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Makin’ It on Wooster St.
By Liz Barrett
Anyone who has ever been to New Haven, Connecticut, finds out pretty quickly that there’s something special about the pizza you find there. First of all, it’s not called pizza; it’s called apizza (pronounced “a-beets”), and there’s a huge sense of pride surrounding the creation of every pie that comes out of the ovens—some don’t even make it to the table if the pizza makers aren’t happy with the way they look.
Growing up in New Haven, Lou Abaté always knew he was going to dedicate his life to pizza. At the age of 12, he was already making pizzas full-time in his father’s pizzeria and, with the exception of a four-year stint as a professional magician with his own magic shop, has been a pizza maker ever since.
Humble Beginnings
Abaté’s childhood dream was to own a pizzeria on Wooster Street. “My dad started his pizza business
in 1956, and I used to ask him, ‘If we have the best pizza, why aren’t we on Wooster?’” says Abaté. “In my
mind, if you were on Wooster, it meant that you had the best pizza in town.”
According to Abaté, everyone who currently owns a pizzeria in New Haven is somehow connected to the original Wooster Street pizzeria, Frank Pepe’s. Abaté worked for Pepe’s son-in-law for a couple of years before opening his first place when he was 19 years old.
In 1992, when Abaté decided to open Abaté Apizza & Seafood Restaurant in a Wooster Street location that had seen 12 restaurants open and fail in the span of nine years, his father warned him of the high turnover in the building and steep rent costs. He questioned his son’s plan and wanted to know what he would do differently to make the restaurant a success. Abaté’s answer was simple: work hard.
“I saw that the other pizzerias on the street weren’t serving lunch, so I served lunch,” says Abaté. “Then I made my restaurant family-style to suit all appetites, while others were only serving pizza. I also knew that no one on the street was delivering, so I delivered.” (To this day, Abaté is the No. 1 pizza delivery restaurant in the area and is credited for pioneering pizza delivery in the greater New Haven area in 1984.)
“I had to literally marry my business,” he says. “After I helped to raise my daughters, I moved out of the house and into the restaurant, leaving a wife of 25 years who hated the restaurant business.” Abaté and his current wife, Loretta, presently run the restaurant side by side, living in the apartment Abaté built above the restaurant.
The Turning Point
Any business usually has a pivotal
point that turns things around or gives
it the boost it needs to get the checkbook
in the black. That day came for Abaté
Apizza & Seafood Restaurant in October
1993. “The first year we were open was a
real struggle,” says Abaté. “Then one day
I got a call from the Secret Service saying
that President Clinton wanted to come in
for pizza. After that visit, my sales went
up 40%. Everyone who came in wanted
to know where the president sat. I always
told them, ‘Right there, where you’re sitting!’”
While the president and the first
lady didn’t eat their medium mozzarella
at the restaurant, they did take it to go,
and witnesses claim that Clinton said it
was one of the best pizzas he ever had.
Family-Style Dining
While everyone else in the area was
serving solely pizza, Abaté decided to
provide a full Italian menu so that Mom
could come in and dine on linguine while
Dad feasted on pork chops and the kids
split a pizza. The menu is extensive and
includes soups, salads, appetizers, pizzas,
calzones and sub sandwiches alongside
dishes such as homestyle lasagna, charbroiled
chops, veal marsala, chicken piccata
and stuffed lobster tails.
Best-selling pizzas include the white pizza with sauteed fresh spinach and garlic, and the meatball, sausage and bacon with mozzarella.
The Secret
According to Abaté, only fi ve to six
people make a real Wooster Street apizza,
he being one of them. “As the saying goes,
it’s often imitated but never duplicated,”
he says. Knowing that the style can never
truly be duplicated, Abaté decided to divulge
“the secret.” “Five elements go into
a Wooster Street pizza,” he says. “They
include method, process, formula, recipe
and technique.” Of course, each element
has its own variables, and each relates
to one another. Factors such as dough
weight, oven temperature, imported
Pecorino Romano cheese and the amount
of time the pies are left in the oven all play
into whether you end up with the best
pizza in the world or the worst. “In New
Haven, we say our pizzas are well-done,
and there’s an intentional pun there,”
says Abaté.
Promoting Pizza
On a street like Wooster, you have to
stand out if you want to get noticed. After
15 years, Abaté says that he is now the
No. 3 pizzeria on the street, behind Frank
Pepe’s and Sally’s. And while he relies on
a lot of word-of-mouth marketing and
enjoys a thriving delivery business, the
recent decline in dine-in patrons has led
him to try some unique promotions.
Abaté decided to produce three commercials for a local television station. The first showcased what Abaté said was one of his most brilliant ideas. “If you can’t bring the mountain to Muhammad, bring Muhammad to the mountain,” says Abaté. Because of rising gas prices and a lack of parking on Wooster Street, Abaté bought an inexpensive limo and advertised that his staff would pick up patrons and bring them to the restaurant. And, yes, people have already taken him up on his offer!
The second commercial involved the use of a catchphrase Abaté wanted to start using for the restaurant. He found the perfect customer to pull it off: At the end of the commercial, he says, “Abaté is…ahhh…so good!”
The third commercial he named “Operation Pizza,” which he designed as a call-out to area residents to make donations to the local veteran’s hospital in support of the men and women who have fought for our country. Abaté also made weekly deliveries of pizzas to the veterans to show his support. The television station that aired the commercial was so impressed with Abaté’s philanthropy that it decided to run the ads for free!
Regardless of his new marketing efforts, Abaté still credits word of mouth as his best marketing tool. And judging by those in New Haven who have dubbed him the hardest-working pizza man on Wooster Street, those efforts are apparently working in his favor.