Throughout our 33 years, we’ve attracted wonderful customers who continuously do amazing things, for us and for each other! There’s something unique about our customers – we tried to capture it in a reader board:

Here are some of the amazing things our customers have done over the years:

1.   A customer ordered a 20” Combo as a thank you for a very nice lady whom he’d met while attending her garage sale. That pizza weighs 8.4 pounds – that’s one heck of a “Thank You!”

2.   While on a double (one delivery driver taking two different orders on the same trip), the driver’s car broke down on his first stop! That customer was so upset that the next customer might not get their Flying Pie pizzas that he flat out insisted that the delivery driver borrow his car so he could deliver the second batch of pizzas.

3.   We received this funny package in the mail, with a short note explaining a member of their party had accidentally taken home the playing card.

4.   Duane sewed the pizza-with-wings quilt that is proudly displayed at the Fairview store. He brought in the pizza quilt and then a little while later came rushing back, asking if he could take back the quilt – he’d forgotten to sew wings on it! The delightful quilt got its wings and came back to us completed.

5.   While out on delivery, the delivery driver’s car got repossessed (pretty low, huh?). The compassionate customer let the delivery driver wait in their house and use their phone since his cellphone was in the repo’d car. They even offered him a beer (one of the 6-pack he’d just delivered) and let him watch Spongebob Squarepants with the kids while he waited for someone to come pick him up.

6.   While waiting in line, a customer heard the couple behind her talking about it being their first visit to the Pie. When she got to the front of the line and ordered her pizzas, she asked the sales person to use the last two pizzas on her Five Pack card to get the new customers their first Flying Pie pizzas.

7.   Last year, on the last day of Habanero season, we sold out of habanero pizzas about mid-way through the dinner rush. Many folks who waited until the last day to come in for a habanero pizza missed out entirely! A friendly customer met some folks who’d missed out on hab season, and very graciously gave them each a slice of his own habanero pizza so they could have a chance to try it.

8.   While on delivery, the driver’s lower radiator hose blew and spewed antifreeze everywhere! The customer gave the pizzas to his kids, and then took the delivery driver to the auto parts store so he could get new supplies to fix his car. The customer even helped him fix the car! His response, when the driver tried to make him go eat his pizza, “Nah, that’s what microwaves are for.”

Seriously, who does this? We have amazing customers.

At the end of every shift, the Crew Leader looks at all the comment cards that came in during their shift and adds any extra notes or information that they have. At the end of the week, the Store Leader looks at all the comment cards that came into the store during that week and adds info or tracks down missing pieces to the story, and then turns in the whole pile.

Every week the Marketing Director looks at all the cards that came in from both stores (we get about 350+ between the two stores). We tally up the number of total cards, the number of cards requesting a reply and we also calculate the average referral score of the cards (after taking out all the “infinity” “1,000,000,000” and “11” scores.) We call the referral score the “average satisfaction score.” We figure customers who put a 9 or a 10 in the referral box are quite satisfied! Our average satisfaction score for one week ranges from 9.6 to 9.9. After we’re done playing with the numbers, the comment cards that want a reply go in one direction and all the remaining cards go into a stack to be considered for our monthly comment card displays in the stores.

Referral score/Customer satisfaction

We write about 30-40 replies every week, both hand-written and emails. We love being able to directly connect with customers and answer their burning questions about Flying Pie. It’s fun when we hear that our letters are displayed proudly in bedrooms or on the fridge. Sometimes they even make it into a frame! It’s quite flattering. And sometimes we even get a letter back! We have great customers.

Letters from our awesome customers

As for the rest of the cards, we use about 80 per store in our comment card displays. We try to put up as many as we can, so sometimes we cut them in half (especially if the card had an amazing drawing and no words). When the in-store comment card displays are dismantled, those go into another pile that becomes the selection we choose from for the bi-annual menu’zine. The number of faces/drawings that get in the menu is usually around 60. (So out of roughly 8400 comment cards, 60 of them get into the menu!)

We also scan 14 drawings to use on our website (they’re in the “What’s New” drop down menu) and we update this collection regularly.

Lesley told Howard about the cool idea and together they set out to explore the boundaries of this new concept.

Over the next three months of tasting, testing and developing, we experimented with a dozen variables ranging from the positioning of the garlic inside the Zappi (under or above the spinach), to how we roasted the garlic in the first place. We tried using sourdough (the default dough for Zappies) and settled on Original because there’s garlic in it! We experimented with adding Mrs. Dash (an ingredient in the DBG pizza); we played with the amounts of onion, artichoke hearts, and zucchini until we found the perfect amounts; we tried adding pretzel salt to the top, like a garlic bagel; and, most importantly, we tested the amount of garlic.

We had to ask ourselves: How much is too much garlic? It is, after all, called the Death: By Garlic Zappi and it needs to be food folks will love having multiple times.

The recipe Dillon started us with used a total of 9 cloves of garlic: 7 roasted, 2 chopped fresh. That’s no scrawny amount of garlic: 9 cloves! To bracket it, we had to know how much is too much. So, we tried it with 15 cloves (12 roasted, 3 chopped fresh). The next day, the tasters shared tales of woe – we resolved that when the garlic lasts into breakfast the next morning, it is simply too much! Turns out, the perfect number is one dozen cloves of garlic: 9 roasted and 3 chopped fresh.

We were pretty confident about the dozen-clove Zappi and decided to have an unveiling for the crews. And then after a few more tests we were ready to unveil it to our customers. We put out sign-up sheets in the stores and collected a dozen willing victims. We gathered together one Sunday afternoon and tasted the new Zappi. All the tasters agreed that the balance of garlic was optimal, and this included feedback from one guest who is a self-proclaimed “garlic fanatic!”

The succulent Death: By Garlic Zappi is built on an olive oil glaze, with fresh spinach and zucchini, artichoke hearts, roasted garlic, romano and provolone cheese, chopped onion, and fresh garlic. We are proud and confident that it’s the most fun you can have with a dozen cloves of garlic.

P.S. While many people missed days of work due to cold or flu, none of the tasters fell ill during the 3 month testing of this Zappi.

Sure, you can make pizzas at home (we also sell our red sauce, pesto, pepperoni, mozzarella, and basil!), but what else can you make with our dough balls?

Here are some tasty ideas:

Our original dough has a smidgen of garlic in it, so it works well for savory kinds of things.

Prosciutto & Gruyere Pinwheels

Pineapple-Sausage Pigs-in-Blankets

Garlic Knots with Romano cheese

The whole wheat dough has a smidgen of brown sugar in it, so it works well for sweet things like cinnamon rolls! These ones have butter, cinnamon, walnuts, raisins, brown sugar, and more butter! (A one-pound dough ball fills up a 9 x 9 pan, whether it’s cinnamon rolls or garlic knots.)

Cinnamon rolls

Please feel free to share your dough ball ideas, discoveries and photos!

The current collection has 248 names… here’s A-C:

A. Paul Ling
A.B. Ginner
Aaron D Tires
Ada D. Zert
Al E Cat
Al O Vera
Alfredo D Dark
Amanda Hugginkhiss
Amanda Lynn Player
Angie O’Graham
Ann Arky
Ann Chovie
Ann Cillary
Ann L Gessick
Ann Tannah Ball
Anna Conda
Anna Phalactic
Anne Teeter
Aunt Eeder
Auntie Biotic
Austin Tatious
Ava Lanch
B. Z. Beaver
Barbie Quer
Barry Treasure
Bea Futtle
Bea Willder
Beau Hunter
Ben D Rules
Ben Dërdundat
Bessie Everhad
Bill Trite
Bonnie Lysover
Brett N Butter
Bri Theezier
Brianna Ritz
C. Quester
Cam E. O’Rolle
Candi Barr
Carmen Getit
Carrie O’Key
Cayman Wendt
CD Barr
Charity Case
Charity B. Guin-Sattome
Chase Tafter (Bounty Hunter)
Cheyanne Meak
Cheyenne D. Muir
Cher F.
Chris P.
Cici Ryder
Claira T.
Claire Annette Player
Claire Voyant
Claire & Preston Danger
Clarence Sale
Cora Spond
Cory O’Graffer
Crayton Havoc
Chris P. Critter
Crystal Ball
Curtis C. Carr
Cy Attica
Cy O’Narra

Our slice pies are par-baked (partially cooked) and when you order one, we toss it in the oven and cook it hot to perfection. There are a variety of toppings that you can add to our lunch slices to get some extra pizzazz! The only exception is ground meats, because they don’t have enough time to fully cook in the oven (the par-baked slices only take 2-4 minutes to cook). You can get a normal slice, or a fancy slice, all dressed up to your liking. Extra slice toppings are 60 cents each.

Some popular lunch slice add-ons:

Jalapeños: We have two kinds of jalapeños (fresh or canned/pickled), and both make excellent slice additions! The fresh jals are excellent with the Vegy Slice, and the canned jals add an extra layer of flavor to the Fromage slice (or vice versa)!

Garlic: Roasted or fresh? We roast our own whole cloves of garlic in the pizza oven. They make great additions to slice pies. Roasted Garlic on a Pepperoni is a popular combo, as is Roasted Garlic on a Vegetarian.

Tomatoes: We have lots of different kinds of tomatoes here – sundried, fire roasted, sliced, and diced. You can get the sliced tomatoes cooked or fresh. Howard learned of a tasty combo from Michael Deeds: Fresh Tomatoes on the side of a Vegetarian slice. When he asked Howard what slice he had one day in the last few years, Howard told him and he said, “Hey, you got that idea from me!” Indeed he had, many years before. It remained one of Howard’s favorites all these years.

Green Olives: An extra salty tang with a pepperoni slice will perk up your day!

Pineapple: The sweet juicy pineapple goes great with the Gouda on the Fromage, on a pepperoni slice, and combined with Jalapeños too!

Ham & Pepperoni are both wonderful add-ons for lunch slices.

 

 

A slice of Fromage A Trois with fresh jalapenos and fresh tomatoes

A slice of Pepperoni with Roasted Garlic

A Slice of Vegetarian with Green Olives and Sundried Tomatoes

P.S. The lunch slices range from $2.25 to $3.25 and from 3:00-3:30 the remaining slices are just $1 each. The $1 slices are a sweet after-school snack or dinner for later!

All of our Specialty Pizzas have a beer and wine that goes excellently with them, complementing the flavors of the pizza sauce and toppings. These beers and wines are listed in the menu, on the website, and at the bar in the restaurants. When we have a need, we’ll sit down and do a pizza/wine or pizza/beer cut. (The beer and wine cuts are a very, very rough part of the job.) We learned that tasting four different wines at a time is just about the limit – past that, they all just taste good and the subtly of the flavor blends are lost.

One of our most favorite wine and pizza pairing is the Fromage á Trois pizza and the Two Princes Riesling. The Two Princes Riesling has a bright sweetness to it that practically sings when combined with the smoked Gouda that’s on the Fromage a Trois. The other two cheeses, provolone and sharp cheddar, the homemade red sauce, and the special blending of herbs on the pizza all unify with the crisp tartness of the Riesling and it snaps together like two puzzle pieces. Perfection!

Another excellent pairing is the Oxford Landing Chardonnay with the Samoan. The Chardonnay has a light sweetness that’s just enough to compliment the juicy pineapple on the pizza, bring out the full flavors in the Canadian bacon, and hum right along with the smoked Gouda.

One time Craig added some jalapeños, and that worked really well too, but it needed something to balance the spiciness. We kept coming back to roma tomatoes. Once we tried it with way too much garlic – eating a second slice actually put beads of sweat on our foreheads. Very slowly, over perhaps 6 months, the recipe developed. As it came into balance, the last two adjustments were to increase the tomatoes slightly, to make the pizza less challenging to consume.

When the pizza recipe was set, to the hundredth of a pound, we tried it out on Gourmet Night, where it received an enthusiastic reception.

The name for the pizza came from a late-night semi-inebriated customer who pointed right in-between a Zappi and a Zeppelin on the menu, and said, “Give me that Zambini.” Crew Leader Scot Johns was the Flying Pie-er who captured the name for future use!

The Zambini debuted in the 1987 menu, and quickly developed a loyal following. Among those loyalists, Dave and Sheila Mills stand out as remarkable. Dave and Sheila started to call in orders for 10-12 Zambini pizzas at a time, requesting that they be frozen. It took awhile to get the story behind these mysterious batches of Zambini pizzas. We learned that Sheila and Dave are the owners of Rocky Mountain River Tours. Sheila is also the author of several delightful Dutch oven cookbooks, based on the unreasonably stunning food they create for guests on their critically renowned 6-day Middle Fork Salmon River raft trips. Dave and Sheila would buy the pizzas while in Boise, and transport them up to Salmon, to share with folks on special occasions. Dave and Sheila have done this multiple times a summer, every year, for over 20 years now. They have introduced hundreds of people to Flying Pie, and the Zambini pizza!

Dave shares: “P.S. We have been known to place a Zambini on the engine air cleaner to heat it for dinner while driving from Boise to Salmon City…a 5 hour drive and we get hungry.” This makes it easy to recognize Dave and Sheila as “Customers most in love with the Zambini.” Sheila even developed a Dutch Oven Lasagna, inspired by the Zambini pizza, which is dinner on the first night of the 6 day trip through the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness!