Lifecycle of a Business

EPISODE 3 RAPID GROWTH

Bianca: Hi Avery

Avery: Hi Bianca

Bianca: We've arrived in the middle of the podcasts already, it's episode three here we are and this week I found a story I wanted to do.

Avery: It's fine by me I'm pretty tired after two episodes my tireless reporting has got me exhausted so you can take episode three.

Bianca: Great and I'll give you a little respite a vacation.

Avery: Can you tell me what you're gonna do

Bianca: I'm gonna do an episode about pizza I found someone named Steph Mantis and she made a product that completely blew up and then that actually became a problem for her so this is episode three rapid growth.

To begin the story you have to understand how important pizza is to Steph's family. They've owned a pizza shop for generations.

Steph: And it's one of the oldest pizzerias in Maine actually.

Her family is greek.

Steph: So greek style pizzas a pan pizza creates a really crunchy crust when the cheese gets cooked on the pan.

And since it was founded in 1960, not much has changed.

Steph: We only serve pizza, we only have one sign, we don't do slices, we don't do delivery.

In her hometown of Biddeford Maine, this is where you went for class field trips, for sports teams parties, where you posted up waiting to see your crush, where you probably had your first date.

Steph: One time a woman's water broke and she refused to leave it until she finished her pizza.

The pizzeria has had the same manager a guy named Bob for over 50 years, they still use the same plates cups and shakers as they did when they first opened.

Bianca: Like those just last 60 years.

Steph: Yeah, basically.

Steph's dad took over the restaurant right before she was born needless to say pizza has been a big part of her life and even into adulthood no matter where stuff goes she can't escape pizza.

Steph: It's literally like changed my life multiple times over.

When Steph was 21, she encased a slice of her family's pizza in resin for an art show. She made it just for fun because she loves pizza. It was a pretty simple idea and it looked like a brown shriveled slice of pizza and a clear triangle of resin with bubbles in it. A few months later, a picture of her Forever Pizza slice went up on the internet and that's when things went crazy .

Steph: And it was one of those things that happens with blogs were somebody posted and there's a repost, and a repost, and a repost, and all of a sudden it's everywhere, like Pee-wee Herman tweeted about it, someone gifted one to Demi Moore.

The public's infatuation with forever pizza was so strong that her life changed completely from this singular product.

Steph: First, there was the pizza museum being in the inaugural collection. And I showed up and it was just this instant like, like everybody in the space was like yep yup yup yup, jump in this car, go to do this thing with me, you want to do this, yes yes yes yes. Then, they invited me to be on the board of directors. That's where I met Scott Weiner.

That's famed New York City pizza tour guide, Scott Weiner.

Steph: And he like walked over and he's like you’re Steph Mantis and I was like you're Scott Weiner

There was only one problem: she didn't know how to scale the product at all.

Steph: The difficulty and the sort of fog around it in terms of what is this? How do I talk about it? Do I sell it? Can I sell it? How do I sell it? Who buys it? I didn't see the scalability in it - like I just didn't. I was actually more focused on real quote unquote product and this is really hard to make frankly.

She felt pressure to make the perfect looking slice of pizza that would last forever but it felt like she was fighting against nature stopping the aging process and the pizza was nearly impossible she didn't know how to make this quickly cheaply or in a way that would last. So she procrastinated. She left all her customers waiting, she apologized, and in the meantime she made animal butt magnets. That's right, she invented animal butt magnets. Then in 2016 a website she had never heard of called Circa News asked her to make a video about Forever Pizza.

Steph: They sent this woman with one camera like super casual. We hung out at my studio, talked, she filmed, we went and got a slice of pizza and it was just like this pizza person makes pizza stuff.

The video was called Someone Figured Out a Way to Make Pizza Last Forever and it debuted right after Trump was elected.

Steph: And I'm thinking like this video is gonna come out and it's just gonna be it's just gonna fall so flat because no one's paying attention to art. So it came out literally ten days I think after the election and I have never been more wrong about something in my life. The video went viral.

So because of some good marketing and some unexpectedly good timing with the election, Forever Pizza was back. The video got 12 million views. She got invited to parties at Questlove's house. Flew to Pizza Expo.

Steph: Pizza Expo is like comic-con meets pizza in Vegas and it's everybody that makes pizza, sells pizza equipment. There's a guy, there selling ovens, napkin dispensers, the uniforms, like all the things, right, dough acrobatics which is like throwing dough to music and like dancing with it and it's intense people come from all over the world to compete in this thing and it's the mega personalities of that space.

Bianca: So when your video went viral you were suddenly like a character in this pizza world like you had the keys to the...

Steph: I started just carrying it with me and I was like, yeah I make this and literally literally people have stepped aside and let me into places

Bianca: Like a club?

Steph: Kind of like the whole world's a club.

Now the pressure for her to make Forever Pizza into a sellable product was incredibly strong. She had customers lined up but she didn't know how to make it in an affordable way that would last. She was facing a problem that many business owners have. She had been talking about a product as if it existed but in reality she didn't have it to sell.

Steph: And at that point you can't change it, it's out in the world and I'm sort of sitting there talking about it as a product of sorts.

People told her it was too dark looking and over time the pizza would often push out of the resin or the resin would turn yellow or the pizza would start to look gross. She started working frantically to try and fix this.

Steph: I have notebooks I can show you some sketchbooks and stuff of my like chemistry notes and my experiment notes so I was messing around with like ph balance and potassium sorbate. Then it was like yo pizza friends like how do I get really white cheese and they're like oh it's it's a bromate it's a you know it's a bleaching agent it's not allowed in california and I was like oh cool let's get that lets make cheese with that. I learned that tomato sauce in some resins completely oxidizes and turns black and others it doesn't. And that's just the pizza and the resin when you start drying it it wants to curl and that's not good like I went to home depot one break and I like Macgyvered these things together to hold it in place.

Her dad was helping her.

Steph: I've gone to the pizzeria and like before hours and after hours we've tinkered with stuff.

And while she was tinkering her customers were lined up waiting for their product she didn't feel ready to take their money and she spent her own funds on research and development. Meanwhile she was working overtime to try to scale the product and making it is really not as easy as you would think.

Steph: I think people think I just get pizza put it in resin it's like no dude I gotta drive to maine, I gotta cook it a certain way, I gotta not-cut it, I gotta pack it, I gotta come back here, I gotta fridge it, I gotta take it out, I gotta scrape the grease, I gotta cut it now, then I gotta dehydrate it, then I got to keep it way down in the dehydrator, then I have to take that and make the molds, embed it, multiple step process in that, then I gotta cut the molds, and I gotta knoll the molds, and I gotta like polish em, then I gotta engrave it, then I gotta package it, it's not just magic wand pizza in resin forever pizza like it's so much more involved but at a glance it's two things.

While people were waiting for their orders to be filled she started getting these really personal stories about why they wanted the pizza. Whenever they made an order she would ask them to fill out why they wanted this product.

Steph: The stories I've received as to why people want this literally hit the human spectrum of birth and death. I have a guy in new hampshire that his girlfriend said I don't want a ring, I want a forever slice. So he writes me an email he's like hey I know this is crazy but like I think I want to propose to my girlfriend with one of your forever pizzas. And so I've actually been talking to him since july. I feel like a pizza marriage counselor of sorts and you know like like I've actually talked seriously to tim about his relationship. I have multiple emails from people who have lost someone that was super close to them that they want this as a memorial piece to. I have one woman that emailed me the night before christmas eve whose husband had passed away and their four year old son every time they have pizza they the son asks where dad is because they used to eat pizza together and she's like can I get a whole pie I want one pie divided into eight slices to give to his family. I want to put one on his gravestone.

So finally after two years of trying to make the perfect slice that would look great forever, she decided that actually the real slice was the way to go just a normal piece of her dad's pizza put in resin in all its dark and shriveled natural glory.

Steph: I was listening to so many people. I had so many voices like telling me what I should do what I could do how this could be. People were getting really excited about what it could be and so was I. What it could be was more pleasing to the eye what it could be was more appetizing when. In reality I was you know kind of overlooking what it was I was not being in the present moment with this project at all.

She put the pizza on sale for 150 dollars a slice.

Steph: And I was like um, we just launched and like that I'm about to sell out he's like where are you I'm like I'm at the coffee shop down the street I come to the pizza house. So by the time I packed up my bag drove two blocks unpacked my bag opened my computer in the pizzeria at that table it was sold out.

In the end people loved the product they loved that it was natural and they were totally fine waiting for it. And now she's continuing to make new batches of her product in its simplest form and she continues to have new buyers. She said she wishes she hadn't spent so much time trying to give people what she thought they wanted and rather just given them what she had. Turns out they liked the product just the way it was

Lifecycle of a Business is a podcast from Mailchimp produced in partnership with Missing Pieces. This episode was hosted by me, Bianca Giaever. Our executive producers are Ari Kushner, Kate Oppenheim and Bryan Latt, and our line producer is Vicky Illk. Thanks to Stellwagen Symphony for the music.