I was in my second year of owning my pizza business when I started working with a local school in Northeast Ohio to make and deliver pizzas each Friday for their new “Pizza Friday” lunch program. Everything seemed to be going well. About a month later I received a phone call from the school’s head dietician. She told me that my staff and I were not cutting the pizzas equally. Their students could notice the difference with the size of the slices. They were choosing the bigger slices and pushing away the smaller ones. Her staff felt pressure from the students to only pass out the bigger slices and hold back the smaller ones.
Sharing her concern, I began researching to see what may be available to solve the unequal pizza slice problem. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a tool that I felt would be simple for my employees to use. The tool would need to be efficient during our busy Friday lunch hours as well as easy to clean. Important elements I felt needed for my employees to use or they likely wouldn’t use it.
One night while asleep, I woke up with an idea. I thought everyone uses a cutting board to cut their pizzas. The most practical pizza portioning device should be a cutting board. It must be made from a material that is food safe and durable for the commercial restaurant industry. I drew a picture of the idea that woke me up.
That morning, I showed the drawing to my general manager. He scratched his head with a confused look. He asked me what it was that I drew. I said, “you’ll see.” A few days later, I had a prototype made for the school pizza lunch program. My employees loved it. They commented on how easy it was for them to use and the pizzas were consistently cut equally, which solved our problem for the school pizza program. The head dietician and her staff were very happy. Yes, even the students stopped fighting over the bigger slices.
Since then, the Portion PadL is one of the most common pizza cutting boards used by schools for portioning pizzas into equal slices. They are predominately sold in the United States, but sell worldwide. I custom make Portion PadLs for not only round pizzas, often they are made for schools that make square and rectangle (sheet pizzas) too. From a single school to larger school districts the Portion PadL is custom made for their cafeteria’s kitchen. Though summer vacation has recently started, in less than two months, most schools will be back in session. Many schools will offer pizza on their lunch menu. The Portion PadL may be the ideal simples to use portioning tool, custom made for pizza businesses and school cafeterias, portioning pizzas for their school pizza programs.