Rethink your cheese and pepperoni order at Ian's Pizza

For three days, from July 21 through the 24th, Wrigleyville residents got an unexpected treat, free pizza-about 60 pies worth. The slices were courtesy of Ian's Pizza by the Slice, a new restaurant that just opened on Clark Street south of Addison Avenue. Unfortunately it wasn't exactly what managers Jaime Gamez and Dimitri Syrkin-Nikolau had planned for the restaurant's launch. In fact, giving away pizza was exactly the opposite of what they had wanted to do.

Ian's Pizza, which was started in Madison, Wisconsin in 2001, is known for its innovative and creative toppings. There's Mac n' Cheese pizza (the slice that made them famous); Smokey the Bandit, which has BBQ sauce, BBQ chicken, bacon and ranch; Penne Pasta Marinara; and BBFAT (black bean, feta and tomato), just to name a few. Customers can order traditional cheese or pepperoni slices and add additional toppings of their choice, but really what's the fun in that?

The Wrigleyville location is the third outpost of pie connoisseur Ian Gurfield. After graduating from the University of Massachusets, Amherst, where he had worked at a pizza place, Gurfield spent a year touring the country in search of the perfect college town to open his own late-night eatery. He was just 21 when he opened the first Ian's Pizza by the Slice. Don't get the wrong idea though; Ian's Pizza is not a franchise operation. This store will eventually be bought out by long-time employees and current managers Jaime Gamez, Dimitri Syrkin-Nikolau and a third partner.

Ian's unique menu, late hours (it caters to the after-bar crowd) and progressive business model has spawned a cult following. And even though the store had to give away its first 60 pizzas, slices are now selling fast. Since July 24, the Wrigleyville store has sold 8,000 slices and counting.

On July 16, Ian's Pizza had its official ribbon cutting ceremony with the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce, which it catered. While they planned to sell the leftover pizzas the next day at a friends-and-family party, they didn't receive their operating license from the city's department of revenue in time.

"If we got busted for selling it we'd get a thousand dollar fine and get closed down," said Gamez.

So, they gave it away to friends and family instead. Unfortunately even after the party there were still fresh ingredients left. Without an operating license, or a clue when they'd get it, Gamez and Syrkin-Nikolau had a tough decision-toss the ingredients or use them to make pies and continue to give them away?

"Ian's is not about wasting. We are trying to be very conscious," Gamez said. So, they invited people they knew down to the store for free pizza.

"We announced it first to our friends and we had little groups of 15 come in and eat pizza. That worked well twice but then we said were not going to get through this food fast enough, so I said we've got to throw something bigger together."

They called and texted everyone in their phones and posted a message on the Ian's Pizza Facebook group, inviting members, most of whom are University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni, to come down for pizza.

They gave away slices all day Monday and all day Tuesday. On Thursday morning, which was supposed to be the biggest pizza giveaway, they finally got their license from the city. Gamez and Syrkin-Nikolau knew they couldn't break their promise for free food, so instead of money, they decided to ask customers for something just as valuable, feedback.

If visitors wanted a free beer to go along with their food, all they had to do was fill out a survey. Questions included, "How was the crust? Was there too much sauce or too little sauce? Were there too many toppings or not enough toppings? How was the service? and Did you get through the line quickly?" Syrkin-Nikolau even threw in a question asking what topping they'd like to see on their pizza next.

"We got really good feedback," Gamez said. In total, Gamez said they gave away roughly 480 slices.

Giving away your food for free isn't the most conventional way to launch a restaurant. Luckily for Ian's Pizza more and more people have been coming back each day, often bringing their friends, or in some cases, whoever they can scrounge up on the street, with them.

"Some guy came in pacing back and forth and he got one [slice] and then another and then called his friend and had me list off all the slices to his friend," says Syrkin-Nikolau.

"I asked how he heard about this place and he said 'You guys have a cult. We were drinking last night at Rebel and we were looking for where to go for food and someone said go to Ian's; it's the best. I got BBQ Steak and Fries and Mac n' Cheese [slices] and then we went outside and started telling other people to come inside.' Word of mouth has been pretty big," said Syrkin-Nikolau.

Daniel Nussbaum and Jessica Lewis, UW-Madison alums, said they visited the shop three times since it opened.

"We stalked them every single day until they finally opened," Nussbaum said. "We even showed up at the opening party somewhat uninvited."

Gamez and Syrkin-Nikolau actually started out as late-night pizza fanatics too, but quickly moved behind the counter.

"Ian saw me every night for two weeks. And I kept begging for a job," says Gamez. "I dropped [my resume] off and he never called my references, he just said ' I'll trust you, hire you and train you,' I passed the training phase, and I've been working there ever since."

For Syrkin-Nikolau the story is essentially the same.

"We were out at some parties having fun and someone was telling me about this crazy place called Ian's. I went in just like all the other freshman do and went back and forth on the glass looking at all the pizza," said Syrkin-Nikolau. "I didn't really want a job but finally second semester rolled around and I thought I needed to get my act together and start making money. Ian recognized me, knew me by name and so finally when they said 'now hiring,' I got really excited so I went and put my application," he said. "I worked there all the way through till graduation."

Opening a pizza place wasn't in either of their five-year plans. Gamez was an education major and expected to become a teacher, while Syrkin-Nikolau received his degree in history and biology. When the opportunity to expand came up though both jumped at the chance.

"One of the things that we were trying to address was creating opportunities for our staff if they wanted to stick around," Gurfield said. "We didn't want Ian's to be a dead-end job so we started talking about expansion and the idea that if we did another store we would create employee ownership opportunities."

Gurfield invited everyone that worked at Ian's Pizza who was interested in talking about the company's future to an off-site meeting in Milwaukee in May 2006.

Neither Gamez nor Syrkin-Nikolau would detail the store's revenues or profits. However, Gamez said there were two main stipulations, as they brainstormed possible locations for a third shop: It had to be within four hours of Madison and have the potential of doing a million dollars in sales.

But, Gurfield also wanted it to be somewhere people were passionate about going.

"We have to make sure that we have people who want to be there, who we are going to believe in, who we trust, who we know are going to do a good job," Gurfield said.

Chicago garnered the most support. A number of people were interest in heading up the Chicago location but Syrkin-Nikolau and Gamez got the job.

After finalizing the location in Wrigleyville, Gamez and Syrkin-Nikolau became head managers of the Frances street store in Madison as a way to gain more experience running a restaurant prior to the Chicago opening.

Even though neither had any formal business training they weren't going into the process blind. Since 2004, Gurfield ran Ian's Pizza on an "open business finance" model, meaning all employees from bus boys to the owners know the company's finances.

"The idea is that if thing are going well then we can share the success, and if things aren't going well we can also share the stress. And then everybody can really think about ways we can turn the situation around if things aren't going well," explained Gurfield.

Workers learn what the business is doing in sales, how much money the company is bringing in overall and how much the company spends on things like beverages, rent, utilities and labor. Keeping employees informed about the numbers is also a tool to keep the business working at maximum efficiency.

One of the big things Gurfield urged employees to improve was the number of slices they were throwing away at the end of the night.

"We went from throwing away 70 slices a night down to 20. That's a big number," explained Gamez. "People were more conscious of it, not just the employees upfront but the cooks as well. It was like a game."

The better the company does and the higher the profit margin the bigger employees' bonuses are at the end of the year.

Gamez and Syrkin-Nikolau say they posted the highest profit margin in the history of Ian's during their tenure at the Frances street shop. It's not surprising then that neither was too worried about the Chicago launch.

"I wasn't really nervous at all. I had been working at Ian's for five years and him and I had already built a good rapport. He said if you need help talk to me," said Gamez.

"And me and Dimitri were really good friends in college and working together and having him as a co-manager, it was a breeze."

One of the big changes the company made last year that has had a big impact on both Ian's Pizza by The Slice in Wrigleyville and the two shops in Madison, was to hire a "food guru," Cindy Gross, who was trained at the Vermont-based New England Culinary Institute.

One of her responsibilities was to look at the cost of everything they were putting on the pizzas and focus on sourcing better, local products. Not only was this valuable information for Gamez and Syrkin-Nikolau leading up the Chicago launch, but it has also helped control costs for the company overall in the increasingly volatile food market.

"Using that information we were able to figure out what slices should we make and what slices shouldn't we make to start with [in Chicago]. We catered the menu a bit to that," said Syrkin-Nikolau.

One slice they would never compromise on though is Mac n' Cheese pizza-even if it were the most expensive slice.

"We still want to serve all the best ones," Syrkin-Nikolau said.

One of biggest surprises of bringing the Ian's Pizza operation to the Chicago market is that some of the food costs have actually gone down.

"We thought going to Chicago things are [going to be] more expensive. It's a bigger city," Gamez said. "It turns out our food costs are a little bit lower because all the food comes from here and it gets shipped to Wisconsin. So we don't have to bite the bullet on that."

As Ian's Pizza continues to grow and establish itself as a fixture on the Chicago scene Gamez and Syrkin-Nikolau say they'll slowly be introducing more toppings and specialty slices that are staples in the Madison shops.

"I've been telling everyone that everything we don't have now we'll have in 2009. So, punch cards, 2009; Gift cards, 2009; Breakfast special, 2009." The Breakfast Special slice has roasted potatoes, scrambled eggs, ham, bacon and cheddar cheese.

Those looking for a traditional Chicago-style deep dish might have to wait longer than 2009 though-"3009, maybe," joked Gamez.

"I hadn't even thought of it and now I'm trying to think of ways that we could incorporate the Ian's specialty into the deep dish..Who knows, maybe it will be Macaroni noodle inside that thick blob of cheese."