The Pete's Value Proposition:
The Geometry of Pizza
Part 1:

Geometry class, 10th grade, early November 1985. We talked about surface area. Later that month, I aced the midterm and forgot the material almost instantly. "How would I ever use this JUNK in real life EVER?," I declared in an adolescent huff.

Well here it is, in real life.

Pete's sells 18" pizzas, whole and by the slice. We've always known the value of an 18" pizza, because we know exactly how much dough, cheese, sauce, and toppings go onto every one of our pizzas. And we know that we use top-quality ingredients not seen anywhere else in the market such as Grande mozzarella and sausage and meatballs made in-house with meat from local farms, ground right in our kitchen from whole cuts.

Yet we regularly get called "expensive," "pricey," and other things not appropriate to print on a family website.

You see, we know that the customer gets so much more for their money when it's 18 inches in diameter, not 14, or 12, or 10, or 8 inches. We just didn't realize how easy it would be to demonstrate the point if we simply went back to 10th grade and dusted off those old geometry lessons.

So for the record, Mr. James, I take back every word I ever said about your class being as boring as cardboard. I'm sorry, and thank you!

O.K. so here we go:

Using the formula for surface area of a circle, (pi) * radius squared, we can figure out that an 18" pizza is the equivalent of:

So that's the geometry part of the Pete's Value Proposition. Find it a little bit unbelievable? Math nerds click here.

But we're just getting started! Let's dial the time machine back even further. How about 7th grade math.

Word problems anyone?

Q: If "Pops" sells an 8-inch "personal pizza" with tomato and mozzarella for $9.95, how much would you have to pay Pop to make it 18 inches wide?
A: (9.95)(5)=$49.75

Q: If "Pops" also offers a 12" pizza and calls it "large," charging $15.50 for it, how much do you have to offer him to get him to make it 18 inches wide?
A: (15.50)(2.25)=$34.88

Q: If Pete's sells an 18" cheese pizza for $18.95, would you still call it expensive?

If you do the math, looking at the prices charged by the many excellent pizzerias in Washington DC and noting the size of the pie they deliver to your table, one thing is clear: the smaller the pizza, the more you get taken to the cleaners. We've done a little bit of research, and done the math. Check out the details.

It'll surprise you. It surprised us.

Pete's Value Proposition: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

What is New Haven style pizza?
Click here to learn more.

follow. why not? everyone else is.