2: way deeper history. So if you can understand that things
Speaker 2: are complex, multi layered and have a deeper history through pizza,
Speaker 2: then I think you can take an easy step to
Speaker 2: apply that to everything else, like other people, other cultures,
Speaker 2: like literally everything. So the Pizza Tour is not just
Speaker 2: about pizza. It uses pizza as a way to hopefully
Speaker 2: let people know that their mind can expand that there's
Speaker 2: way more going on than what you see.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we have a special treat for Slight Change listeners.
Speaker 1: We've never done this before, so we're piloting something totally
Speaker 1: new for those of you who listened to a slight
Speaker 1: change of plans. You might know that at the end
Speaker 1: of the credits, I always say, and a very special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jimmy Lee. Well, now you get to hear
Speaker 1: from the man himself as the closet door closes. My husband,
Speaker 1: Jimmy is a trivia buff. So he's been on Jeopardy
Speaker 1: and he's going to just conduct a lightning round a
Speaker 1: piece of trivia with you, just like a couple questions.
Speaker 2: My palms are sweating.
Speaker 3: Okay, Scott, We're going to do some pizza trivia. Okay, great,
Speaker 3: bring it all right, We're gonna start with this one.
Speaker 3: Rafae la Esposito is considered by many people to be
Speaker 3: the father of modern pizza. In what city did he
Speaker 3: make his pizza.
Speaker 2: It was June of the d eighteen eighty nine, in
Speaker 2: the city of Naples, Italy.
Speaker 3: Okay, that is absolutely correct. Okay, next question. So I
Speaker 3: am a proud Midwesterner, so I got to represent the
Speaker 3: Midwest a little bit here. What kind of I would say? Delicious?
Speaker 3: Gouey processed cheese is used on a Saint Louis style pizza.
Speaker 2: It's technically not a cheese, It's a dairy product called provel,
Speaker 2: but technically not a cheese according to the FDA. Yeah
Speaker 2: that's fair.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: Next question, sold in an orange colored box? What brand
Speaker 3: sells frozen pizza that's made from chickpeas? Aha?
Speaker 2: We got a pause here, Yeah, we got a pause here.
Speaker 2: I've never I don't think I know the answer to
Speaker 2: this question. It's a frozen pizza, orange box, chickpea bass
Speaker 2: that's right, I don't know the answer. Okay.
Speaker 3: I'm very pleased to have stumped to you on this.
Speaker 3: Maybe listeners will recognize the brand Bonza, and Bonza is
Speaker 3: not affiliated with this podcast. I think we're just fans
Speaker 3: at home. I'm not a fan, okay, I'm more a fan. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: So the answer there was Bonza pretty tasty given that
Speaker 3: it's made out of chickpeas. Okay, I have one final
Speaker 3: question for you, guys.
Speaker 1: Is a real tough thing.
Speaker 3: This could be tough. I think it's gonna be tough
Speaker 3: for a lot of people. According to the Guinness Book
Speaker 3: of World Records, what person holds the record for the
Speaker 3: largest collection of pizza boxes? Extra points if you can
Speaker 3: tell me how many boxes are cited in the official record.
Speaker 2: So the official record on I want to say was
Speaker 2: October twenty thirteen, is five hundred and ninety five boxes
Speaker 2: held by the young gentleman Scott Wiener, a very impressive record,
Speaker 2: although the record currently the actual number of boxes that
Speaker 2: have broken is north of eighteen hundred. I mean, I
Speaker 2: just got a ton in the other room, like I
Speaker 2: just got him this past week.
Speaker 3: Well, Scott, you've done an amazing job. I'm surprised as nobody.
Speaker 3: This is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Thank Scotting, Thanks Scott, Hey, thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed my conversation with Scott, I'd recommend you
Speaker 1: check out another conversation I had with Christine ha. Christine
Speaker 1: went permanently blind when she was twenty four because of
Speaker 1: an autoimmune disease, and then went on to become a
Speaker 1: world renowned chef. We'll link to that episode in the
Speaker 1: show notes and enjoin me next week. When I talked
Speaker 1: to David Lindon, a neuroscientist who is diagnosed with a
Speaker 1: rare form of heart cancer and given just eighteen months
Speaker 1: to live it's now been more than two years. I
Speaker 1: talked to him about how his diagnosis has changed some
Speaker 1: of his most deeply held views. More on that next week.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes
Speaker 1: our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan,
Speaker 1: our producer Tricia Bovida, and our sound engineer Andrew Vastola.
Speaker 1: Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 1: helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Waite.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Shunker. See you next week.
Speaker 2: Do you will