Critic's Review
Want to know how to lose $500K in 9 months? Open a quick serve pizza franchise in a bad location. A predictable failure; there's just too much bad pizza around to choose from.
Review 12/28/16
I didn't see much reason to try Pieology, but there's a shortage of new places open at lunch time. I'm to a point that I'm rarely surprised. Their big promotion is that if you join their mailing list you can get Free "cinnamon strips" or "herb butter strips". Not going to get too many takers on MORE dough (like eating a pizza isn't enough).
This strip mall is one of the weirdest I've seen. There are parking spots in the back, but no rear entrances to the stores. You can only get into the lot from the west side; plus it's one way from back to front. Kind of a pain.
I got here at 2:05. There were 2 people leaving and 2 parties of 2 at tables waiting for their order. As I opened the door, a dude belted out "Welcome to Pieology". You can tell they just opened because that kind of enthusiasm doesn't last long.
"Pizza or Salad", he asked. Those are the choices.
"I want a pizza"
He offered me tomato sauce, BBQ sauce or something else. I said I wanted a pizza, right? how does BBQ sauce fit in? I could see the guy behind him pressing out the dough on a machine. No itallian guys spinning pies here. This is flashfire pizza without all of the plants.
They have lots of non-pizza like toppings. I asked for pepperoni, spicy sausage and mushrooms.
"Sorry, no mushrooms today".
great, they have feta cheese but no mushrooms at a pizza place. I asked him to squash some meatballs on the pie. At the register I grabbed a water and whipped out my coupon for the strips. "I'll take my free herbed butter strips". The cashier guy seemed confused. I guess nobody else bothered to check the web site. Either that or nobody really wants dough strips.
The strips are normally $2.99, which seemed high. I had no idea what they actually were. The cashier kid forgot to charge me for the water. So my bill was $9.17 all in. No tipping.
They gave me a number and I took a seat. I saw a big iced tea machine which made me wonder why I got the water. I took a seat at a large hi-top in the back.
The chairs at the lower tables are plastic. The hi-top tables have those very uncomfortable aluminum chairs. Some designer babe who never ate in a QSR came up with these. They look kind of cool but they're not much to sit on. Frankly I found the place kind of uninspiring.
I was all set, waiting for my pizza. They have boxes (just like Blaze) that fit a 1/2 pizza that you'll be taking home if you're not a fatty-fat person.
The wait wasn't long, less than 5 minutes. The "pizza" came out first.
Why am I eating this stuff, I thought? The first thing that was clear was that the toppings weren't done. The process doesn't quite work when the crust is done before the toppings. I took a bite.
A bunch of stuff on dough. This crust was thinner than Blaze or Flashfire. Just something to hold the stuff.
Too much black dust. Gotta keep the pizza ovens clean.
The "strips" came out and I had to hold myself back from laughing. A pizza crust brushed with butter and "herbs". Who is going to pay even $3 for this?
Nothing terrible tasting about any of this, but nothing really good either. I didn't like the sausage and the "meatballs" weren't cooked enough.
A dude came over and asked how everything was. Usually I just say "fine", but today I felt more chatty. "It's Ok, I said, but this isn't really pizza". Turns out he was from Chicago, so he understood. He said he thought that the crust was better than Blaze, but I think he's wrong. Blaze and Flashfire both have better crust than what I had today.
Conclusion
Here's my take on this fast food pizza stuff. I'd MUCH rather have 2 slices of a real pizza than this. And that's all I'm going to say.
I live in the neighborhood and noticed a sign indicating "Bowlicious" is coming soon.
We will see if its the location or another restaurant with a lousy concept.
input. It isn’t the location. It was bad food and lack
of good management. At first opening, there was not
any advertising or very little known. The concept of the
pizza making could have been good, it wasn’t. When
ordering, the toppings were piled too thick to cook,
leaving pizza soggy on top and always burnt on the
bottom. This was horrible. I asked several times
for it to be not burnt, but to no avail! The workers
always started piling chairs upside down on the tables
about 45 minutes before closing time, customers
would look in the window and leave, especially if it was a large party. ...
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