Everyone knows that pizza is the world’s favorite food. And you (as a pizzeria owner) just happen to provide this food. But what if you’re allergic to pizza? Gasp! I know, I know... who’s allergic to pizza?

Actually, quite a few people. But it’s not really an allergy: it’s a disease that affects as many as one in 200 people in North America.* And it’s not pizza specifically, but the flour or dough that they are unable to eat. People with Celiac Disease, as it’s called, are unable to eat the gluten found in most bread flours, namely wheat, rye and barley because it destroys the lining in the small intestine, which interferes with the body’s absorption of food.

You might ask why you should offer gluten-free pizza for only one person in every 200. For Roberto Vergalito, owner of Roberto’s Pizza in St. Catherines, Ontario, the reason is quite simple: they have family members. “Obviously, not everyone in the family is going to be a Celiac,” Roberto said. “When you offer something that no one else has, not only will you gain the target as a customer, but, hopefully, the family as well will become your customers.” To give you an example of the attractiveness of gluten-free pizza to people with Celiac Disease, PMQ came across a story about a woman that drove four hours just to eat a gluten-free pizza in Italy.

“I had a customer come in and ask about a gluten-free pizza. I didn’t have any at the time, so she left disappointed,” Roberto said. “Over the months, I had several people come in and ask about gluten-free pizza. These people hadn’t eaten pizza in years because of the gluten.”

Interested in people that couldn’t eat pizza, Roberto began to research Celiac Disease and eventually to start experimenting with different kinds of flour. After extensive experimenting, he decided that rice flour was his best bet. “It took a few months and a half dozen experiments with different types of flour to get the recipe just right,” Roberto said. “I think I sold two 13-inch pizzas the first week I offered it. Mostly by word-of-mouth, my sales for this pizza alone have risen to between 35 and 40 pizzas a week.” In order to get the word-of-mouth started, Roberto sent out monthly coupons and put some ads in the phone book so that people would know what he offered.

To make gluten-free pizza, Roberto has special 13-inch trays that he uses just to make the crust. This keeps cross contamination with his regular dough to a minimum. He also has whoever makes the dough wash their hands every time they come in contact with the regular flour. “I also tell customers that even though my place is spotless clean, this is a pizzeria and there’s flour all over the place,” Roberto said. “Thus far, I’ve had no complaints or any calls from the hospital about someone being sick from it.”

For the most part, his toppings are gluten-free. As far as veggies go, he chops fresh vegetables. The pepperoni, hamburger and bacon are all gluten-free as well. Roberto told me that he has a wide variety of toppings for the gluten-free pizza that people order. For the most part, though, they don’t load up on toppings. He’s only sold a couple of pizzas with the works (all of his toppings).

The gluten-free crust costs Roberto about $3 to make. For a 40-kilogram bag of rice flour, he pays $180 and can make between 100 and 110 crusts. The dough has to be mixed by hand because the flour is harder to manage than regular flour and doesn’t look mixed enough if not handled exactly right. You also have to make the crusts as soon as the dough is made, spreading it in the trays by hand and cooking it. Roberto says that with regular flour, the crust rises, regardless of the thickness of the dough. With a gluten-free crust, cooking it hardens it a little bit, but that it’s a fairly soft crust and takes longer to cook than a normal pizza.

Roberto cooks the crust in aluminum pans, which he then freezes. This way he can offer his crusts in-store as well as having a take-and-bake option, with or without toppings. If he actually makes the pizza for them and cooks it, he charges the customer $13.94, which is the cost of his regular 13-inch, three topping pizza (8.95) plus $4.99. If the customer wants just the crust, he sells it for $7.99.

In this way, Roberto can compete with the usual grocery-store take-home pizza brands. “Again, if someone is looking for something for their celiac child, they won’t find a pizza in the grocery store for them. They’ll come to me and probably get something for themselves,” Roberto says.

By going after a unique market, Roberto is both carving a niche for himself and attracting new customers. For only a slight increase in price, Roberto increases his marketing-base by quite a bit.