Free Pizza Delivery…By Airplane
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 01.10.06 | 1:46 PM ET
More proof that Americans do love their pizza: A couple of Nome, Alaska entrepreneurs have started what could be the world’s first pizza parlor delivering its goods by airplane. Nome, a city of 3,500 so remote it’s the finish line for the Iditarod, had no take-out restaurants before Airport Pizza arrived on the scene in early August. Now Alaskans from hundreds of miles away are hooked on Airport Pizza’s pies, which are carried by Frontier Flying Service.
Frontier flies pizzas across the region—St. Lawrence Island, Shishmaref, Gambell, Brevig, Teller, Elim, Golivan, Wales, White Mountain, Koyuk, “even the occasional Unalakleet,” Airport Pizza manager Matt Tomter told Katie Pesznecker of the Anchorage Daily News last week.
Airport Pizza isn’t typical food-wise, either. Pesznecker writes:
Tomter and his staff layer on fancy ingredients, from meatballs to chorizo to roasted chicken, from artichoke hearts to jalapenos to spicy Thai peanut sauce. It’s way beyond the cheese-and-pepperoni mind-set.
The cost? A 15-inch cheese is $16. Several of the 19-inch pies cost $32—like the Greek-themed Mediterranean, the Alfredo pepper-steak pizza, and the gyro pizza, with gyro sausage, onion, tomato, feta, mozzarella, and a garlic butter sauce topped with cucumber dill dressing.
Just before Christmas, 50 pizzas were flown to Savoonga, about 160 miles west of Nome on the northern coast of St. Lawrence Island. Mayor Jane Kava said the city ordered them as gifts for families.
The order: Twenty-five Hawaiians, with Canadian bacon, pineapple, mozzarella and marinara; and 25 chicken ranch, with chicken, bacon, red onion, tomato, mozzarella, cheddar and country ranch sauce.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Pete Combs 01.10.06 | 6:52 PM ET
You know, that makes for a great story! Can anyone put us in touch with Airport Pizza? We’re an aviation news site and we do three podcasts a day—this would be a cool story!
Thanks!
Pete Combs
Senior Editor
Robin Johnson 02.07.06 | 3:49 PM ET
Airport pizza’s contact number is 907-443-PZZA (7992) - Their URL is
http://www.airportpizza.com/
Hope this helps.
Pete Combs 02.07.06 | 4:51 PM ET
Thanks for that! We did a story for our podcast awhile back. Let me run this back through the mill.
Best regards!