The Panhandle Pizza Company
San Francisco operator gets a 'handle' on the World Wide Web
By Jim Reed
 t the end of
San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, there's a grassy strip about a half-block
wide and three blocks long, known locally as the Panhandle. The Haight-Ashbury
district is on one side of the Panhandle and a short distance from the other side,
on Hayes Street, is The Panhandle Pizza Company. Restaurant owner Don Schaan
likes the Panhandle name, not only because it helps pinpoint his store's
location, but because he is a Western artist, too.
 "I do silver and gold jewelry as
well as wall hangings and other art pieces," says Schaan, 54. "The Panhandle
name helps blend the two sides of my life, my business and my art." Schaan,
who is of German-Russian extraction, has a masters in social work from St. Louis
University and developed his love of Western art growing up in North Dakota.
"The plains and the prairie are a part of me," he explains.
Several of his works are displayed at
The Panhandle Pizza Co., lending a Western theme to the 500-square-foot
restaurant, which seats 16. His store location is "right down the hill" from
the University of San Francisco.
Though the restaurant is less
than four years old, Panhandle has already won citywide pizza bake-offs. In
SF Weekly's Best of San Francisco '97 awards, Panhandle was the
winner for Best Pizza: "It's not your New York thin or your Chicago deep dish,
it's Californian -- and that's, after all, why we live here."
Schaan uses a cornmeal/olive oil
crust and as many fresh seasonal ingredients as possible, such as fresh corn,
right off the cob. Other toppings include pine nuts, marinated chicken and
andouille sausage. You can also order soy cheese, goat cheese and natritional yeast
toppings. The vegetarian pizza is a favorite.
Panhandle uses company-owned motor
scooters for delivery. "I get complete commercial insurance for an unlimited
number of drivers for, as I recall, $340 a year." Pizzas are double-bagged
and strapped on the back of the scooters.
"Our drivers can navigate in, through
and around traffic and go almost to the door. It's easier to see house
numbers, and it's much easier to find parking. I'd say two motor scooters
could do the work of three or four cars. Everything is just quicker with a
motor scooter." Schaan is adding a motor scooter icon on his new Web site.
In January, Schaan opened for business
on the 'Net at www.sfpizza.com. "We captured a direct, simple domain
name. 'SFPizza.COM' is so easy to remember." While forging ahead with a
Web site, Schaan admits to being a computing neophyte. "I've never been anti-computing,"
he notes. "Until now, I just haven't needed computers, but I observe the
trends, and I believe the Internet offers a way to increase my daytime business."
Panhandle is in a business area, which is bustling during workdays.
As innovative as he is with delivery,
Schaan has not implemented online ordering via the Web. "We don't have
computers in the store," notes Schaan, "but we're saving toward that. Right
now, people can examine our menus on the 'Net, but they must call in to order.
We do have a fax machine, which business people use a lot. A lot of them
have computers, so we think they'll like jumping to our Web site to select
something for lunch. In some corporate offices, it's easier to find a
computer than a phone book."
One of the biggest advantages
of having a Web site, Schann believes, is that, "It gives us a means to
prominently display the many flattering restaurant reviews we've received.
We quote liberally from published reviews on our Web site. It gives our
customers a broader way to look at us, and we get much more mileage from
restaurant reviews than if they merely appeared in a local publication one
week and then disappeared from sight."
For Web site creation, Schaan
selected an artist friend, Rae Stimler, who does "a little Web work on the
side." Stimler is a partner at Holy Mountain Trading Company, an online
catalog company specializing in gourmet teas and Asian teaware. She has
developed a large and enviable Web site (www.holymtn.com),
and its many amenities foretell the future of Panhandle's fledgling site.
It may shock those in the pizza
industry, where online orders are typically a minor part of total revenue, to
learn that Holy Mountain derives all of its income through Web
marketing. Tea, we learn, is second only to water as a world beverage.
"Our whole operation is on the
Web," says Stimler (Rae@holymtn.com).
"All of our business comes from the Internet -- all of it! We do everything
mail order; we have no walk-in facility. That's not how our business started
out, but that's how the Internet has taken over. We do business internationally,
and our catalog is online -- only. We ask everybody to download it and print
it out."
Because Holy Mountain's catalog
is online, "We can update it constantly, without the expense of having it printed.
I think a lot of business is going to be done like this in the future." Schaan
envisions marketing his Western art as well as his pizza on Panhandle's site.
While her Web sites are extensive,
Stimler prefers to keep her software tools simple and inexpensive. She spurns
the numerous and often expensive Web page-editing programs in favor of Windows 95's
built-in NotePad text editor for HTML. (Do not confuse "text editors," sometimes
called "ASCII editors," with word processing programs that embed formatting codes
and, therefore, are awkward to use for creating HTML code.)
One commercial program Stimler
does like is from MetaCreations (www.metacreations.com). "For
pictures that need some work, I use Kai's Photo Soap (software) to clean them
up. You can enhance washed out colors, remove scratches, things like that."
While Adobe PhotoShop (around $550) is the pricey standard for such chores,
Stimler points out that Photo Soap costs much less (around $50).
Essentially, PhotoSoap is a
professional retouching package used for photo editing. With it, you can
change and correct colors, fix "red eye" and remove wrinkles, as well as
crop, rotate and resize photos. It offers a way to take your less-than-perfect
images and spruce them up.
A source of pride for Stimler
is a special feature on her own Web site. "We're very proud of our teapot
gallery," says Stimler. "We have four 'tours,' each consisting of 20 pictures,
and while you're viewing one, the next is already downloading in the background."
She learned the downloading technique from David Siegel's book, Creating
Killer Web Sites: The Art of Third-Generation Site Design (Hayden Books, 1996).
Siegel offers helpful tips and useful links for site developers at www.killersites.com.
The teapot gallery may be a
sneak preview of things to come for Panhandle Pizza, since Don Schaan wants to
showcase not only his pizzas but his Western art as well. "My brother-in-law
is a product photographer, so he's going to come by and take pictures of the
restaurant and the pizzas."
Schaan also has a book to
promote. "My wife, Leslie, wrote a book just out from Simon and Schuster. It's
called A Music I No Longer Heard: Early Death of a Parent. It deals
with the experiences of people whose parents died before they were 18."
JIM REED is a Louisville, Kentucky-based
freelance writer and communications consultant. Email him all about your
own Web site at JimReed@aol.com.
To nominate a site you like for a PIZZA TODAY review, call or fax Jim
at (502) 969-5152.
- Pizza Today, May 1998
LUNCH
Thursday/Friday 10:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
DINNER
7 nights 4:00 - 11:00 p.m.
WEEKEND HOURS
3:00 - 11:00 p.m.
|
panhandle@sfpizza.com
