Hi. We have an opportunity to open a second pizza shop about a half hour from our current location. Here’s the details. We would have 1500 sq. ft. of space. It is on a 4 year college campus on 150 acres. It’s in the hills above a small tourist town in Northern California (St. Helena). Our first shop is in this town. The population in Angwin is 3K+ with the college population at 1500+. The college has a cafeteria on campus and the only other businesses are a hardware store/grocery store, a book store and a gas station. That’s the no brainer part.
Here’s the dilemma. The college is 7th Day Adventist and they don’t allow any meat of any kind on the school site. The 150 acres is owned by the college. We are looking into getting “meat” that is allowed - which means veggi meats.
My question is this - Are there any “meat veggi” products out there and are they any good? Are there certain vendors that we would have to deal with? We will be in touch with the people at the cafeteria to get help.
I’m just getting started on researching the possible products so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
My “gut” say this will not work or someone would have already been there…
PS…Used to deliver lots of pizza to the “bushes” around a similar college years ago…lol…
Rather then try to make pizza with fake meat, tofu, tofurkey, etc.: Why not just make good vegi pizzas? It’s not something we do, but there are many possible vegi pizzas…as long as they allow cheese.
One option would be to purchase Vegetarian Pepperoni: http://www.lightlife.com/Vegan-Food-Vegetarian-Diet/Smart-Deli-Pepperoni.html Slate reviewed a bunch of different veggie sausages: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2011/06/vegetarian_sausage.html Perhaps you could track down the companies to find distributors in your area.
You could also learn to make Seitan, which is vital wheat gluten prepared in such a way that it can remind one of chicken. Tempeh is another option, sort of like a soy meatloaf. Tempeh can be ordered in loaves through someone distributing Asian foods, Seitan is likely something you’ll have to make in house. Tofu can be cooked in different way to give it a more pleasing texture. Here’s a local restaurant that makes good use of Seitan, Tempeh and Tofu: http://theowleryrestaurant.com/
But before all that, I would humbly suggest creating a survey and go find out exactly what those students would want out of a pizza restaurant. Maybe also determine if they have money to spend on outside food - it would really hurt to open up and then discover that they are mostly on fixed budgets with no cash to send your way!