B'nai B'rith
Michigan Regional Council
Invites members & guest for
an evening with...
PHOTO: BY DANIEL LIP
TOM GREENWOOD
Columnist & Reporter for the Detroit News
Recipient of the "Ernie Pyle" reporting award
7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, March 26, 1997
Social Hall — Adat Shalom Synagogue
Middlebelt Road - Farmington Hills
No Charge
A brief business meeting will precede speaker
Reception to follow...
Studio in Harvard Row Mall
The
Aryeh Sharon slices a pizza that is to
be sent to Virginia.
Traveling Pizza
SPOT
Jerusalem Pizza goes national with two-day delivery of its pies.
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114
WATERFORD/WEST BLOOMFIELD • 7570 COOLEY LAKE RD. • 810-363-2806
ust a little over six months
after they opened Jerusalem
Pizza, Aryeh and Soril
Sharon stood in the back of
their Southfield Road store and
marveled at the success of their
business venture.
"I can't believe it," Mr. Sharon
said. "This is doing much better
than I ever imagined."
That their kosher pizza has
now taken on a national — even
international— reputation for ex-
cellence should not surprise him.
New products such as a kishke
pizza as well as the ever-popular
potato pizza continue to earn fans,
Jewish and gentile, nonkosher
and kosher observant.
But he was flabbergasted when
a request for 10 pizzas from Vir-
ginia Beach, Va., was made.
A rabbi who had been a daily
consumer of the Southfield store's
offerings moved a short time ago
from Windsor to Virginia Beach
and was saddened by the kosher
offerings in his new community.
It seems the local community cen-
ter had pizzas shipped from a New
York outlet at a cost of $19.95 per
pie.
"He said, `Aryeh, your pizza is
much better than this,"' Mr.
Sharon said.
The rabbi asked Mr. Sharon to
ship his pizzas. Mr. Sharon did not
rule out the request but told the
rabbi he needed to learn how to do
it first.
Mr. Sharon called the New
York pizza store and had a pizza
shipped to him. He found the
cheese pizza had been cooked and
sliced. With a piece of wax paper
in between each piece, the slices
were stacked, placed in a large Zi-
plock bag and put in a pizza box
which was slipped into a Federal
Express box.
"I was surprised," he said.
"There was nothing to it."
See Kosher Bites,
page 116.
With the goading of the rabbi
in Virginia Beach, Mr. Sharon
shipped out his first batch of
cheese pizzas and waited for the
return reviews. The Virginia
Beach Jews gave high marks to
the Southfield treats.
"They said it was 100 percent,"
Mr. Sharon said.
Emboldened by his success, he
has since shipped out 10 falafel
pizzas to a yeshiva student in New
York, purchased for the student
by his mother; sent several vari-
eties of pizza to his own son in Mi-
ami; and flown pies to Florida,
Texas and Minnesota.
He has also refined the way he
ships the pizzas. After a large piz-
za is cooked, it is allowed to cool
and is sliced into eight pieces. The
pizza is placed on a cardboard cir-
cle and shrink-wrapped before it
is placed in a box which is then
sealed with tape. The pizza box is
put in a Federal Express two-day
delivery box and sent out.
The cost of one pie is $16.95 but
each subsequent one gets a little
cheaper. For 10 pies, the price per
pizza drops to $12.95. All prices
include shipping and handling.
While the two-day delivery
seems to work well for the recipi-
ents, some don't want to wait that
long. One mother sent her son in
Missouri a pizza using two-day de-
livery. It wasn't fast enough for
the son.
"He called and asked, 'Can you
please send it overnight?"'
Mr. Sharon said, "I don't know
if we are going to do that" because
of the higher shipping costs.
To accommodate the others, the
store has set up a toll-free num-
ber and now accepts Mastercard
and Visa for payment.
While some would welcome the
success of such a venture, Mr.
Sharon fears what it will bring.
He has no plans to open another
franchise of Jerusalem Pizza be-
cause he is already working 14-
hour days. ❑
Et To order a pizza for ship-
ment, call 1-888-581-1212 or
(810) 552-0088.