October 19, 2005

PizzaFest slice of real-world marketing

Central High DECA students conduct pizza tasting contest featuring area restaurants

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer

       Lunchtime Wednesday at Central High School was a little different.
      Instead of the usual cafeteria or brown bag choices, students could plunk down $3 to sample pepperoni slices from five area pizza places. The first ever PizzaFest featured taste bud to taste bud competition between Little Ceasars, Pizza Hut, Mancino's and Luigi's, Hockey Heroes and Papa John's. Students contacted many pizza vendors in Traverse City but the approximately 400 slices needed to compete kept smaller ones away.
      When all the votes were counted, Mancino's and Luigi's were the plates down winner. The DECA students arranged for the winner to be announced as the "Best Pizza in Town" for four days spanning last weekend on the TC Talks billboard on Cass Road. They figured that the vote of teens on one of their favorite foods was newsworthy.
      "This is great advertising, all students go to pizza places," said Adri Bruening, a junior and a member of DECA. "$3 for five slices of pizza is a good deal."
      The billboard was just one of many enterprising actions the DECA students did to put on PizzaFest. After getting the green light for the event from DECA advisor Pat Rutt, the school's marketing teacher, they ran it by school administrators and coordinated with lunchroom personnel. Students realized that trays were a necessity to carry the five samples so they borrowed some from the National Cherry Festival.
      They also held the event under a tent donated for the day by the Boy Scouts, which was handy on the cloudy, drizzly day.
      "It was a great success and it was our first annual PizzaFest," said Rutt. "We were very pleased with the turnout and blessed with weather holding out and the little bit of rain we had rained between lunches."
      The event raised $700 for the school's four-year-old chapter of DECA. Short for the Distributive Education Clubs of America, DECA is an international association for marketing students. The goal of the organization is to develop the next generation of marketing, business and entrepreneurial leaders.
      Committed to community service, DECA members previously flexed their fundraising muscle by raising more than $6,500 last year for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
      "We ranked tenth in the nation for that effort," said Rutt.
      The PizzaFest money will help send qualifying students to next spring's international DECA conference in Dallas. This conference draws DECA students from around the nation and world to compete in a range of business and marketing events. Two students, Garret Boursaw and Ashley Ackley, attended the international conference last spring in Anaheim, Calif.
      "It was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced in my life," said Ackley, a junior who is vice president of DECA. "I signed up for the leadership academy and was picked to go in my state; obviously I'm real interested in business."
      Boursaw, who competed in vehicle and petroleum marketing events, said he met students from all over the free world during his week in Anaheim.
      "Culture-wise, you learn a ton," he said.
      Linda Dutowski, co-owner of Mancino's and Luigi's, said the organization participated because shortly after they opened 12 years ago they won a pizza contest at the Cherryland Mall.
      "We entered for the bragging rights and also for a good cause," she said of the PizzaFest. "We believe in giving back to the community and helping out where we can."
      Noting that her customer base includes the lucrative teen market, Dutowski added that many employees are drawn from the high schools.
      "The restaurant business is a stepping stone for youngsters," she said. "We now have a second generation working for us and that's loyalty."