American City Business Journals:
There was more blood than dark-red tomato sauce at Round Table Pizza in Waikiki, as spectators turned up on May 24 to watch B.J. Penn pound Sean Sherk in the Ultimate Fighting Championship televised from Las Vegas. The fight on TV meant more business for the pizza joint.
“We had to turn away about 300 people,” said Robert Bach, owner of Round Table, which has three Waikiki locations, two of them sports bars. “If we had a sporting event every night, we wouldn’t have to worry.”
Bach and other pizza-store managers are worried about business. As gas hovers at $4 per gallon and food prices rise 30 percent over last year, they’re finding ways to operate without slicing into product quality.
“Record gas prices are not only affecting our industry, they’re affecting everybody across the board,” said Henry Katsuda, president of TD Food Group, which owns Pizza Hut and Taco Bell in Hawaii. “We’ve never seen a period like this where we’ve seen such broad-scale increases in commodities. We’re seeing it in corn, wheat, beef, lots of dairy products like cheese.”
Some pizza chains recently raised delivery charges to offset the high price of gas and commodities.
Photo: Tina Yuen, PBN.
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