Crafting Quality Pizzas

Analyzing Ohio's Best Pizzeria through a Deming Lens

You know, even if you expect that 90% of people won't notice that you did this with extra care, it's like still for you, you know; not to sound too corny but [what] we're doing, it's a craft… [W]e're making something you got to stay excited about, little improvements that just you notice or your co-workers notice.

- Alex Plattner, Owner, Saint Francis Apizza

THE AIM for this newsletter is to have some fun in the otherwise serious work we do here in understanding the Deming approach to management and how to apply it in our work by taking a look at how a self-taught pizza chef manages his business (unwittingly) in a Deming-aligned way. Our subject will be Saint Francis Apizza, owned and operated by Alex Plattner in Cincinnati, OH.

Besides indulging my other passion for studying how great chefs make their products, my intent here is to illustrate how the Deming philosophy isn’t some alien set of beliefs, but inherently compatible with the way people want to work as opposed to how they may have been conditioned. In the video above, Alex and his team ably demonstrate many of the aspects of Deming’s management theory that are seamlessly woven into their daily routines, proving its universality. Perhaps they can serve as an inspiration for you and your teams?

A Deming-Style Pizzeria

What inspired me to write this post was the first words that Alex says at the beginning of the video I quote above: this told me where his intrinsic motivations lay, which is similar for many great chefs. The joy he finds in his work is in continually refining the processes behind his product, even if the improvements will only be noticed by himself and his employees.

Where Alex gets excited about making pizzas, I get excited about diving into his thinking and methods to see how they work and what I can lift from them to share with others who are embarking on a Deming learning journey for new ways to manage their businesses and organizations. In this video, I wasn’t disappointed: it is a veritable treasure-trove of examples of Deming management practices that leap off the screen. Here are some I found:

1. Joy in Work

2. Improving Quality, Managing for Variation

3. Managing the Business as a System

Let’s look at some examples for each of these.

Joy in Work

It’s readily apparent that Alex loves what he does, and was inspired into the business by the owners of Apizza Scholls (Brian and Kim Spangler) in Portland, OR where he grew up. He learned techniques from them and models his pizzas after theirs - they set the example he aspires to achieve. Incidentally, this is an example of Deming’s view on cooperative competition, ie. how “competitors” help each other improve.

Alex naturally intuits that if he and his employees aren’t having fun slinging dough, then it will translate into a poor product for the customer. He keeps the interest and fun going by taking his team on learning trips to inspire them, learn what others are doing in the trade, and to help build team camaraderie outside the kitchen. He also hosts special “Tavern-Style” pizza pop-ups on Monday nights to test new concepts which has proven to be popular with customers.

Alex also works to keep the passion for making great pizza high by encouraging experimentation to change things up and break routines which can lead to new products. In this way he engages his employees to participate in improving the business.

Improving Quality, Managing for Variation

The better part of the video Alex is featured in is concerned with how he works to continually improve the quality of his product through his methods and processes. Much of this requires managing for common-causes of variation in his system. Some examples include:

• Improving dough temperature consistency with calculations to account for ingredient and ambient temperatures;

• Using a “smart thermostat” to maintain the “poolish” (pizza dough starter) temperature at 68F;

• Compensating for variation across lots of flour which affects their target hydration levels for the dough (68%);

• Managing gluten development for a good “eggshell” like crust with stretch and fold techniques;

• Managing dough fermentation/proofing by wrapping dough balls in plastic wrap and reserving some in a fridge; this is critical to the baking process to control for just the right amount of evenness in the crust and reducing bubbling.

• Adjusting mixing times to develop the right amount of gluten so the dough won’t tear when stretched and shaped

Managing the Business as a System

It’s been my observation that chefs who run their own restaurants are perhaps the most adept at understanding how to manage their business as a system because they are always thinking of how to manage the interdependence of ingredients, people, and processes along with their respective vagaries and variations.

In the above-mentioned ways, and perhaps more that aren’t covered in the video, Alex demonstrates managing Saint Francis Apizza as a system:

• He is conscious of how his methods turn inputs into a product customers want to buy;

• He understands that improving the quality of his product requires attention to details in these methods and processes that customers may never see, but yield gains in consistency and productivity;

• He appreciates why it is important for everyone to enjoy their work and find purpose in it, and works to incorporate fun learning opportunities to engage his staff and keep them inspired;

• He is aware of how he needs to continually manage variation in his kitchen, from the ingredients, how they are prepared, ambient temperatures, fermentation, and baking to the people he employs to help him make the product.

What Else Could Alex Do?

Alex appears to be managing his business well without direct knowledge of Dr. Deming’s practices: he just does things in a systems thinking kind of way naturally. This does beg the question of what else he could do were he to know Deming’s methods?

• If he isn’t doing so already, developing a good idea of how his processes work by creating flow diagrams that can be shared with his employees with the aim to involve them in improvements. For example, hiring, selecting vendors, performing new product experiments. These don’t need to be heavy-weight, but reliable enough to be understood.

• Examine procurement practices: It seems he’s already aware that he needs to get flour from a single source to control variation—is this extended to other inputs for the business?

• Alex seems to have a very good sense of his constancy of purpose, ie. he’s in the pizza-making business, and is keeping his focus there. What plans for the future is he making for where Saint Francis Apizza will be in five years?

• It’s also apparent that Alex is aware of the necessity for a consumer research feedback loop to improve the design of his product, eg. hosting pop-up events to test new products. What other feedback loops could be instituted?

• Another aid for Alex may be to visualize his business as a system with a flow diagram, if only to reassure himself on how it all works and maybe illuminate some blindspots he might not have considered. It might be interesting for his staff to see this, as well, for they might have some additions of their own.

Summary and Reflection Questions

Consider the story of Alex Plattner and his pizzeria, Saint Francis Apizza, and how he approaches managing it in a way that is very Deming-aligned. I’ve posited that this is because Deming’s philosophy is itself aligned with how people want to work as opposed to how they have been conditioned under the prevailing style of management.

Given the examples I’ve highlighted above, what lessons could you extrapolate and apply in your organization? In what ways are you managing for variation in your inputs, processes, and people? How do you approach improving quality? In what ways are you improving your processes? How do you promote opportunities to boost the enjoyment your staff have in their work? What motivates them to come into work? What demotivates them? Same questions, but for yourself?

In your community, what analogs to Saint Francis Apizza are there that you know about? How do they manage their business? What could you learn from observing them?

Miro Board Notes

Paid-tier subscribers can access the notes I compiled for this post, including links to specific parts of the video I didn’t include here, as well as related posts for deeper dives into the related aspects of Dr. Deming’s philosophy mentioned, via the link below. As always, I reserve the right to amend and add to this because I too have post-publishing epiphanies about what I forgot to add!