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Amici's East Coast Pizzaria Celebrates
20th Anniversary
Again Ranked Top U.S. Independent Pizza Chain
NEWS RELEASE
December 11, 2007
San Mateo,California --- Amici’s East Coast
Pizzeria (amicis.com) celebrates its
20th anniversary in December again ranked as the No. 1 independent
pizza chain in the U.S.
The
Bay Area’s most recognizable pizza has never veered from the concept
established in December of 1987: serve an authentic East Coast style pizza in
an upscale, efficiently run restaurant, combined with a carefully managed
growth plan to maintain the quality of the food and service. Years before the
term became a marketing buzzword of the new millennium, its founder delineated
a textbook case of “building a brand”, representing one of Northern
California’s most successful low-tech business stories of the past two decades.
Based in San Mateo,
Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria is slated to open its 10th Bay Area
restaurant in Danville in March of 2008 and recently received the highest
praise among patrons in a survey conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle.
“We
developed this concept with the intention of ‘building a brand’ within the
community of transplanted East Coasters,” said Amici’s President and co-founder
Peter Cooperstein. “The signature item was a thin crust pizza cooked in
700-degree open flame ovens. In our early years we featured few variations and
declined to even offer a ‘combo’ pizza.”
The popular eatery’s
blueprint was developed by Cooperstein, a Boston,MA native spiced with a
bachelor’s degree in economics from Cornell University , an MBA from MIT’s
Sloan School of Management and an insatiable craving for a fine New York-style
pizza.
The
early stages of the computer industry revolution drew Cooperstein to the
Silicon Valley in 1981, but a market shift re-focused his efforts on providing
East Coast refugees with a product they missed.
After
researching successful pizza establishments in Boston and New York City he
returned to his new home, and armed with the MIT diploma, commenced a career in
the pizza industry….as a dishwasher.
For
the next 18 months Cooperstein apprenticed through the industry with turns as a
waiter, bus boy, deliveryman, prep cook and pizza cook. His first waiter job
was at the original Village Pizzeria on Steiner St. in
San Francisco, which was managed at the time by New
York native Mike Forter. The two became business partners and
20 years and nine openings later, Cooperstein and Forter remain good friends
and partners in one of the Bay Area’s most successful food enterprises.
“At the beginning of our
relationship I didn’t understand Peter’s drive and focus,” Forter remembered.
“It wasn’t until much later that I came to fully appreciate his unorthodox
approach to doing business and why it has been so instrumental to our
success. Besides an incredible work
ethic -- once we opened he worked 14 hours a day seven days a week -- he
demonstrated an ability to identify and solve problems and a great capacity to
anticipate and interpret the motives and likely actions of others and to make
decisions based on those perceptions.”
After
two potential San Francisco locations derailed, Amici’s debuted at 69 Third Avenue in San Mateo on December
29, 1987.
“After
years of preparation, we were finally ready to open,” Cooperstein remembered.
“About 20 minutes before opening, never before then, this incredible anxiety
encompassed me like a shroud, ‘What if no one comes in?’ That was the longest
20 minutes of my life.”
Amici’s/San
Mateo was at capacity from the outset and has maintained that popularity ever
since.
The
initial San Mateo menu’s mainstay was a New York style cheese and tomato sauce
pie that remains the fashionable eatery’s big hitter 20 years later. Specialty
pizzas in 1987 included, a Fried Eggplant pizza (Boston style), a Manhattan Red
Clam pizza, a New Haven style White Clam pizza and the Philly pizza (Italian
sausage, green peppers and onions). Amici’s also offered a popular antipasto
salad and three pasta dishes.
Over two decades and eight more locations the
original recipes have never varied and remain among its most popular, though
Amici’s has expanded its menus with additional toppings, salads and pastas.
The
restaurant has also continued many of its original vendor relationships as
well, including using the same high quality Wisconsin whole-milk mozzarella
cheese that topped the first pie served in San Mateo.
Amici’s finally reached San Francisco
in 1991 with an opening on Union St. (moved to Lombard St. in September of
2006); followed by
San Rafael (‘95), Redwood Shores (‘98), Mountain
View (2000), Dublin (‘03), King Street in San Francisco across from AT&T
Park (‘04) , downtown San Jose (‘06) and Vacaville in the Nut Tree Village
(’07).
The
company’s development has been chronicled throughout the industry. Pizza Today
Magazine, a trade publication which closely monitors business across the
country, recently ranked Amici’s as the number one independent chain in America
for the fifth time of the past six years.
“We
do a really good job at the three components of pizza service,” Cooperstein
recently told Pizza Today. “We do a big dine-in, but delivery is half of our
sales, and we also do a lot of carryout. If you look at successful large
operations, they usually aren’t able to put all three together. At Domino’s
there’s no dine-in. At California Pizza Kitchen there’s no delivery. We’re able
to do all three well.”
While
Cooperstein’s initial business plan has adjusted with societal changes in taste
and economy, the initial foundation of creating a blend of simplicity and
sophistication remains unaltered.
Amici’s has managed –
with a great design and construction team – to create a dynamic but intimate
dining environment in its restaurants.
“We try to improve the
design every time we develop the layout for a new restaurant,” Forter
explained. “We want to make each place better than the previous one for the
customers and for the workflow of the staff.
But it’s challenging to integrate the take-out, delivery, and dine-in
aspects of the business in a way that’s easy for the staff to work and not
intrusive for the customers. When it works, the combination of the busy,
managed chaos visible in the open kitchen, the modern but warm architecture,
and the friendly and efficient service all come together to make the dining
experience at Amici’s unique.”
A
significant component of Amici’s steady growth has been delivery.
From the early morning deliveries to employees of
the financial markets in downtown San Francisco, to the night owls of the
high-tech businesses of Silicon Valley, and a multitude of Bay Area residences
in between, Amici’s provides a level of quality and convenience that others
cannot.
Again
Amici’s remains distinct; its restaurants dispatch deliveries one order at a
time direct from kitchen to customer; deliveries are prompt and the food is
always fresh.
With
deliveries approximating nearly half of the operation’s total revenue, the
continuing rise in fuel costs remain a pressing concern.
“It’s
not just the issue of our drivers,” Cooperstein admitted. “It affects our
suppliers, as well. This isn’t an issue that will go away. We don’t anticipate
the cost of gas to go down. It has become a serious part of the cost equation.
When asked about their
success, Cooperstein and Forter are quick to recognize the invaluable
contributions of their employees in the Amici’s story.
“Some
our best systems and innovations have been developed by dishwashers, servers
and drivers who have contributed their hard work and ideas to our company. Our
staffs are the face of the restaurant,” Cooperstein reflected. “We’ve been very
fortunate to hire and retain quality individuals. We have tried to develop good
relations with our employees because we know that we cannot be successful and
treat our customers well unless we take care of our staff. And we think we have
succeeded because some of our people have been with us for 10 or more – up to
19!! – years, and are now managing our restaurants.”
And
how has an MIT education served to enhance the delivery of fresh pizza to the
Bay Area?
“When
I was working in the kitchen at a San Francisco pizzeria we got a phone call
just a few minutes after closing one night,” Cooperstein remembered. ”The
caller was aware that we had just closed but was hoping we could still make a
delivery. He was less than five minutes away so I got his order in the oven,
baked the pie, got it in the car and raced to his door thinking he’d really be
impressed. I rang his doorbell within 15 minutes of receiving his call. He
refused the order. He claimed that to get it to him that fast we must have sent
a leftover pizza that we were just pawning off on him. You don’t get that
experience in a classroom.”
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Media Contact:
Peter Ciccarelli
CICCARELLI&associates
P.O. Box 143
Capitola by the sea,CA 95010
831-476-7275
P1Chic@aol.com
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