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Community Corner

Proud Pizza Maker

Patty Phillips went from polo player to pizza queen.

Every entrepreneur has a story to tell, a yarn to spin about how the business started—what particular combination of courage, smarts, pluck and plain good luck it took to get his or her idea off the ground.

But Malibuite Patty Phillips might just have the best story of all. She started her pizza manufacturing empire because of her desire to be a professional polo player!

Whoa … let’s start at the beginning.

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While working for a commercial real estate developer in L.A., Patty was also an avid polo hobbyist, playing indoors three to four nights a week after work.

"I was in love with polo, and I was pretty good," she said. "I played so much that pretty soon it was obvious I needed to get my own polo pony, so I saved up $50,000 to buy a couple of ponies."

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But in her day job, Patty had done a marketing study that looked at trends, and she took note of changing habits and needs. She saw that with more working women, there was likely to be an expanding need for food already prepared and ready to eat, so Patty came up with the idea of gourmet take-and-bake pizza— “Something really good, and easy for people to pick up and take home.” 

Instead of the pony, Patty took her $50,000 and opened her first restaurant in 1988 in Beverly Hills. 

Looking back, she marvels at the moxie it took.

“I came up with this idea, but I didn’t have any food experience," Patty said. "So I just decided to take my money and go for it. My dream was having 600 stores all over the country, of being able to hire the physically handicapped and mentally challenged, to create all these jobs, and then to go play polo full time."

It didn’t quite work out that way. 

"I had never been in the restaurant business, so I paid someone to teach me," she said. "I had so much to learn. I did it all … my own prep, cleaning, my own books. I worked from morning to midnight every day, and it was two years before I had a day off."

Not much time for polo!

"But with everything in life, you have to go with the punches," Patty said. "It was much tougher than I ever thought. But I’m very tenacious. I’m not willing to quit. I was willing to do whatever it took to make my dream and concept come true."

Three years later, she opened her second location of Patty’s Take and Bake in Santa Monica on Montana Avenue between 6th and 7th (it recently closed after 20 years, a victim of the recession). She later opened two more locations, which she sold in 2004.

It was during that early time that the seeds for Patty's future wholesale success were planted. It turns out she had a fan in Roger Pigozzi, then executive chef at the Biltmore in downtown L.A.

"He came by one day, and said to me, 'You have the best pizza I’ve ever had! Can you sell them to me?' So every morning, I would go into the store and make pizzas for him, drive them to the Biltmore, and then drive back and open the store and work there all day."

Ever one to pick up on a need, Patty took note of the wholesale idea and expanded it. She recalls a funny early meeting with Cliff Delorey, then executive chef at the Marriott Hotel in Century City. She arrived there dressed in shorts and tennis shoes, carrying a couple of her pizzas.

He said, "Patty, did you just make these?"

She responded, "Yes, how did you know?"

It turns out she was covered in flour! She made quite an impression, though.

"He gave me my first big break," Patty said. "I got into the Marriott chain because of him."

Cliff also taught her a key skill—how to parbake the crust, so it holds up longer. Before that, she had been making everything on the spot, fresh. With a parbaked crust, she could partially bake it ahead for mass production or freezing.

"Once I got the baked crust, I was able to mass produce in bigger volume, and then I got a distributor,” Patty said. 

Fast forward to now, and she is strictly wholesale, with both a Patty’s Gourmet Pizza product line and a Lil Dev's product line, named after her now 12-year-old son Devin Sarantinos, a seventh grader at Malibu High School. In fact, he’s not so lil’ anymore, so she is evolving that line to be called simply Dev’s.

You can find her pizzas in Gelson’s, Bristol Farms, Whole Foods in northern California, Trader Joe’s (under their own label), in Las Vegas casinos, the Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Sheraton hotel chains, all throughout northern and southern California and Hawaii.

For Trader Joes, daily she makes an eight-inch pizza called Classic Pepperoni Pizza, kept in the fresh section. Patty also waxes nostalgic about a couple of flatbreads she produced for them—there was one with Danish blue cheese, caramelized onion, pear and garlic pesto that I personally would have killed for.

“Oh my God, I miss that one," Patty said. "It was so good. People who loved it really, really loved it.” Count me among those. However, some customers weren’t so sure about the blue cheese, and kept thinking it was mold (well, it WAS mold, but the good kind!). So TJ’s discontinued that. She also made another flatbread with figs, caramelized onion, garlic pesto and a mozzarella cheese blend. Again, yum.

With Patty, everything is born of a need.

The Lil Dev’s line came about because one day her son was in the supermarket with her, and asked for a frozen pizza. We'll gloss over how deeply ironic it is that the fresh pizza maker's son yearns for frozen, but she began looking at the ingredients. She picked up package after package, disappointed in the ingredients, the levels of sodium, fat and sugar. So she decided to make her own, fashioning five-inch whole wheat pizzas with a blend of five cheeses, expressly designed so kids can bake or microwave them.

Patty was trying to get kids to eat healthier, but finds that more mature consumers also buy them.

"It turns out the Lil Dev’s pizzas we designed are only seven points on Weight Watcher’s, so while I began by marketing to kids, we have a lot of adults that buy them too," Patty said. "Why not? They taste good and they’re all natural." 

For Patty, when one door closes, another opens. So when she closed her Santa Monica store, she opened her Patty's Gourmet Pizza Marina del Rey factory for walk-in business, selling pizzas at half-off retail prices.. They make a certain amount for walk-in customers every day (hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., Sat. 12:30-5:30 p.m.) and when they’re gone, they’re gone. She recommends calling ahead at 310-821-6150 to make sure they will have what you want when you arrive. 

Ideas for new pies come from a variety of sources, including customers, employees, trend-watching and tweaking. "We’re always open for ideas and suggestions," she said. "We love to play!”

Patty won’t share her secret crust recipe, so don’t even ask! She will say it is made of natural ingredients, uses unbleached flour, and undergoes a long, slow 12-hour proof, which enhances the flavor of the dough. She discovered the recipe while traveling, thought it was the best pizza dough she had ever had, and promptly paid the man who made it to teach her how. He spent two weeks with her helping her perfect it. And of course, since then, the original recipe has undergone tweaks for production needs.

Although Patty never makes pizza at home (it’s easier to bring it home from the “office!”), she does have some professional suggestions for at-home pizza makers. "The nice thing about a pizza is you can pretty much put anything on it and make it great. It’s like a canvas and a painter," she said.  

PATTY'S PIZZA TIPS

  • Use anything in the refrigerator. "I can’t think of anything that doesn’t work. Leftovers from the night before—broccoli, asparagus, chicken, ham, steak."  
  • Less is better. "Most people think more is better, but that’s not the case with pizza. You don’t want to overload your pizza with too much stuff. You can kill a pizza by putting too many toppings. If you are adding a lot of different ingredients, put them on sparingly."
  • One ingredient should also shine through as your main topping. "For example, if you have three toppings, choose one of them as the main. Like with the Barbecue Chicken Pizza, the chicken is the main topping, and red onion and cilantro are highlights. For a steak pizza, steak would be your main topping, and whatever else you wanted to add would be sprinkled lightly. For a basil, tomato and garlic pizza, decide which of those you want to showcase, and the others are secondary."
  • "Always give the crust a 1/2-1 inch border; don’t put ingredients all the way to edge."
  • Don’t have it swimming in sauce. "For sauce, use a thin layer of tomato sauce, olive oil or pesto, or whatever sauce you are using."
  • "Have fun with cheeses, including all kinds of blends. Whole milk mozzarella melts the best. We also do a blend of mozzarella, provolone, and Monterey Jack. Again, with a cheese blend, the main ingredient would be mozzarella; try to have one main flavor come out."
  • You can make pizza without cheese. "Use tomato sauce, a bunch of vegetables, and bake it that way!"
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