On May 24, 2005 the phrase “Whirled Famous Pizza” was not anywhere to be found on the Internet. On that day we put up a photo of our proposed awning for State St. and used the phrase on our website for the first time.

In the June 7 edition of Thrive! the ‘whirled famous pizza’ phrase got its first print debut.

On June 10, a Google search for “Whirled Famous Pizza” found us (and no other places).

On about June 1, we requested the “Whirledfamous.com” URL, and by June 9th it was in operation.

Whirled Famous, or World Famous?

Dozens of people, week after week have had their first experience at “pie spinnin’”, thanks largely to our “It’s Your Day” program. All told, we’ve shown thousands of people how to spin pizza dough in the air! If that isn’t “Whirled Famous”, we don’t know what would be. We are very proud to have helped so many people succeed at the mesmerizing motion of spinning pizza dough.

In May of 2005 we put a large World Map up on the wall at both our locations that collects pins of where folks are from and attached a note saying:  If you reside over 100 miles away & think that what we do here is pretty exceptional, we would be delighted to add a pin to the map of our growing world fame, especially if you’re likely to tell friends or colleagues about us.

Putting a pin in our map has quickly become an exciting new facet of the Flying Pie experience for guests brought in by Boise-area relatives. In the first month we got over 100 pins, including some in Europe, Russia, and of course, many, many states of the USA.

We are excited for the full fury of the summer onslaught of out-of-state visitors who make a point of including us in their Boise time, those who are new as well as those returning to Boise to visit friends and stop in for an amazing pizza experience. We’ll also see a bunch of folks who stop here as the halfway point between Seattle and Salt Lake City. We happily believe them when they tell us how they planned the drive around a very important stop at Flying Pie. Thank goodness it’s a round-trip so they can get a second dose!

Seeing the dough spin so beautifully, and how deeply people love what we do, it’s sometimes hard to tell which way says it best. However, our preference is that we don’t say “World Famous”; our customers do.

Stand & Be Counted!
When people feel compelled to tell us about the difference visiting us has made in their lives, we listen attentively.

We really value hearing from people who feel their memories of Flying Pie are precious to them.

Give Us a Little Boost
If we’ve made a difference in your life, we’d love for you to tell folks about it! Spend five minutes writing a review about Flying Pie, for one of the online review places. Here are some websites we know have reviews on Flying Pie and there are probably even some we’re not aware of yet! 

If you are one of the tens of thousands of people who live (or currently are) far away from Boise, who have experienced and love what we do here, send us a postcard and we’ll add you to our “Virtual World Map”. 

Virtual World Map?
Since we know there are people scattered all over the globe who have very strong emotional ties to Flying Pie in Boise, perhaps it’s time for a Virtual World Map to hold their place until circumstances allow for their joyful return.

To be included among the Flying Pie salute team, send us a postcard from where you live (proof enough for us!) saying that you’d like a pin to be added to our world map. Include a little note about your favorite pizza, or when we might expect to see you again, and we will probably frame the postcard and put it on the wall too! 

The addition of a registry of the towns (and number of supporters) is the final piece so that folks can see that almost anywhere on earth, if you love Flying Pie, you are not alone.

Tracking Our Way to Whirled Fame
A timeline of our Whirled Fame was a very popular recent table tent, so we are re-printing it here, for a wider audience to enjoy. 

1978: Flying Pie was started by Dave & Connie Parker.
1980: Joe Levitch “found” and purchased Flying Pie for $1.00 & a large debt (which was accrued by an interim owner, not the Parkers).
1984: Howard Olivier joined Joe in Boise to help envision & grow the Flying Pie.
1985: We became the first restaurant in Boise to deliver beer and wine.
1992: We delivered pizza to Alaska (this was our 1st time on CNN).
1995: We put the exclamation mark on the Boise City Library! sign. (Our 2nd time on CNN).
1997: www.flyingpie.com is born.
2000: Our website passed 100 visitors per month.
2001: The first batch of Triple Pi ale was born.
2002: We started “It’s Your Day.”
2003: Our website averages 2000 visitors per week.
2004: The Giant Foil Ball was started and grew to a noticeable size (at 
least Ch.2 thought so).
 We have several #1 Google hits. 
 We are inducted into the Boise Weekly’s “Hall of Fame.”
 Our restrooms became an amazing destination.
2005: Both Stores get world maps to track their long-distance guests.
The State Street Store becomes the 19th hole to the Ann Morrison Disk Golf Course. 

Sometimes folks forget to tell us about their visit, and just inform the whole world instead, like on a web blog or on-line review. 

If you see our “tracks” (evidence of Flying Pie’s reach into your community), please let us in on the experience. This might take the form of a web site mention, an article or review somewhere, or a photo of one of our comment cards in an unlikely place (BSU Music Professor Marcellus Brown’s office door, for example), or an antenna ball on an F14 Jet! 

If you or your child writes a school report mentioning Flying Pie, whether it’s an essay or creative fiction, please consider sharing it with us – we have been known to generously reward such sharing with some sharing of our own. We always appreciate knowing what things are resonating from here. 

We loved a recent Skateboard shop ad that was a play on our name – how exiting! Thanks to all who sent in copies of it.

“The Pizza Man V. The Dude” movie is another recent example. In this campy horror film about a pizza delivery guys’ intense day; guess where he works? The restaurant footage is inside our Fairview store. 

If you see a different company using our comment cards or reader board phrases, those are high compliments too.
 

We learned of this national series (one book about each state) from some customers who discovered us in the Idaho guide book. They have visited all 48 lower states, using Moon’s directories. It seems that if you like the kind of places recommended in the areas you know, it’d be a smart buy to pick up a Moon’s Directory for any state you were going to spend more than a few days in...

You might have heard of this little sports thing called ESPN. 
In addition to having their own TV channel, they also have a website. We discovered recently that in the ESPN.com "Travel Guide" for the MPC Bowl Game, there's a link to our website along with "Boise's best pizza won't disappoint."

Home Cooked Pizzas Fly the Coop
When you are taking some “Home Cooked” pizzas to someone far away, we always love to know about it (and offer our expertise to insure that the pizzas hold for the required length of time. With five pounds of dry ice, we can hold two large pizzas frozen for about 40 hours – that’ll get you pretty far!). 

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