Mobile Push Cart

[Express_Kart]

Hello,

I’m looking into starting a mobile pushcart business, but I’m debating on the menu as of right now. I was thinking pizza would be a sure thing, but I’m trying to determine the logistics of getting the pizza to the customer. My debate is to either make my own pizzas, or use pizzas from a local vendor. I understand that both alternatives has their pros and cons, but I would like to hear from you experts out there.

I’ll explain a little on what I’d like to do: I want to provide fast and friendly customer service first and foremost, but I also want them to keep coming back. I was thinking of using a local vendor’s pizzas and having the pizza already sliced and separated into individual boxes for a quick hand-off. I’m being told by the health department that if I go that route I won’t be able to use any meat products, so I would only be able to sell plain cheese pizza. If I want to make my own pizza; I would need to have a cart that possesses a sink. My cart can only be limited in size on the sidewalks of my downtown area, so I’m not sure I want a cart that includes a sink as that will take up space.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Eric

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

Have you checked to see if you can use precooked meat toppings? How about vegetable toppings? It sounds like your concept calls for just handing out prepackaged slices of pre-cooked pizza, is this correct? If so, the health department will most likely require that you maintain the pizzas at a minimum temperature of 140F, with that, there should not be a problem in using pizzas prepared with precooked meat toppings. Think of yourself as an extended pizza delivery system, I don’t see much difference, but maybe I’m missing something.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[GotRocks]

Here is where I think the snag starts when looking at it from the health departments POV

The local retailer(S) who would be providing the pizza to you, will most likely need to get a different tier of licensing, Basically a commercial processors license with, an onsite inspector, and the pizza produced for you, by them may be required to be made in a separate facility, or when they are not open to the public to meet the current “wholesale producer” regulations.

How does this happen? Your supplier just went from being a retailer, to being a wholesaler.

I just saw a similar situation in my own town between a pub, and a pizza place owned by the pub owners friend. The pub owner offers late-night frozen pizza for his drinking customers, he figured instead of buying some frozen garbage and baking that in his countertop commercial 1-rack ovens, he could have his friend make some frozen 12" parbakes at his pizza restaurant and he in turn could serve those at his pub.

The pizza guy inquired about this to the health department just to make sure this was acceptable, and the health department informed him that to do this legally, he was required to get an “Establishment Number” (the little circle with info on all meats) and have a state appointed inspector onsite when these “Wholesale” pizzas are being manufactured. This also required a full blown HACCP plan, and that the restaurant not be open to the public during manufacture of these pizza’s, or to use a separate licensed facility to produce them. Imagine that!
So the pub still sells frozen “Tombstone” pizzas late at night.

We had another bar getting pizzas from “Papa Murphy’s” and selling those at his bar, right up until his annual HD inspection, when the inspector saw what was happening and gave the owner of that bar a very ugly legal smackdown and threatened to tag and close the place if the current stock of pizza from papa Murphy’s wasn’t immediately discarded.
The owner of the Murphy’s franchise claimed ignorance and just said “I thought the guy just ate a bunch of pizza each week” and swore up and down he had no knowledge of the resale of his products. He got off free of fines and sanctions.

Possible solution;
Now, if you were an employee of the company making the pizza (just on paper) and your financial compensation was the price differential of your pricing to customers compared to your cost, this could all be made to look very legal and proper on paper as far as the regulatory agencies which are involved.
The restaurant has the sanitation equipment needed, the mechanical refrigeration, and a place to document your time/temp logs and this could be looked at as a catering truck. You would just need to document times & temps.
But then why would this pizza place sell to you for less, when they could sell directly to the same customers for full price, and make more income on drinks and such?

You think that sucks, look into what it takes just to make your own bacon for use in your own restaurant since the 2005 Fed food code changes!
I’m dealing with that right now, and I hate doing HACCP plans.