The Power of Pizza: Co-Owner of Pizza X Shares Thoughts on Food Business in COVID Times
Carol Kugler • The Herald-Times
“We’re nine months into this and it is going to be better in another nine months, hopefully,” Jeff Mease said recently as he announced the opening of a sixth Pizza X location while also saying that another of his restaurants, Lennie’s, will be closed for at least three weeks. “The only part of the business that’s doing well is Pizza X.”
In 1982 when Jeff Mease began working at a Domino’s Pizza shop, he had no idea where pizza would take him and other people in the Bloomington area. It wasn’t long after his first pizza job that Mease and business partner Lennie Busch established Pizza Express, now known as Pizza X. Besides giving Mease and Busch their first venture into the restaurant and food business, pizza is what has kept the now-expansive One World Enterprise businesses — which include Lennie’s, Hive, Pizza X, a catering business and One World KitchenShare — from folding during the current pandemic.
Nationally, it is estimated that nearly one in six of the almost 100,000 restaurants across the United States is closed either permanently or long-term, according to a survey by the National Restaurant Association.
The survey stated that nearly 3 million employees are out of work, with the restaurant industry estimated to lose $240 billion in sales by the end of 2020. The survey statistics were compiled in August and September, before the latest surge in COVID-19 cases, which has further curtailed people spending money at their local eating establishments.
The opening of the sixth Pizza X shop was actually supposed to happen earlier this year, according to Mease. But he and the other employees have been so busy dealing with what he called “COVID stuff” that they weren’t able to get the shop up and running before students at Indiana University left town for an extended holiday break.
The new shop will be located inside the current One World KitchenShare, which is a food business incubator that has kitchens for rent as well as space for other food businesses to operate and food trucks to use. It’s also where the dough and sauce for all the Pizza X locations is made.
When business was booming, Mease had visions of opening up classrooms to help start-up food businesses gain knowledge so they could better succeed. Now, he’s having to utilize all of the knowledge he, his business partner and other employees have to keep his own restaurants and businesses operational.
Even with hard times, Mease gets excited as he talks about the Indian cooking class held at the kitchenshare this fall. “I’d love to see more cooking classes here,” he said. “One of the things COVID has done is people have to cook at home. But a lot of people don’t know how to cook.
“Cooking isn’t rocket science by any means, and, hey, it’s a lot of fun. I think there is a market for people who want to cook.”
Mease believes the reason pizza shops and Chinese restaurants have survived during the current pandemic is because both pizza and Chinese dishes are a little more difficult to cook properly in a person’s home kitchen. The availability of the ingredients needed, the proper preparation and equipment — such as a pizza oven — and specialized techniques make pizza and Asian foods something most people are willing to purchase instead of trying to make it at home, he said.
“By the time you make the dough or buy it and get the cheeses and buy some grocery-store pepperoni ... it’s not cheap or easy. Pizza benefits from that.”
The other reason that pizza shops are doing well is because they already had a delivery system as part of the business. The sit-down, fine-dining restaurants have had to adapt their menus and business models in order to try and survive during COVID-19. Some restaurants that use third-party delivery businesses have figured out they need to increase their prices in order to break even, Mease explained.
“If people are willing to spend that much more, in that case, then it works,” he said, “as long as people are finding the value in it.”
For Lennie’s restaurant, that wasn’t the case, so it will remain closed until mid-January, Mease said. He’s anticipating a decrease in the COVID-19 virus about the time Lennie’s is expected to reopen, with plans for the restaurant’s annual “Oh, Canada” specials to be on the menu soon after opening.
Even when a business model is working, Mease tinkers. With Pizza X, ice cream from both local and national sources, cookies from Baked! of Bloomington and contactless free delivery were added as ways to increase the offerings and also help other local businesses. For all of the restaurants and shops, following health guidelines to lessen the spread of COVID has been important as well. Mease feels fortunate that there have been only a few COVID-positive cases among staff.
And he’s thankful for pizza.
“Pizza X is really floating our whole company and we’re really thankful for that,” he said. “Pizza has ended up being a really popular thing.”