Pizza by the penny

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During the '90s recession, 99-cent pizza became a Montreal staple. But can the el-cheapo foodstuff survive an economic boom?

Maher Morgan, the owner of the Pizza Madona at Mont-Royal and St-Denis, claims he's responsible for the single most important business innovation in the history of 99-cent pizza. "We all used to make 18-inch pizzas and cut them into six slices, but it was hard to make ends meet," he explains. "So two years ago I made my pizzas slightly bigger by stretching the dough out to 19 inches, and I cut them into eight slices instead." His costs would go up slightly, he reasoned, but at 99 cents a slice he'd be pulling in $7.92 per pie instead of $5.94.

The two weeks that followed were about as tense as it gets in this business. "I watched every customer like a hawk, waiting to see if they would catch on and if they would be dissatisfied at all," says Morgan. "Nobody noticed the difference."

In hindsight, Morgan probably need not have worried. As a general rule, your average 99-cent pizza consumer is too drunk, too stoned, too poor and too busy shoving that measly slice down their cake-hole to notice much of anything. Today, every pizza in town gets cut in eight. And 99-cent pizza joints are a dime-a-dozen, almost easier to find than deps.

It's hard to imagine that as little as 10 years ago, 99-cent pizza barely existed in this town. During the '80s boom, poutine was fast-food king at $3.50, while $3 pitas stuffed with mystery meat were the up-and-comers. Then the bottom fell out of the economy in 1991: squeegee punks hit the streets, while everyone else either went back to university or got on the dole. Suddenly, poutine was a delicacy. The cheapest thing on the menu was the steamie, but no one wants to make hot dogs a staple of their diet. Too enigmatic. Too gassy.

Enter pizza. "People come in here and count out their 114 pennies [the cost of a slice with tax]," says Morgan. "This business was born out of the recession, and if it can work in a recession, it can work anytime."

But as the economy heats up again for the first time in 10 years, others don't share his enthusiasm. "There's too much competition in this business," says Oscar Borzbatagan, owner of Pizza Oscar on St-Denis near Duluth. "Most places go out of business within a year. People work just to pay their rent."

"What really sells these days is shish taouk," says Wissam Hamdan of Pizza Belladona on Mont-Royal at St-Laurent. "But you need five employees and a bigger kitchen to make it. I don't have that kind of money." Can this bare-bones meal survive the fat-cat boom of the naughts?

Madona e bambinos

Anyone who survived the '90s by eating 99-cent pizza owes thanks to Abrahim Tarbouch. The Syrian-born Tarbouch owned a couple of restaurants in 1993, but the place that was catching on was his pizza joint at St-Laurent and Prince-Arthur. Nearby Euro-Deli had a better reputation, but he was moving pie by under-selling them.

With the help of some friends, including Egyptian Maher Morgan, Tarbouch turned his business into Montreal's most recognizable name in cheapizza. "We changed the name to 'Madona' for three reasons," says Morgan. "First, it was Italian. Second, the reference to the Virgin Mary seemed trustworthy and appropriate for this city. And third, the singer."

Ah yes. Madonna Louise Ciccone was at the height of her career at the time. Name your restaurant after her, and hungry, high clubbers might fall prey to the subliminal message as they stumble off the dance floor. Eat Madona pizza, and you'll be the best Voguer in town.

Whatever. It worked. "The logo shakes like it's dancing," says Morgan. "We dropped one 'n' to avoid any legal problems." The partners agreed to share the name, but to be sole proprietor of their own stores. Tarbouch owns three Madonas, Morgan one.

Pizza joints sprouted like wildfire after that, and competition was fierce. In addition to 99-cent slices, there were package deals like the squeegee meal: two slices and a drink for $2.49. There was a short-lived trend towards 49-cent slices, and you could (and still can) get two whole pizzas for the price of one. In one truly memorable pizza battle on the Main, 1 + 1 Pizza dueled toe-to-toe with 2 = 1 Pizza, located right next door. Today only 1 + 1 Pizza remains, thanks perhaps to their refusal to embrace The New Math.

But Madona remained tops in the business, and their most successful competitors were those that adopted the tried-and-true business strategy of copyright infringement. Borzbatagan opted for Madona's familiar yellow circle when he opened Pizza Oscar two years ago. But it was Wissam Hamdan who showed the most brio of all: Pizza Belladona, in addition to sounding pretty damn familiar, has the same colours, the same fonts, and the same dancing logo as Madona. And it's spelled with only one 'n' to boot.

"So what?" says Hamdan. "My dad knows Mr. Tarbouch, and he was pretty mad when I first opened up. But that's competition. Some guy could open up shop tomorrow and call his place Pizza Belladon. What can you do?"

Well, you can sue. But Tarbouch and his partners decided to be magnanimous about it. Partly because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But mostly because they understand that name-brand recognition doesn't mean spit in this business. No one's going to walk an extra three blocks, past three or four other pizza joints, just to get their hairshirted foodstuff from Madona.

"Location is everything in this business," says Morgan, who left behind a 15-year career as an aeronautics engineer with Pratt and Whitney to become a partner in Pizza Madona. "You need lots of pedestrian traffic day and night. Otherwise you'll never sell enough pizza. And I always say: the first ingredient in 99-cent pizza is cheap rent. You can give your restaurant any name you want, but if you don't have prime real estate for next to nothing, your name won't save you."

Immigrant-eat-immigrant

The 99-cent pizza phenomenon isn't unique to Montreal. But in cities like Toronto, the business is dominated by large franchise-chain juggernauts such as Pizza Pizza; the shleps at the counter are wage-slaves who couldn't cut the mustard over at McDonald's. Here, by contrast, the industry is dominated by independent entrepreneurs. In most cases, the owners make the pizza and serve customers themselves, earning their keep , 114 pennies at a time.

Who would want to make their living this way? By and large, they tend to be recent immigrants; it's hard to find an Italian who slings pie for 99 cents. "The reason there's so many pizza places is that anyone can do it," says Borzbatagan over at Pizza Oscar, who hails from Turkey. "If you spend two weeks working at someone else's restaurant you'll learn everything you need to know. You need maybe $40,000 or $60,000 to get the business off the ground. You get to be your own boss, no one tells you what to do."

But you work like a dog. Borzbatagan says that, once the summer's over, he's going to sit down and take a hard look at his business. "My wife works here with me, and we don't have a social life," he says. "I know we'll make money in the summer, but usually it's just enough to get us through the winter. By spring, we're back where we started. And when the price of gas goes up, the price of cheese goes up because of delivery costs. Who knows how much that will cost me."

Over at Belladona, Lebanon-born Hamdan--who works six days a week, with his father handling the odd shift--remains optimistic while admitting that times are tough. The fire that destroyed the old Mount Royal arena, which housed a manufacturing plant, has left him with fewer lunchtime customers on weekdays. "But tam-tam is still good for business," he says.

Madona's Morgan remains optimistic. His recipe for success is simple: he keeps his pizza cheap ("Raise prices and you're dead"), he doesn't deliver ("I feel sorry for people who deliver at ridiculously low prices--they have to lose money"), and he caters to local tastes ("There are lots of vegetarians on the Plateau, so I make eight different pizzas with no meat").

But Morgan has another trick up his sleeve: believe it or not, he has vertically integrated his operation. "I started a cheese distribution business," he explains. "That way I can exercise some control over the price of my most expensive ingredient. And I sell cheese to a lot of other restaurants, including my competitors."

That would explain why Morgan seems to be making money while others are barely scraping by. But it also means he has a vested interest in the health of the pizza industry writ large. For everyone's sake--the entrepreneurs, the squeegee kids, the down-and-outers and everyone else who has to count their pennies--here's hoping Morgan's optimism isn't misplaced. :

--Philip Preville