Hand-grilled crusts a hot product

EATING WELL: Founded in 2009, Providence-based Top This! Fire-Grilled Pizza Crusts produces about 3,000 crusts, or 125 cases a day. Above, company employee Pablo Tum at work. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
EATING WELL: Founded in 2009, Providence-based Top This! Fire-Grilled Pizza Crusts produces about 3,000 crusts, or 125 cases a day. Above, company employee Pablo Tum at work. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

The business name Top This! Fire-Grilled Pizza Crusts is both a challenge to competitors and an invitation to consumers, owner Roger Dwyer says.
“Fire-grilled” is a distinguishing characteristic for how those handmade white and wheat crusts are cooked, according to Dwyer. He’s in his third career after decades spent in both the restaurant business and as a professor for wine-and-beverage-services classes at Johnson & Wales University.
Acknowledging national competition like Boboli’s and Pillsbury, Dwyer says the difference between other prepared pizza crusts and Top This! is the way the crusts are grilled.
“What makes these things really good are the flour and yeast, and the flavor from the grilling,” he said. “Each one is hand grilled on a charbroiler, the same thing you have on your deck. You get the flame from below and the grates are very hot. It caramelizes the sugar and that’s what gives it the flavor.”
The other selling point is more of an intangible: it’s the impetus on the part of the consumer to want to decorate the product in unique ways – making it, in Dwyer’s view, much like a painter’s canvas.
“It’s a blank canvas for people to show their creativity,” he said. “It’s inevitable for people to tell me what they put on it.”
As described on his website, Dwyer confirmed that his “aha!” moment for starting the business came in 2004 when he noticed Castiglione was freezing pre-grilled crusts and selling them later. He convinced Castiglione to partner with him. Together, they began building a robust business selling to the restaurant and food-service industry.
But Dwyer was convinced the product would sell in the business-to-consumer environment of retail grocery stores and supermarkets.
“We had a good deal of success with food service, but there was also some pushback from the buyer, because they were under pressure and sometimes we couldn’t compete price-wise,” he said. “I found that [people] wouldn’t object to the price … if we offered it as a retail product.”
While the two men have remained partners, their roles flipped, said Dwyer, who took over in 2008 as the major partner.
A package of two 13-inch, 7-ounce pizza crusts retails at $5.99 at most supermarkets in Rhode Island. Prices also are consistent in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and at one chain, Doris Markets, in Florida, he said, but are about a dollar higher in New York and New Jersey. Larger sizes are sold to businesses, he said.
The crusts are made and packaged in space leased at the Bake Us bakery at 170 Royal Little Drive, a commercial bakery that houses multiple tenants. Dwyer and Castiglione own the grilling and pressing equipment but share use of mixers and storage space, Dwyer said.
The company usually has 14 to 16 crusts on the grill at any given time and produces about 3,000 crusts, or 125 cases, a day, he added.
Right now, the larger eight-, 10- and 13-inch crusts are sold wholesale through eight different distributors that include Sysco, U.S. Foods, All American Foods of North Kingstown and Toppa’s of Newport, Dwyer said.
Retail distributors include Associated Buyers of New England in Barrington, N.H., Associated Grocers in Pembroke, N.H., Bayside Distributors of Warwick, Jordan Paige in Branford, Conn., Cityline Distributors of New Haven, Conn., Side By Side Specialty Foods of Westerly, and McMahon’s Farm of Hope Junction, N.Y.
“There is not only a dedicated clientele but an incredibly enthusiastic clientele,” said Dwyer. “There’s almost a cult kind of following, and that’s why we do so well.”
Dwyer is considering adding a second shift to his full weekday shift to increase capacity by late summer, but that remains a tentative plan, he said.
Another goal is to sell a gluten-free version of the product, but he has not yet cracked that market.
Long-term expansion remains a lofty goal, he said, particularly because of his commitment to the current practice of cooking by hand. Flipping by machine might be an option but faking the grilling associated with production is not, he said.
“I would love to be a national product, but before I do that it would have to be automated,” he said. “The cooling and handling of dough, the pressing could be automated. The one thing I won’t do is put grill marks on a baked product. That’s the one thing I won’t compromise.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
Top This! Fire-Grilled Pizza Crusts
OWNER: Roger Dwyer and Al Castiglione
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Food manufacturing
LOCATION: 24 Corliss St., Providence
EMPLOYEES: Seven full time in production; six part time in sales
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2009
ANNUAL SALES: WND

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