nosh nook #100 - saturday, august 1, 2009

how america eats has changed; snacking is the new meal (link)
07.30.09 - the register herald (beckley, wv) - by john blankenship

straight out of brooklyn, the $5 slice (link)
07.30.09 - the ny times - by manny fernandez

sorry for the nosh nook delay, folks. yesterday morn was a little off the normal schedule for me. i was planning on heading to liberty park for the all points west fest (more on that debacle to come later), so in order to leave work at a reasonable enough time, i planned to get into work at the SHOCKINGLY early time of 9:30. when i woke up yesterday morn to pen a nosh nook about john blankenship's thursday piece about how america's meal habits are becoming more snack like, i came across this OTHER ny times article & decided i just had to write about that instead...so i waited on it til today. plus, it's the 100th edition of the nosh nook so i like to be happy with the pieces tied to randomly important sounding numbers. i know...excuses, excuses.

so this times article by manny fernandez focuses on di fara pizza, a new york legend located in the midwood neighborhood of brooklyn & run by a 72-year old guy who only uses ingredients flown in from italy. they recently raised the price of a slice to $5, which is a big deal to a lot of people because as fernandez notes, "the price of a slice has long been one of the city’s unofficial economic indicators." even bloomberg's had something to say about it. “the real question, relative to the local economy, is whether people are trading up from a $2.75 slice or down from a $25 entree, and from what i hear in the subways and on the streets, it’s probably a mixture of both. but if you’ve ever had a really great slice of pizza, you know there are worse deals.” ok bloomy, we get it. you ride the subways like us regular folks.

a mother of a friend of mine works somewhere in the public sector in a job that has something to do with the city economy, so they contacted her for this article. she let them know that they should contact her son, who i've heard rave about di fara at least once a week for months now. while he didn't provide an official comment, he told his mother to tell them that "hell yeah it's worth it." i haven't tried it yet myself, but don't see anything wrong with paying $5 for a slice if it rules that hard. anyway, the times article looked at it from a slightly different angle (more with the ties to the greater economy), but it's a topic that the ny post already reported on way back on monday, so i wonder if some scooping happened here. mmm...scooping.

nosh nook #90 - friday, july 17, 2009

new pizza hut iphone app cuts out strenuous phone ordering (link)
07.16.09 - the inquisitr - kim lacapria

the wait is finally over! as i mentioned a few weeks back, the big pizza chains are getting all giddy about technology & as such, are developing viral campaigns, social networking tools & iphone apps, all designed to marry the wonders of technology with the excitement of ordering crappy pizza.  pizza hut is leading the iphone race with the release of their new iphone app, "ihut," which, according to their demo video, is "the killer app for your appetite." the boys in creative must've spent hours on that slogan.

i wanted to test out the app for myself, so yesterday, whilst sitting at the airport, i downloaded it & fired it on up.  for starters, to do anything but play the "pizza hut racer" game that's part of the app, you have to go to the pizza hut website & create an account.  it turns out that you can't even create an account from their mobile site, so my plan for ordering up a large pie with the works & having it delivered to gate C12 (isn't that an explosive?) were foiled.  i kicked ass at the racing game though...a time of 1:22 and only three collisions with pizza boxes, one with a pan pizza & another with a thing of wings.

luckily, kim lacapria of the inquisitr (can i buy an "o" please?) has put together a rundown of the ihut app's benefits.  it's mainly designed to let hutskateers virtually place orders via interactive options that allow you to resize pizzas, drag & drop toppings and sauce your wings with a shake of the iphone.  you can't go too far though.  as the pizza hut press release for the app explains, "if an overeager pizza customer adds too many toppings, the pizza explodes and toppings go flying across the screen with an alert to make their pizza happier with fewer toppings." how fun! on top of ordering & playing racing games, there's a "virtual fridge" with coupons on it, so you can pay less for your crappy pizza.  lacapria thinks it's nice & all, but notes that she's "a born and bred New Yorker- if someone didn’t swear at you while you ordered it, it ain’t a pizza, dude." for the record, in my eight years in nyc, i've never been sworn at whilst ordering a pizza...sounds like ms. lacapria brings out the worst in people.

nosh nook #75 - friday, june 26, 2009

social media will not get me to eat your gross pizza (link)
06.25.09 - cnet - by caroline mccarthy

social media rules! actual scientific fact: if you have a band/organization/corporation & want it to succeed, you've got to promote it. luckily, thanks to social media, it doesn't matter what you're promoting or what the quality of it is as long as you have a twitter account or a facebook page or whatever social media platform is all the rage at that particular moment in time. if you have a social media strategy as well, the popularity of your band/organization/corporation will instantly skyrocket & as a result, the big bucks will just start pouring in pretty much instantly.

the world's largest & hippest pizza chains are no stranger to the power of social media & have decided it's time for them to get their hands on some of that social media fat cash. yesterday, both dominos & pizza hut revealed their social media strategies. as cnet's caroline mccarthy reports, those strategies are geared towards getting the social networking generation psyched about their crappy pizza. on july 4th, pizza hut (or "the hut" if you're hip) will be giving away free orders of "stuffed pizza rolls" to its facebook fans & twitter followers. dominos announced that their online ordering system has become even better, as you'll now be able to track your order on facebook & twitter. thank god. it's about time that someone came up with another reason for me to go on facebook.

caroline mccarthy's not fooled though. she's a fellow new yorker & as such, has 24/7 access to quality pizza. if she wants gross pizza, a concept perfected by chains such as pizza hut & dominos, she'll head over to crocodile lounge, where any day of the year, she can get a free, crappy single-serving pizza with every drink she buys. she doesn't "give a hoot if the ordering process is spiced up with twitter coupons, facebook connect tracking updates, a ustream feed in the kitchen where it's made, or GPS chips to track it on google latitude."  crappy pizza is crappy pizza & no social media strategy can change that...although i bet she'd change her mind if she got a facebook friend request from the noid.  i would.