Who doesn’t love pizza? Our country’s love affair with this greasy, cheesy food is evident on food delivery platforms like UberEats and GrubHub. It only takes a few clicks on your smartphone to order Domino’s, Pizza Hut, or Papa John’s straight to your door.
But what about independent pizzerias? They don’t have nearly as much representation online. The national pizza chains and their hefty digital marketing campaigns drown out local shops and make it even harder for family-run businesses to thrive.
This is exactly why Ilir Sela created Slice, an online food ordering platform for independent pizzerias.
What is Slice?
Instead of featuring national chains that already have a steady following, Slice caters exclusively to small, local pizzerias, especially in small cities where large-scale delivery services like GrubHub and UberEats aren’t as prevalent.
It began in 2010 as a modest, local food ordering platform called MyPizza. About two dozen pizzerias in the Northeast used MyPizza to create and manage websites with menu information. Over the years, MyPizza steadily grew to include thousands of restaurants nationwide, inspiring the rebrand to Slice in 2016.
Not only did Slice move into the mobile space to create the Slice App, but it even hired the former vice president of GrubHub to serve as its chief marketing and customer officer. Now Slice is a force to be reckoned with as it fights to help independent pizzerias obtain more orders.
How Does Slice Work?
As a customer, you order your food on Slice just like you would on any food delivery app. Choose your local restaurant of choice, create your order, and pay. Your order is sent to the restaurant through email, phone, or fax, depending on the restaurant’s preference, then delivered to your door by the restaurant’s own couriers.
Slice takes a $1.95 commission per order, which is much lower than the fees charged by competitors. UberEats can charge up to 30% of the total order, while GrubHub ranges between 5% and 15%. This lower fee explains why the number of pizzerias using Slice has skyrocketed from 4,500 in 2016 to 10,000 today. Slice keeps growing rapidly, as the platform has taken more than 12 million orders since its inception.
Using Slice When You’re Craving Pizza
To support your favorite pizzeria, you can order from a mom-and-pop shop on Slice in about 60 seconds.
In Sela’s own words, “Our whole system is built around pizza. We’ve designed the app so that, within just two taps, you can place an order, and we have features like the pizza builder, which makes it easy to customize your order.”
Download Slice through the Google Play or App Store to find the local pizza shops participating near you.
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