The boss of the oldest pizza delivery service in the canton talks about his business

‘La Pizza’ in Baar has survived for over 30 years despite enormous competition. Owner Sinan Berkyürek and the legendary founder Urs Steiner reveal the recipe for survival.

‘Someone phoned to order a large delivery late at night. To be delivered to a gravelled area in Zug,’ says Sinan Berkyürek. No, this isn’t an account of a drug deal. It's the story of a pizza order that happened recently. The customer was the EVZ ice hockey team, which was catering for a visiting team after a match, explains Sinan Berkyürek.

He’s the owner of the La Pizza delivery service in the Oberneuhofstrasse industrial estate in Baar. The 45-year-old sits at a wooden table that almost disappears in the enormous space of the production room. 180 square metres. Three pizza ovens. Two dough machines. A spacious warehouse. ‘These conditions are a privilege,’ says Berkyürek. The master baker had already opened a pizza delivery service at the age of 19, but sold it to gain experience in large catering businesses. He took over ‘La Pizza’ at the beginning of 2022.

The special thing about this business is that it’s the oldest pizza delivery service founded in the canton of Zug that's still in business today. There are myths surrounding the long-standing operator Urs Steiner (see more below), and Sinan Berkyürek says that he is still benefitting from his pioneering work today.

This also applies to his successor Daniel Rohrbach, after he spent seven years running ‘La Pizza’. The man from Hagendorn ran the delivery service from October 2014. ‘It was a very instructive, intensive and sometimes nerve-wracking time,’ recalls Daniel Rohrbach, who now runs the Bistro Gleis 3 at the Pilatus railway station in Alpnachstad during the summer season.

He became aware of the Baar-based company as a career changer through an online advert. During his time in Baar, competition in the delivery sector grew enormously. ‘When I took over ‘La Pizza’, there were 13 services listed on Eat.ch that delivered food to Baar - today there are 70.’ Research by the 'Zuger Zeitung' newspaper confirms this figure. If you search explicitly for ‘pizza’, you get 27 hits.

Owner Sinan Berkyürek in the spacious production kitchen of ‘La Pizza’ in Baar      Photo: Matthias Jurt
 

The basics have to be right
The food delivery business is brutally competitive, especially in the pizza sector. This is clear from the frequent changes of ownership and names. Most providers belong to a large chain. Not so ‘La Pizza’. The secret of its survival lies in the freshness of its ingredients, says the owner. ‘We make fresh dough every day, and don't just slap store-bought tomato sauce on it, but refine it with spices and oils, for example. We also use high-quality mozzarella with a low fat content. That's the basis of every pizza, and we get it right,’ says Sinan Berkyürek, promoting his product.

95% of all the dishes offered by his company are fresh. This is because the company offers much more than the dish that gives it its name. But pizzas do account for 90% of the sales. On peak days, he sells up to 280 pizzas, mainly on weekends. But business is also good during the week, thanks to loyal regular customers such as offices, schools and fire brigades in the canton.

The fact that ‘La Pizza’ has lasted so long is also due to the fact that pizza is flourishing as an evergreen in the catering landscape. It defies the calorie-counting zeitgeist. Even the delivery packaging is not particularly contemporary. Because, due to the fat residues, pizza boxes do not belong in the cardboard collection, but in the general rubbish. At weekends, several thousand boxes are likely to be collected in the canton of Zug alone. ‘There's simply no alternative at the moment,’ says Sinan Berkyürek. He has switched to recyclable materials for other packaging, but is well aware that most customers are still likely to throw them in the bin - especially when they eat outside.

Customers can quickly feel themselves being patronised
He is wary of making customers feel patronised. This applies just as much to the waste issue as it does to their ordering behaviour. The majority of orders are placed via the large online food portals. According to industry figures, market leader Eat.ch takes a 13% commission per order. That's why the delivery services prefer hungry people to contact them directly. ‘I once called a regular customer who always ordered online, and asked him whether he would prefer to order directly from us.’ The customer's reaction taught him a lesson, says Berkyürek: ‘He then never ordered anything from us again.’

Nevertheless, dialogue with customers is important to him. The boss responds to most of the comments made on Google. Negative online reviews are poison for the business - and for Berkyürek's psyche. He tells the story of a woman who made serious false claims online. ‘What affected the company also hit me personally - I felt really bad about it,’ he says. Some people are aware of their digital power, and try to obtain free food by blackmailing companies with the threat of bad reviews. Sinan Berkyürek does not want to go into details publicly. ‘This is a sensitive issue in our industry.’

He is also saddened by the fact that many people do not appreciate the work of his team. ‘A pizza is also a dish, and we prepare it in a special way,’ he says by way of explanation: ’There's a lot of hard work behind it. Just making a fresh dough is time-consuming. I also pay wages here, to the chefs, the drivers, my deputy and finally to myself.’ He currently employs twelve drivers and five people in the kitchen, all part-time.

This allows the boss to work less. He now has much more time for his wife and two children than when he took over the company. ‘I used to be in Baar every day. But I now take Saturdays and every other Sunday off,’ he says.

Is pizza on the family table on those Now days? Sinan Berkyürek smiles, as he often does, and replies: ‘Of course, I still like it - I'm at the source.’

More information about La Pizza can be found on:
https://www.pizzaservice.ch/hausgemacht.html
and the selection can be seen on:
https://www.pizzaservice.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/redakteure/images/files/Speisekarte_La_Pizza.pdf

Note:
With eleven drivers at the best of times
Urs Steiner is generally regarded as being the founder of the La Pizza delivery service. But that's not quite true. The Baar native took over the company in 1994 from a triumvirate led by former EVZ player-coach Reto Stuppan - not even one year after it was founded. ‘They didn't know much about food,’ recalls the now 60-year-old Urs Steiner, a trained butcher and chef. He, on the other hand, procured and combined fresh ingredients from the very start.

The current owner, Sinan Berkyürek, tells a story he heard about Urs Steiner. ‘In view of the low level of competition, he could afford to tell a customer from Hünenberg to come to the municipal border with Cham to pick up the pizza.’ ‘That's half true,’ says Steiner. ‘It's true that I had to set delivery limits, so that the drivers were back quickly enough for the next journey. If a customer was willing to pick up a pizza at this limit, then of course we’d organise it. The delivery time was the ‘be-all and end-all’. Whoever was faster was also ahead of the competition. Because we had competition right from the start,’ explains Urs Steiner. At the best of times, there were eleven drivers on the road for ‘La Pizza’.

In the beginning, his wife Barbara helped with the business, but he was later able to employ additional staff. ‘I couldn't have done it without the staff,’ he says, mentioning pizzaiolo Aziz Halili and his first driver Philippe Engster. After 20 years, he sold the delivery service to Daniel Rohrbach. ‘I've achieved a lot, and I'm still proud of that today,’ he adds.