Pizza frenzy: These local pizza places share their advice for Super Bowl Sunday

Last year on Super Bowl eve, the dining room at Big Jay’s Pizzeria was practically overflowing with pizza boxes.

Rianna Lindsay, front-end manager of the pizzeria’s Rome location, said that the staff spent the day before the big game folding an incomprehensible number of boxes.

“Oh my goodness, it was insane, but it was great,” Lindsay said.

According to Pizza Today, most pizza restaurants typically see a 30-35% increase in sales on Super Bowl Sunday as compared to a typical Sunday, as football fans chow down on cheesy slices and saucy wings while watching the game.

Gameday also completes a stretch of the typical five busiest pizza sales days of the year, preceded by Halloween, the day before Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

All hands on deck

O’Scugnizzo Pizzeria in Utica, founded in 1914 by Eugene Burline, has been around longer than the NFL itself. Eugene's grandson Steven Burline has worked at the family business for 47 years and owned it for 35. He has seen his fair share of Super Bowl Sundays.

“They become a blur after a while because it’s so crazy busy from 3 until about 6:30,” Burline said. “They’re pretty much all the same to me at this point.”

Chris Caban, owner of Ed’s Pizza Place in Little Falls, confirmed that Super Bowl Sunday was their busiest day last year, second only to Thanksgiving Eve.

“It’s all hands on deck,” Caban said. “We’ve got seven people inside and three delivery drivers. Last year we sold about 2,000 to 2,500 wings and probably more than 400 pizzas.”

Burline said that O’Scugnizzo’s most popular selection is their sausage pizza, and the restaurant still finishes their pies with a layer of tomato sauce and a dusting of fresh pecorino romano cheese, just like Eugene Burline did over a century ago.

They even ship bake-at-home pizzas all around the country – this year football fans in other states like Ohio and Florida will be enjoying a taste of Utica while they watch the game.

Burline and his team spend the week leading up to the Super Bowl laser-focused on preparation, including making plenty of O’Scugnizzo’s house-made sausage.

“You get as many people as you can who want to work and put in the work, and hope for the best and prepare for the worst, I guess,” Burline said. “We’re always overstocked. During the week we're preparing from the Monday before right up until the day – having the cheese sliced, and having the sauce made, and all the good stuff that we need for pizza.”

Pizza, pizza

Big Jay’s, which has a location in Marcy in addition to its Rome location which opened last January, offers hand-tossed New York-style pizza and 12 different kinds of homemade wing sauces. Lindsay said she thinks the 24-inch pizza they sell is the biggest around.

Meanwhile, Ed’s Pizza customers can choose between a New York-style thin crust and a Sicilian-style thick crust. Caban said that the menu is a bit more pared down on game day for the sake of expediency; for example, you can't order calzones.

“They just take a little while longer, and we just want to focus on pumping out pizzas and wings,” Caban said.

Pizza planning

Pizzerias like Ed’s, Big Jay’s and O'Scugnizzo's offer pre-ordering options for Super Bowl Sunday so customers can plan ahead and the restaurants themselves can prepare. Lindsay highly recommends pre-ordering, even the day before.

“We try to take as many orders as we can on the day of, but sometimes we get so crazy that we have to shut our phones off,” Lindsay said.

While they do everything they can to prepare for the intense volume of sales, pizzerias can get overwhelmed on busy days like Super Bowl Sundays. Caban asked that customers keep those factors in mind.

“Be patient,” Caban said. “A lot of business owners are very stressed about that day, so just be patient and be kind.”

The volume of business can make for a demanding day, but Lindsay said that having a collaborative team helps ease the pressure.

“It does run smoothly because we have a great system,” Lindsay said. “We all work together. We’re just one big team or one big family – the love is there. The pizza makers are helping the counter girls, the counter girls are helping the pizza makers and the kitchen, everything. We try to have a well-rounded group where everybody can do everything in the building, and it is quite reassuring. It’s just like one big family here at Big Jay’s.”

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Super Bowl Sunday: Football's biggest day is huge for pizza shops, too