177. Refocus to Grow with Scott Rivera

Send us Fan MailThis week on The Hot Slice Podcast, we catch up with Scott Rivera, owner of Scottie’s Pizza Parlor in Portland, Oregon. We last visited Scottie’s in 2018 to profile the hot Portland pizzeria as an On the Road Feature. In the feature, he shares, “I think a lot of New Yorkers and people from the East Coast can relate to not finding good pizza when they move away,” Rivera says, adding that people question the water, the flour, etc. “So I decided to learn how to make pizza myself the way that I thought was good. I very quickly learned that it was not as easy as I thought it would be, and (I) started to use cookbooks and whatever I had, whatever tools I had (like) cookie sheets and made some really, really bad pizza. I think because it turned out to be so hard, I kept wanting to get really good at it. I was like ‘How can this be so hard? It’s just a pizza. There are three things you have to get right. It’s just dough, sauce and cheese.’”In the article, he also shared that slices were his shop’s bread and butter but that has changed. He spent much of the pandemic and after dialing in his pizza and operational systems. After much exploration, he decided to open a second pizzeria. We go in-depth into his process and what it took to make the new location happen happen.If you are a pizza dough geek, this episode is for you. Scottie details his pizza dough exploration and talks sourdough.Read the On the Road Feature in Pizza Today at https://pizzatoday.com/topics/people-pizzerias/on-the-road-scotties-pizza-parlor-portland-or/Learn more about Scottie’s Pizza Parlor at https://www.scottiespizzaparlor.com/ and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/scottiespizzaparlor/ Show Notes:Pizza Expo 2024 will be our 40th Anniversary. If you have show memorabilia, photos or memories, please share those with Jeremy at [email protected] and Denise at [email protected] your pizzeria for the 2024 Pizzerias to Watch List. Complete the form today at https://pizzatoday.com/pizzerias-to-watch-questionnaire/