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Small Pizza Shops Want a Bigger Slice · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Here are two ways of thinking about technology and
0:23
Speaker 1: the pizza business. One, technology creates a wiener take all
0:28
Speaker 1: game with economies of scale and network effects. The bigger
0:31
Speaker 1: a company gets, the better and cheaper its product gets,
0:35
Speaker 1: and so it just runs away with the game. This
0:37
Speaker 1: is the story of Domino's Pizza, which, underneath the hood
0:41
Speaker 1: is a really smart tech company that has used data
0:44
Speaker 1: and algorithms to drive incredible growth. Investors know this. Over
0:49
Speaker 1: the past ten years, Domino's stock has risen more than
0:52
Speaker 1: the stock of Amazon or Google or Facebook. On the
0:56
Speaker 1: other hand, technology can also benefit small businesses by lowering
1:01
Speaker 1: barriers to entry and creating powerful new efficiencies. But we
1:04
Speaker 1: haven't seen much of this side of technology in the
1:08
Speaker 1: pizza world, least not yet. Most mom and pop pizza
1:11
Speaker 1: shops haven't changed in decades, and if they don't change soon,
1:15
Speaker 1: they may get destroyed by the tech juggernaut of big pizza.
1:25
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is what's your problem. My
1:27
Speaker 1: guest today is Elier Sella. He's the co founder and
1:31
Speaker 1: CEO of Slice, a tech company that works with thousands
1:34
Speaker 1: of small pizza shops across the United States. The Elier's
1:38
Speaker 1: problem is this, how do you bring the technological revolution
1:41
Speaker 1: to thousands of tiny mom and pop pizza shops, the
1:44
Speaker 1: places where they don't even have time to answer the
1:47
Speaker 1: phone every time it rings to start. I asked Elier
1:50
Speaker 1: to talk me through all the things that can go
1:52
Speaker 1: wrong at a pizza shop every time somebody calls in
1:55
Speaker 1: an order. So when you dial in, you'll either get
2:00
Speaker 1: a busy signal. If you don't get a busy signal,
2:03
Speaker 1: very likely you'll be put on hold for sure. All right,
2:06
Speaker 1: the guy's got to somebody who can hear people screaming
2:07
Speaker 1: in the background right exact phone. The guy disappears exactly.
2:11
Speaker 1: And so what we know is, you know, twenty plus
2:14
Speaker 1: percent of phone calls go unattended. And then they will
2:18
Speaker 1: take your order, but they will mishear you because it's
2:21
Speaker 1: very loud on the other side. And that means that
2:24
Speaker 1: either the quantity of something that you ordered will be wrong,
2:28
Speaker 1: maybe a topping will be forgotten, but there will be
2:31
Speaker 1: something wrong with your order. Sometimes then you have to
2:34
Speaker 1: read out your address. That's a whole other issue, so
2:38
Speaker 1: they might get the address wrong exactly exactly. Your neighbor
2:41
Speaker 1: gets a free pizza and I get nothing. You're there
2:44
Speaker 1: two hours later waiting for your pie to arrive. That
2:47
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. The bottleneck isn't the pizza oven, it's
2:50
Speaker 1: the telephone. It's the telephone. So what Elier's company, Slice
2:54
Speaker 1: is trying to do is to get small pizza shops
2:57
Speaker 1: out of the world of telephones and orders scrolled on
2:59
Speaker 1: paper and into the world where customers use an app
3:03
Speaker 1: to order and where the pizza shop runs on a
3:05
Speaker 1: computer system designed by Slice. There is a Slice app,
3:09
Speaker 1: and when you open it, it looks like Seamless or
3:11
Speaker 1: Grubhub or Uber Eats, but Slice is really different than
3:14
Speaker 1: those companies. Those are basically delivery services that charge a
3:18
Speaker 1: fee of around twenty five percent. Slice does not provide delivery,
3:23
Speaker 1: and its fee is typically around five percent. What Slice
3:26
Speaker 1: is really trying to do is to bring Domino's level
3:29
Speaker 1: technology to the mom and pop pizza shop on the corner.
3:32
Speaker 1: These are pizza shops that are about as far from
3:34
Speaker 1: Dominoes as you can get and still be selling pizza.
3:38
Speaker 1: These are independently owned and operated. I call them micro businesses.
3:43
Speaker 1: They're not even small businesses. They don't have a staff
3:46
Speaker 1: of ten or twenty. They are usually a team of
3:49
Speaker 1: two or three people, most often a family, and they're
3:53
Speaker 1: working alone. They're responsible for making the pizza, answering the phone,
3:59
Speaker 1: serving the person who's walking in at the counter, making
4:03
Speaker 1: sure perilous processed. Sometimes they run out of inventory and
4:06
Speaker 1: they have to run out and pick up inventory. But
4:09
Speaker 1: it's a very reactive, unpredictable, lonely job. So that's that's
4:16
Speaker 1: your client. That's what it's like, sort of behind the scenes.
4:19
Speaker 1: That the pizza shop on the corner, which everybody has
4:21
Speaker 1: right wherever you live, there's some neighborhood pizza shop. And
4:25
Speaker 1: then on the other hand you have Dominoes. Right, Dominoes,
4:30
Speaker 1: which you know you think of as a pizza company,
4:33
Speaker 1: Buddy is actually like a really savvy, big tech company essentially,
4:38
Speaker 1: right it is. And so I mean it seems like
4:41
Speaker 1: in fact Slice is not so much about you know,
4:46
Speaker 1: Uber eats or a door dash, but he is really
4:49
Speaker 1: more like a Domino's alternative. Is that right? It's fun on.
4:54
Speaker 1: So Domino's made the decision about fifteen years ago to
4:59
Speaker 1: focus on becoming a technology first company because they realized
5:04
Speaker 1: that those inefficiencies that we spoke about earlier exist and
5:08
Speaker 1: they all to realize that they can create much stronger
5:12
Speaker 1: consumer relationships customer relationships if the customer was online. Remember now,
5:20
Speaker 1: you know for a Domino's, seventy five percent of their
5:24
Speaker 1: orders are being placed digitally through their own native channels.
5:30
Speaker 1: That was a brilliant call by Dominos, right, like incredible.
5:34
Speaker 1: They made a really smart call, you know, kind of
5:38
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the iPhone era. They saw what
5:40
Speaker 1: was coming and they did it exactly. And tell me
5:43
Speaker 1: all the ways that's paid off for them. So they
5:45
Speaker 1: were the first to first national chain to invest in
5:51
Speaker 1: a best in class native mobile ordering experience. They were
5:56
Speaker 1: the first company to have a nationwide rewards program that
6:01
Speaker 1: is tied to the online mobile ordering experience. So you
6:06
Speaker 1: get all these rewards if you ordered online. And in fact,
6:09
Speaker 1: they're the first company to stop advertising phone numbers. Interesting,
6:13
Speaker 1: Dominos does not want you to call them. They don't
6:15
Speaker 1: want you to call that's the user point of view.
6:18
Speaker 1: Tell me all the reasons that's good for Dominoes. So
6:21
Speaker 1: why is that good for Dominoes. Let's fast forward and
6:24
Speaker 1: look at it today. And as I mentioned, seventy five
6:26
Speaker 1: percent of the volume is digital. When that happens, you
6:30
Speaker 1: tip a scale when it comes to insights. Because most
6:34
Speaker 1: of the customer base is now digital, I can now
6:37
Speaker 1: predict using data, data science, and insights, I can predict
6:42
Speaker 1: what will happen at a Domino's location every single day.
6:46
Speaker 1: So Dominos for a Friday, they know how many sales
6:49
Speaker 1: they will have. So one, the experience for the consumer
6:53
Speaker 1: becomes much better because when you order a pizza for Dominoes,
6:56
Speaker 1: most likely that pie is already in the oven. They're
6:59
Speaker 1: anticipating its super sides are very powerful. They knew I'm
7:03
Speaker 1: going to order that pizza right now, and so they
7:06
Speaker 1: started cooking it five minutes before I ordered it, exactly,
7:09
Speaker 1: and I would say that's fun. Two, there's no food waste,
7:13
Speaker 1: so they don't have to they don't have to remake
7:16
Speaker 1: a pizza or throw it away. Three, it's directly connected
7:21
Speaker 1: to their entire sort of workflow, and so there isn't
7:27
Speaker 1: a ton of inefficiencies in terms of which driver is
7:31
Speaker 1: going to take which order and where it's going to
7:33
Speaker 1: be delivered. All of this data feeds into their team
7:37
Speaker 1: and gives them insights, gives them direction into how they
7:41
Speaker 1: need to handle every single customer. So when you talk
7:44
Speaker 1: about all those things that Domino's does, and how smart
7:49
Speaker 1: they are because of it. It's sort of amazing that
7:52
Speaker 1: there's so many mom and pizza shops still in business. Ah. Yes,
7:56
Speaker 1: and this is the this is the AHA moment for me.
8:00
Speaker 1: Domino's has solved a lot of the business challenges and
8:04
Speaker 1: inefficiencies of running a pizza shop. However, it asked for
8:09
Speaker 1: one major tradeoff, and that is your creative freedom. You
8:13
Speaker 1: cannot have you know, Elier's pizza shop in my own
8:18
Speaker 1: family recipe. You know, you can't bring that forward when
8:21
Speaker 1: you open up a Dominoes. You have to trade that off. Sure,
8:25
Speaker 1: I mean that's true from the point of view of
8:26
Speaker 1: the entrepreneur, but from the point of view of the customer,
8:29
Speaker 1: I mean I don't prefer Domino's pizza, Like does the
8:32
Speaker 1: shop around the corner just stay in business because people
8:35
Speaker 1: prefer the pizza there, or they like, like, why hasn't
8:38
Speaker 1: Dominoes just wiped everybody out? It's kind of the question. Well,
8:42
Speaker 1: they've they've done a great job and they've taken market share,
8:45
Speaker 1: but it's clear that the consumer loves the authenticity and
8:48
Speaker 1: the variety that comes with local. There's you know, closer connections,
8:53
Speaker 1: better connections with that local operator. And in many cases,
8:57
Speaker 1: the consumer is forging a more convenient mobile experience for
9:02
Speaker 1: better quality product. And you know, I think there's a
9:07
Speaker 1: there's an opportunity to solve for both. Okay, remember Domino's
9:11
Speaker 1: has six thousand locations. Yeah, Slice works with eighteen thousand locations.
9:15
Speaker 1: So team Slice is bigger than team Dominoes in terms
9:17
Speaker 1: of revenue, in terms of number of pizzas sold, without
9:20
Speaker 1: a doubt. Our goal and my vision is to help
9:23
Speaker 1: that independent operator to be in business for themselves, but
9:27
Speaker 1: not by themselves. How do we create a community around
9:31
Speaker 1: this industry and empower it with the similar sort of
9:35
Speaker 1: operating system and tools and technology that Dominoes brings to
9:40
Speaker 1: their franchisees. So there's an idea that's interesting to me
9:45
Speaker 1: that is bigger than just pizza. Pizza's big. But this
9:49
Speaker 1: is not just a pizza idea, and it's about technology
9:55
Speaker 1: and how it seems like sometimes technology drives us toward
9:59
Speaker 1: a winner. Take all. Right, you know, certainly we've seen that,
10:03
Speaker 1: say with a Google or even with social media. Right,
10:06
Speaker 1: you have these very powerful network effects, but it also
10:10
Speaker 1: seems like there are instances when technology can lower barriers
10:15
Speaker 1: to entry and create efficiencies for you know, smaller businesses.
10:20
Speaker 1: And I don't know what quite the right analogy is,
10:22
Speaker 1: but I was thinking, like it reminds me a little
10:25
Speaker 1: like Dominoes, and Slice reminds me a little of like
10:28
Speaker 1: Amazon and Shopify. Right. Amazon is this giant, centralized, brilliant
10:33
Speaker 1: e commerce company, and then you have Shopify, which is
10:35
Speaker 1: very clever and lets anybody who wants to sell stuff
10:39
Speaker 1: online with a lot of like powerful smart technology. It's
10:43
Speaker 1: as well said, we get a lot of analogies and
10:47
Speaker 1: a lot of examples are sort of similar to that,
10:52
Speaker 1: you know, specifically to our customers, there's a major difference
10:55
Speaker 1: even with Shopify that that is an incredible company that
11:00
Speaker 1: has built all of these tools, and then the entrepreneur
11:04
Speaker 1: goes and leverages those tools to be to be successful
11:07
Speaker 1: and to have an online presence. The challenge in our
11:11
Speaker 1: industry is if we just built the tool and then
11:15
Speaker 1: made it available to these operators, well, that's just another
11:19
Speaker 1: job for them to do. And what the mistake a
11:23
Speaker 1: lot of people make is they say, Okay, hey, independent operator,
11:27
Speaker 1: small business owner, you can go and compete with Dominoes.
11:31
Speaker 1: And they're still gonna lose. They're still gonna lose because
11:34
Speaker 1: they're because they're alone and they don't have that experience.
11:37
Speaker 1: So the difference between even a Shopify and Slice is
11:41
Speaker 1: that Slice takes on the responsibility of partnering closely with
11:45
Speaker 1: these operators and managing the online economy, the online experience,
11:51
Speaker 1: and the digital tools on their behalf, and then giving
11:55
Speaker 1: them all the insights back so that they know exactly
11:58
Speaker 1: what's going on in this online world. So why only pizza? Like,
12:04
Speaker 1: your app looks just like a you know, a Grubhub,
12:07
Speaker 1: happ or whatever, but I open it in its own
12:09
Speaker 1: pizza and like, I mean, I like pizza. I know
12:11
Speaker 1: people love pizza, but like, why only pizza? Why not?
12:17
Speaker 1: It's a big market. It's a forty seven billion dollar
12:21
Speaker 1: industry in the US, and that's just revenue that passes
12:24
Speaker 1: through seventy seven thousand pizza shops. What share of those
12:28
Speaker 1: are independent shops? Seventy fivest most most most? Why does
12:35
Speaker 1: everybody love pizza? Why does everybody love pizza? Asking the
12:41
Speaker 1: tough questions on what's your problem? No, no, I think it.
12:44
Speaker 1: I think it brings us back to happy, celebratory times
12:50
Speaker 1: in our life. If you remember growing up, when did
12:53
Speaker 1: you have pizza? Soccer games, football game, Yeah, birthday parties,
12:57
Speaker 1: moments where you typically came together with other people. So
13:02
Speaker 1: pizza is the ultimate social food. It has eight slices.
13:07
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure some people will eat all eight.
13:09
Speaker 1: I've done it before and it's it's great. But it's
13:12
Speaker 1: meant to be shared. And so there's this incredible positive
13:18
Speaker 1: feeling that you get when you order a pizza. I
13:21
Speaker 1: would say two, it is um delicious, It travels well,
13:27
Speaker 1: and it just tastes really good. I mean, it's a
13:30
Speaker 1: nice combination of you know, a Doughey based sort of protein.
13:34
Speaker 1: You know, obviously that's sauce, and it's it's a really
13:37
Speaker 1: bad balanced problem. Fat is so good. You didn't say fat.
13:41
Speaker 1: That's really what's doing the lifting. Let's be honest, right,
13:44
Speaker 1: And I would say the last part is this matters.
13:47
Speaker 1: It's incredibly affordable. Yeah. For many families and many households,
13:52
Speaker 1: pizza is the night out in Yeah. And so I
13:56
Speaker 1: would say for those reasons, um, it has become a staple.
14:00
Speaker 1: It's an American institution. American is an interesting word there,
14:04
Speaker 1: not Italian, like the thing we eat is not even
14:07
Speaker 1: it used to be, but not not the pizza we
14:09
Speaker 1: consume is very American, very much in an American product.
14:17
Speaker 1: After the break, how Slice may soon be solving problems
14:20
Speaker 1: in the physical world, including how to deliver cardboard boxes
14:24
Speaker 1: to thousands of pizza shops. Now back to the show.
14:35
Speaker 1: Elier was born in Macedonia, moved to Staten Island when
14:38
Speaker 1: he was ten, and kind of grew up in the
14:41
Speaker 1: pizza business. I have a lot of family members that
14:44
Speaker 1: owned pizza shops, so hung out at my uncle's pizza shop,
14:47
Speaker 1: it was called John Anthony's in Brooklyn. You know, would
14:51
Speaker 1: make pizza's if we needed to. We did a bunch
14:53
Speaker 1: of deliveries. But most of my teenage years, whether it
14:59
Speaker 1: was the weekend or some weeknights, we would spend at
15:03
Speaker 1: a pizza shop. Elia went to college in Staten Island
15:06
Speaker 1: and started a tech support business that he later wound up.
15:09
Speaker 1: So I had that business. Because of that, family members
15:12
Speaker 1: saw me as the tech guy, and they wanted me
15:14
Speaker 1: to build them websites and online ordering for their shops,
15:17
Speaker 1: for their pizza realized for their pizza shops. And then,
15:20
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of realized that all these pizza
15:21
Speaker 1: shops were very similar, they just had a different recipe.
15:25
Speaker 1: The first version of Slice was called my Pizza dot Com.
15:28
Speaker 1: I bootstrapped the company for six years. We didn't raise
15:31
Speaker 1: any any money. Um So in the beginning, it was
15:35
Speaker 1: mostly the consumer was placing an order online. The order
15:40
Speaker 1: would make it to my telephone and then I would
15:43
Speaker 1: phone the pizzeria. I would call the pizzeria with your order.
15:46
Speaker 1: What year was this, by the way, it was it
15:47
Speaker 1: was twenty twenty ten, so the people had there was
15:51
Speaker 1: there were iPhones, it was an app store. I'd go online.
15:54
Speaker 1: I'd think I'm doing this high tech thing ordering on
15:56
Speaker 1: my phone. It turns out there's just a guy namely
15:59
Speaker 1: You just you read it and then you called the
16:01
Speaker 1: pizza shop. That's right, presumable you had to call it
16:03
Speaker 1: in because it was twenty ten, Like, they probably didn't
16:06
Speaker 1: even have iPhones, a lot of them, right, Like all
16:09
Speaker 1: they had was a telephone and a pizza oven and
16:11
Speaker 1: cheese at a cash register. Right. There would be no
16:13
Speaker 1: way with a lot of these shops in twenty ten
16:15
Speaker 1: to send them a digital order. Absolutely, And even if
16:19
Speaker 1: you had a way, they were not going to adopt
16:21
Speaker 1: that just because they were old fashioned, basically old fashioned.
16:24
Speaker 1: They didn't want to change the way that they operated,
16:26
Speaker 1: that they worked every day. Great, Remember it's it's an
16:29
Speaker 1: individual operator. Any changes to the workflow is a huge
16:35
Speaker 1: disruption to your day. You don't have the time, right,
16:37
Speaker 1: it's a big disruption. So tell me sort of where
16:41
Speaker 1: you are in the arc of figuring all that technology
16:47
Speaker 1: stuff out. Like clearly your app lets me order online
16:51
Speaker 1: from the corner pizza store, right, so it it at
16:54
Speaker 1: least provides the opportunity to move customers off of the
16:59
Speaker 1: phone and you know, off of to move customers away
17:03
Speaker 1: from calling in their order and toward placing the order digitally,
17:07
Speaker 1: which is clearly better and more efficient for everybody. Where
17:10
Speaker 1: are you on on all of the other like the
17:13
Speaker 1: pizzas in the oven before I even order it, because
17:15
Speaker 1: you knew I was going to order it? Like, are
17:16
Speaker 1: you doing that? Do you want to do that? Absolutely?
17:19
Speaker 1: Now we're on this journey to make sure that all
17:22
Speaker 1: of these locations have very similar, a very similar tech
17:26
Speaker 1: stack across the board. Once we have this consistent tech
17:31
Speaker 1: stack across all these independent shops, we now have community level,
17:37
Speaker 1: network level data and insights, and we can use that
17:41
Speaker 1: information those insights to empower the individual shops, right, so
17:47
Speaker 1: they can they can collectively now know what to charge
17:50
Speaker 1: for a large pizza, what is the expected delivery time
17:54
Speaker 1: from the consumer in that city or town? How do
17:58
Speaker 1: menuse you know, how are they evolving? What are the
18:01
Speaker 1: most popular items? So, in essence, they are not they
18:04
Speaker 1: are no longer just m you know, alone and looking
18:08
Speaker 1: at the data just from your own customer base. But
18:11
Speaker 1: they kind of know what's happening industrywide and what kind
18:16
Speaker 1: of data, if any, are you sending back to the
18:17
Speaker 1: shops now, Like what can you tell them now based
18:20
Speaker 1: on what you already know today? It's super I would
18:23
Speaker 1: say high, high level basic data about consumer insights. So
18:28
Speaker 1: we know tipping point or the threshold for the consumer
18:32
Speaker 1: delivery fee, so we know what the consumer expects for
18:36
Speaker 1: a delivery fee in a town. Is there a secret
18:38
Speaker 1: number that's the most people will pay for delivery? I
18:41
Speaker 1: know it varies from town to town. So if you're
18:43
Speaker 1: in New York, you have to have free delivery that
18:46
Speaker 1: is the expected delivery fee from the consumer. If you're
18:49
Speaker 1: in LA you can probably get by with three or
18:52
Speaker 1: four dollars delivery fees. It literally varies town to town
18:56
Speaker 1: or cities a city. What else do you know already
18:59
Speaker 1: we know what is the threshold for delivery time, so
19:03
Speaker 1: what is the optimal ETA estimate time of arrival? And
19:08
Speaker 1: that is all so geography based, but it's also time
19:11
Speaker 1: of day, day of week based. So we know that
19:14
Speaker 1: on a Friday night the consumer is a little bit
19:15
Speaker 1: more tolerant for you know, a wider delivery time, but
19:20
Speaker 1: if it's lunchtime on a Monday, they expected really really fast,
19:24
Speaker 1: and that also varies by geography. What else you know?
19:27
Speaker 1: We know what is the average price of a pizza,
19:30
Speaker 1: of a large cheese pizza by town. We know when
19:32
Speaker 1: the price is super high. We know when the price
19:35
Speaker 1: is probably on point or when it's too low, especially
19:39
Speaker 1: relative to the quality score of the shop. So what
19:43
Speaker 1: do you what do you not know yet that you
19:45
Speaker 1: hope to know in the future. What are some of
19:47
Speaker 1: the data sort of problems you haven't solved yet. We
19:50
Speaker 1: don't have a ton of visibility from the shop side.
19:54
Speaker 1: So what are they paying for different supplies? What are
19:58
Speaker 1: they paying for cheese? What are they paying for you know,
20:00
Speaker 1: dough and all these things? And so how does that
20:03
Speaker 1: differ from from location to location. So we really want
20:08
Speaker 1: to do better is connect the insights and the data
20:10
Speaker 1: from the from the seller, from the shop side, so
20:14
Speaker 1: that we can sort of create a closed loop of
20:17
Speaker 1: insights and information. You give any pushback from shops who
20:21
Speaker 1: are like, wait, I got my secret cheese, guy, give
20:24
Speaker 1: me a great deal on cheese. I don't want my
20:26
Speaker 1: rival across town to know about it. I'm not going
20:29
Speaker 1: to tell you that, not really, because every single independent
20:32
Speaker 1: is being price gouged because they don't have the leverage.
20:37
Speaker 1: You mean, they're paying more than Dominoes anyway. So if
20:40
Speaker 1: I got, if I got a corner shop, my competition,
20:43
Speaker 1: who I care about is not the other corner shop
20:45
Speaker 1: across town. It's Dominoes. Is that what you're saying? Exactly?
20:49
Speaker 1: Or to be quite honest, if I can, if I
20:51
Speaker 1: can band together with the other shops in town and
20:54
Speaker 1: lower the price, I'm willing to do that. Mom and
20:56
Speaker 1: pop pizza shops of the world unite. You have nothing
20:59
Speaker 1: united but your expensive mazzarella. Exactly exactly. And so I'll
21:03
Speaker 1: give you an example. We launched a pilot to bring
21:09
Speaker 1: packaging supplies two pizza shops. We filled a warehouse, a
21:14
Speaker 1: ten thousand Squareford warehouse with a bunch of pizza boxes
21:17
Speaker 1: to an order of magnitude. How many pizza boxes is that?
21:20
Speaker 1: It's a good question. Is it a million? Not quite
21:25
Speaker 1: a million, but some are in the tens of thousands
21:28
Speaker 1: or hundreds of thousands, okay, And there's more orders coming
21:31
Speaker 1: because it's it's like the first first order that we placed.
21:34
Speaker 1: But what we did was we went to the largest
21:36
Speaker 1: pizza box manufacturer in the US and we negotiated a
21:41
Speaker 1: rate that is similar to what Dominoes negotiated for their franchises.
21:45
Speaker 1: And do you think, I mean, are you going to
21:47
Speaker 1: get into the cardboard box business? Like? Is that going
21:49
Speaker 1: to be part of what Slice does? It's looking really
21:52
Speaker 1: really promising that there's an incredible demand in an appetite
21:56
Speaker 1: from pizza shops to pay twenty dollars for a bundle
22:00
Speaker 1: instead of thirty five. The reason why I love it
22:02
Speaker 1: is because then we can pass that saving back to
22:05
Speaker 1: the consumer. By the way, that's that's the secret of
22:08
Speaker 1: Dominoes is because of their efficiencies, they didn't raise prices
22:13
Speaker 1: for fifteen years, dominos has kept the same prices. So well,
22:17
Speaker 1: that's I mean, technological change, driving efficiencies and making things
22:20
Speaker 1: cheaper is good, right. That is the long term story
22:23
Speaker 1: of how the world gets richer. Exactly so will we
22:26
Speaker 1: get into it at scale to be determined, but it's
22:29
Speaker 1: certainly looking promising, and we will do anything that is
22:33
Speaker 1: necessary to help independent operator small businesses succeed. I gotta
22:40
Speaker 1: say I love the story of the startup tech Unicorn
22:44
Speaker 1: getting into the cardboard box business, partly because it's just
22:48
Speaker 1: so physical and real, but also because it's a reminder
22:52
Speaker 1: that this story is really all about slice trying to
22:55
Speaker 1: bring the benefits of scale in every dimension. In order
22:59
Speaker 1: to compete with dominoes, the mom and pop pizza shops
23:02
Speaker 1: need to use the same tech stack and aggregate their
23:05
Speaker 1: data so they can use analytics to accurately predict custom
23:09
Speaker 1: or behavior. But also they should bend together and buy
23:12
Speaker 1: cardboard boxes in bulk because they're cheaper that way. In
23:19
Speaker 1: a minute, the lightning round with lots of questions about pizza.
23:30
Speaker 1: That's the end of the ads. Now we're going back
23:33
Speaker 1: to the show. Okay, let's do the lightning round. Great
23:37
Speaker 1: anchovy or pineapple neither neither very good. What's one piece
23:43
Speaker 1: of advice you'd give to somebody trying to solve a
23:45
Speaker 1: hard problem. Hard problems take a long time to solve.
23:52
Speaker 1: Be really passionate about solving the problem. But don't just
23:57
Speaker 1: do it because you want to make money or for
23:59
Speaker 1: some other reason, because then you will not have the
24:03
Speaker 1: patience to stay with it long enough to actually solve it.
24:09
Speaker 1: What's the most overrated pizza topping? Mushrooms? What's the most
24:14
Speaker 1: underrated pizza topping? Hot honey, hot honey. That's right. I
24:21
Speaker 1: never even heard of it, that's how underrated it is.
24:24
Speaker 1: There you go, Chicago Pizza or New York Pizza. Just kidding,
24:28
Speaker 1: obviously New York Chicago pizza is a pie. It's not
24:30
Speaker 1: even pizza. It's not even pizza. Thank you. What do
24:38
Speaker 1: you understand about the world Because you grew up in
24:41
Speaker 1: Staten Island, people have to work really, really hard for
24:45
Speaker 1: a long time to earn more than fifty or sixty
24:49
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year, and for most people, ordering takeout
24:56
Speaker 1: or delivery is a luxury and not, you know, not
25:00
Speaker 1: something that they can do every single day of the week.
25:03
Speaker 1: Do you think Slice will always be a pizza company? No?
25:09
Speaker 1: What's next after pizza? We're looking at bakeries, We're looking
25:13
Speaker 1: at like taco shops, Mexican takeout and delivery is a
25:17
Speaker 1: really big deal. So those are the areas we're kind
25:20
Speaker 1: of trying to learn more about. What's the best pizza
25:23
Speaker 1: You've ever had? Best pizza I've ever had? On a
25:27
Speaker 1: Midsummer day, let's call it around four or five pm.
25:31
Speaker 1: You're in Brooklyn. You go to LMB Simoni Gardens. Ah,
25:34
Speaker 1: I know it. You get the LMB you know, square pie,
25:39
Speaker 1: You get a you know, three or four cans of
25:41
Speaker 1: pepsi with a couple of friends, and you sit outside
25:44
Speaker 1: and the sun is setting and it's kind of hot,
25:47
Speaker 1: and you're having a Slice with a with a cold
25:50
Speaker 1: can of of pepsi or cooke. Very nice, Thank you
25:55
Speaker 1: for your time. Thank you. This has been one of
25:58
Speaker 1: my favorites because it's been a combination of fun and
26:02
Speaker 1: challenging at the same time. Oh great, fun and fun
26:05
Speaker 1: and fun and challenge, fun and interesting, fun and thoughtful. Yeah,
26:08
Speaker 1: we're going I like the thoughtfulness exactly. Elier Sella is
26:16
Speaker 1: the founder and CEO of Slice. Over the next few weeks,
26:19
Speaker 1: we're going to be doing some more shows about the
26:21
Speaker 1: future of food. Coming next week is an interview with
26:24
Speaker 1: Pat Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods. His problem, how
26:29
Speaker 1: do you make meat without animals. Today's show was edited
26:33
Speaker 1: by Robert Smith, produced by Edith Russolo, and engineered by
26:36
Speaker 1: Amanda ka Wong. I'm Jacob Goldstein. You can find me
26:40
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Jacob Goldstein, or you can email us
26:43
Speaker 1: at problem at Pushkin dot fm. We'll be back next
26:47
Speaker 1: week with another episode of What's Your Problem