Food Theory: STOP Ordering Your Pizza Like This!

Imagine being his son and seeing all that pizza and getting excited then your Dad says No it's for science

6:30 , if you check the nutritional info on Domino's website it says this: " When you add a topping, the cheese portion is reduced to ensure a proper bake". :)

Hiya MatPat! I used to work in a pizza restaurant chain and we were actually trained to give less cheese when extra toppings were added. It’s partially a cost cutting measure, but more importantly different toppings have different moisture levels that, when baked, change the overall texture (i.e. veggies and greasy meats soak into the sauce, dough, and cheese , which can lead to undercooked middles and overcooked crusts). Plus, too many toppings can trap heat and moisture, which can lead to an uneven melting of cheese. 9 times out of 10 if the pizza doesn’t look “aesthetically pleasing” the customer will request a new one, which means the original gets wasted. Hope this helped to provide some insight! :)

I miss him........

I used to work at Papa John's. Totally on the money for the extra cheese being used to cover the sauce. Papa J's specifically taught us to put the cheese on last as a seal for the toppings.

As a current pizza chain employee, I can honestly say the “base” cheese pizza will have significantly more cheese than a pepperoni pizza because the “base” cheese pizza is considered one topping. They scale back on the cheese when it comes to actually adding toppings to reduce grease factor and gives the pizza a chance to cook correctly.

Hey guys! Former Pizza Hut line cook here to weigh in about the pizza weight! We have standard sized cheese measuring cups for pizzas of different sizes! A 14-in any ONE-THREE TOPPING pizza (regardless of crust) gets a large scoop, but once you break that three topping limit, or even if you just get pepperoni with extra pepperoni, you drop down to a medium cheese scoop. (Then for my location, a small cheese scoop on top of the extra pep) I was told it’s to help prevent the extra roni’s from weighing down the dough while it bakes but Idk. Yes I realized this video is two years old

When I worked at Pizza Hut, they weighed the leftover toppings at the end of the night. If the cost ratio was down for the day, meaning too much toppings were used in respect to how many pies were sold, we would be told to "pull light" when it came to the toppings. I rarely listened and just tried to make a decent pie, one I would want to eat. They rip us off all the time. Thank you for the work you do. Consumers are just cattle to be milked by big business 11:53

As a former Domino’s employee, there’s guidelines to how much toppings and cheese each pizza gets depending on how many toppings there are and the size of the pizza. For example, a normal cheese pizza would have more cheese as opposed to one with toppings like pepperoni so that it comes out of the oven looking right and it’s more cost effective for the company.

Worked at Domino’s for 2 years, was trained to put double cheese on cheese-only pizzas and to hold back on toppings the more they add so that it’ll all cook evenly in the oven

Little Caesars employee here: "The more toppings you get, the less toppings you get." meaning, the more toppings you order, the less of each of those we put on, due to making sure the pizza bakes properly, and the reduce production cost.

0:21 “18% tip and nobody needs to know about this” “How about 20?” 💀💀💀💀💀💀

4:55 so I would like to explain something here. I work at a Pizza Hut and have for a while now and the reason the cheese weighs more is because if a pizza Is just cheese with no toppings we have to add an extra half a cup of cheese that way the customer isn't being screwed over for just ordering cheese. But when we add pepperoni we don't put on that extra cheese therefore it ways less. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

As a previous dominos employee, we were always taught to put as little cheese as possible, especially on pizzas with toppings

You should also take into account deals that aren't limited time offers. Like, Domino's menu price for a 14 inch pepperoni is $18 ... but there's a carryout special on single topping pizzas that makes them $8 instead, and they've had that deal for the past 2 years or so (before that they had a deal on 3 topping pizzas for about the same price). Little Caesar's just doesn't bother to list the "non-deal" price. So yes Little Caesar's is cheaper even with the deal, but in practice it's not by as much as you'd think by comparing menu prices.

Domino’s employee here, who has run both the oven and make line. I can confirm, we go lighter on the cheese on pizzas with toppings. This is because the company actually has pre-determined portions we’re expected to follow.

As someone who used to work at Pizza Hut, the company actually tells its employees to put less cheese on pizzas that have toppings. It’s less like a cheese pizza is the base that you add toppings onto, and more that you’re replacing the “extra” cheese on a cheese pizza with toppings. It’s been a while, but I believe it was a cheese pizza had a cup of cheese on it and a pizza with toppings had half a cup of cheese on it.

As a chef who specializes in Italian cuisine i can say that the more toppings you have on a pizza the less of each topping you will get. It's not supposed to be a bad thing. If you pile the same amount of cheese on a pepperoni pizza as you do a cheese pizza it will be a soggy greasy mess.

9:22 Jesse: "Yo, Mr. Caesar, are we in the pizza business or the money business?" Little Caesar: "Neither... I'm in the empire business."

Thank you matpat for 13 great years!