The Price of Pizza, Part 2

This is a follow up to the previous blog post titled The Price of Pizza. 

This is a story of a wrong made right.  Of the power of the people.  Of the little guy getting a win. Of the free-market capitalist system working as it should.

You may recall that in The Price of Pizza I talked about how my favorite pizza place, Maple Glen Pizza, changed their pepperoni from the large, generous slices they used to have to small, little stingy ones.  This altered the overall taste of the pizza and what was before, hands down, the best pepperoni pizza ever, became just an average, regular, so-so pepperoni pizza. 

Problem was, Maple Glen Pizza charges $25 for their pepperoni pizza.  Suddenly, the value equation was altered.  At $25 it was no longer worth it.  This sent us on a search for other pepperoni pizzas.  We tried just about every pizza joint within a 5 mile radius and found a few we liked at the much more reasonable price of $18.  Heck, even WaWa’s pizza was pretty good, and that was only $9.

Well, it appears our absence was felt. 

Months had gone by with no Maple Glen pepperoni pizzas.  The other day I decided to call them for a Chicken Cheesesteak.

The owner answered the phone and when I said “Hi, it’s me, Mary, “ he exclaimed, “Mary, it’s so good to hear from you! Did you see the fb message we sent you? We wanted to let you know that we went back to the old pepperoni! We miss you, we love you, and we want you back!”

I was a little confused as to how they could have messaged me, but assumed he just meant that they posted the return of the original pepperoni on their social media pages and did I see those posts.  Which, I had not.

Glory be!! They went back to the original pepperoni.  Before leaving Maple Glen Pizza, I had asked the owner what was going on with the pepperoni switcheroo and would they be returning to the old one.  He said, “No. This is a permanent change.”  I replied, “Oh darn.  We really don’t like it.  We were hoping this was just a temporary thing.”

But clearly, I was not the only one disappointed in the change.  I can only assume that their pepperoni pizza sales dropped significantly.  They must have lost customers, and some were probably like us, customers for 27 years.  That had to have hurt.

And so, in the way that the free-market capitalist system should work, when demand dropped, they had to relook at their supply (of pepperoni) and revert back to what the people wanted.

We ordered a pepperoni pizza the next Friday night.  It. Was. Delicious.  When I went to pick it up the owner asked me if I had stopped eating pepperoni pizzas or did I go elsewhere.  Stop eating pepperoni pizza? Like that would even be an option? Lol. I told him I would never stop eating pepperoni pizza and that we went elsewhere.  He asked me where and I rattled off all the places.  But then I said to him, “A few of the places were good.  But yours is in a class by itself.”

“That’s great to hear,” he said. “And great to have you back.”

Now, if I could just talk to him about that price…..