So, when we heard Aoki was making pizza with "lit herb infused dough," we didn't get super excited or rush out to try it. We left that to other people, who ordered from the delivery-only location at 444 N La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. And those other people, scrolling through their delivery app, noticed that Aoki's wasn't the only pizza place said to be at 444 N La Cienega Boulevard. There was also a place called "Thick & Tasty." And another called "Gabriella's New York City Pizza." And "Froman's Chicago Deep Dish Pizza," which sounds an awful lot like a sly Ferris Bueller reference meaning, "Haha, we are frauds."
Let's offer the most charitable explanation for what's going on here. If restaurants are delivery-only, they don't need to carve out a whole lot of space for tables and stuff, so it makes sense for multiple restaurants to share a location, make the whole thing kitchens, and scale up. Cool, cool. But then people thought to give the place a visit, and they reported seeing just two guys working there alone, surrounded by boxes with different labels. Phone, and they won't know which restaurant to identify themselves as. Sometimes, you'll order from one restaurant, and they'll send you the pizza in the wrong box.
Why would one place pretend to be a dozen different restaurants? Aoki's people say this system lets them sell a bunch of different kinds of pizzas under different menus. But since one restaurant could do that just fine, and since reviews on these pizzas are less than stellar, here's the conspiracy theory: They keep coming up with new names so when one gets a bad rep, they can just drop it and replace it with another. Which has to be an odds with Aoki's personal goal here, since he's all about branding.
Collision Conf/Wiki Commons
"Though, I could have called it 'A-OK Pizza.' Real missed opportunity there."
66 Comments