By Charlie Pogacar
Editor’s note: Last week PMQ Pizza published a Q&A with Dan Richer in which he discussed his Spicy Vegan Vodka pizza, among other things. We decided to break the interview into two parts. This is the second of those installments. The first two questions and answers from this Q&A were included in the first installment, too, and are repeated here for context.
Best known as the owner and operator of Razza Pizza Artigianale, Dan Richer has been making pizza professionally since 2003. He has established a reputation as something of a perfectionist when it comes to making pizza.
But Richer’s perfectionist tendencies are not limited to the culinary aspects of owning a pizza business—even the hand soap in the restaurant’s bathroom goes through a full vetting process. “Everything in our restaurant is super specific,” Richer said. “I just simply don’t put products into our restaurant without being truly in love with them.”
Related: Vegans Rejoice: Dan Richer Has Cracked the Code on Dairy-Free Pies
While Richer has won plenty of awards for his pizza making—including being named 50 Top Pizza’s Pizza Maker of the Year in 2023—his holistic approach to running Razza has earned glowing restaurant reviews. Those restaurant reviews go beyond the pizza on the menu and are a testament to Richer’s bona fides as a restaurant operator—it was The New York Times’ food critic Pete Wells’ three-star review from 2017 that sprang Razza into the national conversation in the first place.
The following is a look at Richer’s thoughts on operating a pizzeria—specifically the ones that go beyond the dough, cheese and flour.
PMQ: What separates good pizza from bad pizza and good pizza from great pizza?
Dan Richer: Care. That’s it.
It’s genuinely caring about the product, your guests, your team, the people you surround yourself with. It’s the amount of care that you take every step of the process, every day of the week, every week of the year, year after year.
There are about 30 steps to making pizza from the moment you choose what flour to mix with water, and there has to be a level of care and commitment to being excellent every step of the way.
And we’re talking small steps, like whether you cross-stack your doughs to cool them down if you’re refrigerating them overnight. That’s a major step. Temperature control in the room, temperature control of the dough, how much friction is generated, how much heat is generated by friction, taking that into account with the formula.
Related: How to Cross-Stack and Downstack Your Pizza Dough Trays and Why It Matters
All of these things really matter if you’re looking to create a consistently excellent product every single day. It really comes down to whether you have enough gasoline in your tank to keep going when it gets really difficult, because it does get difficult. And do you have enough gas in your tank to keep going with the level of excellence that you once did?
PMQ: One thing I know you’re passionate about is training your staff and developing their careers. Why is it so important to you to be able to have faith in your staff and to be able to step away from the shop to do things like go to Las Vegas and Italy and believe the shop can keep the lights on while you’re away?
Dan Richer: I don’t want to do this alone. It’s too hard. It’s too hard and it’s lonely being alone.
We have the power to bring so much joy to our guests, but also to each other. We’re constantly surrounded by people in this business, and we can either be a positive impact or we can just be hands-off and be selling widgets, right?
We’re not selling widgets. We’re actually creating an environment of care and kindness, and we have the ability to bring happiness to people’s lives—both our guests and the people on our team. And if we can create an environment where that happens, that just feels good.
PMQ: Do you differentiate between team members who are passing through your restaurant versus those who appear they might be “lifers” trying to establish a career in the industry? And do you train those types of people differently?
Dan Richer: I don’t think anyone’s a ‘lifer.’ I don’t think that way. It doesn’t enter my brain.
I think that every day we have on this planet is a gift. And if someone chooses to spend their time, and part of their life, working at my restaurant? That makes me very happy.
I treat everybody as what they are, which is a human being, and we should always be kind to each other. If somebody on our team is genuinely curious about something, then of course I’m going to want to talk to them about it. Some people aren’t that curious, and those people tend to not stick around at Razza, and that’s okay, too.
We tend to have people who are very curious and want to understand what we’re doing so that they can be successful at their job.
I think that’s a really important distinction: We hire people that want to be successful. They want to do a good job. And I think that’s like 99% of the people out there. You don’t want to work in a job that you’re not good at or that you haven’t been given the tools to succeed at. I view that as my responsibility as the owner. We spend a lot of time on our training practices. It’s so incredibly important for a pizzeria.
PMQ: Do you have a training manual? Do you have training videos? What do you guys do?
Dan Richer: So we have not gone video yet, but it’s on the docket for this year. We are trying to digitize all of it because that’s one of the big changes over the past 20 years. People don’t want to read a manual. They don’t want to read a book. They want micro learning. They want to treat it like TikTok or Instagram where you’re able to watch two minutes worth of learning before you change subjects or topics, so that’s definitely a direction we’re going in. Right now, a lot of the training is on paper and then we follow that up with hands-on, on-the-job training.
PMQ: What advice would you give to a young pizza maker starting out in the biz?
Dan Richer: Make sure you keep your gas tank full.
PMQ: And what do you mean by that?
Dan Richer: It’s really hard to be engaged with your team, your product and your community if you are drained mentally, emotionally and physically from the very real stresses of being in this business. It’s a hard business. I’m fortunate that I love it so much that I’m not ever going to do anything else.
But I’ve gone through it many times throughout the decades: burnout. And nothing goes well when the leader is burnt out. And you have to know when to step back and focus on yourself. Make sure you’re in the right headspace physically and emotionally because you’re the one that everybody is watching. So keep a full gas tank and that’ll keep you going.
PMQ: Do you accomplish that with support systems?
Dan Richer: Yeah, support systems. Therapy: Everybody should be in therapy. Then just keep your eyes wide open and really try to understand the business, both from a product standpoint but also a people standpoint, a financial standpoint.
Here’s one: Understanding facility management is really important. They don’t teach you that in culinary school—not that I went to culinary school. But they don’t teach you how to diagnose an HVAC or plumbing or electrical issue. They don’t teach you that, so study up because it’s really important. It’ll cause you a lot of stress in your life if you can’t figure out how to diagnose some of those issues.
PMQ: Do you feel better at handling those issues now that you’re established and successful?
Dan Richer: I wish I could say yes! But no, it is easier but mostly because I don’t freak out if the air conditioning system breaks. Because we don’t have an HVAC team—not an in-house one, that’s for sure—but I can diagnose most of those issues now. Just like I can diagnose most plumbing issues. I know how to reset a toilet now. So if somebody goes into the bathroom and kicks the toilet or does something and it magically breaks, I know how to fix it, and I don’t need to call a plumber. I don’t have to wait five hours for a plumber to come.
I can go to Home Depot, buy a new toilet and set it myself in an hour.
PMQ: I feel like this is your YouTube channel, right here.
Dan Richer: Dude, nobody talks about facility maintenance. It’s insane. What it actually takes to operate a busy pizzeria is so much more than most people realize.
