Company: Rich's Foodservice

Website: richsfoodservice.com

Introduced: March 2020

Distribution: Foodservice

Product Snapshot: The trend is clear: consumers are increasingly demanding a unique, personalized pizzeria experience—right down to custom-crafted, authentic dough. Foodservice kitchens trying to answer the call in the face of labor demands that necessitate easy-handling products may be feeling a little… stretched.

Enter Rich Products Corporation (Rich’s), with its new Ready-To-Stretch Sheeted Pizza Dough. A labor shortage means kitchen staff are stretched thin when it comes to custom orders. Ready-To-Stretch meets those challenges by putting the power of premium pizza right where it belongs—in operators’ hands.

Loraine Grimm, senior product manager at Rich’s says, "We had the research that showed the importance of crust in the hierarchy of what makes a great pizza, and used that to come up with a dough that emulates an authentic, handmade recipe in every way, but modernized it to meet the demands of today’s kitchens.”

Research shows that almost half of consumers choose where they get their pizza based on “the best crust." Ready-To-Stretch checks the box in every category, including taste, texture and aroma compared to scratch-made dough. Plus, with the growth of fast-casual restaurants not expected to slow down anytime soon, another major advantage with Ready-To-Stretch is its quick turnaround, going from the cooler to the oven in just minutes. Ready-To-Stretch can even be utilized to meet unexpected surges in traffic, thawing at room temperature from frozen in just 20 minutes. Ready-To-Stretch bakes consistently in any oven, including convection, wood-fired, impinger and deck ovens.

With its customized stretching, Ready-To-Stretch dough is extremely versatile and can be used not only for pizzas but also calzones, breadsticks and more. And because the entire portfolio—including Ready-To-Stretch and Ready-To-Stretch Cauliflower—comes in two different sizes (Individual - 6”/6oz. and Large - 12”/22oz.), chefs can infuse their personalities into every pie by custom stretching it to their desired size, thickness and shape.

“We’re letting our customers put their authenticity on display, while saying goodbye to guesswork, in order to have artisan-quality pizza on the menu,” said Loraine Grimm.