HARLINGEN, Texas (ValleyCentral) — Fans are bringing their appetite for the big game this Sunday between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs.
Super Bowl Sunday is widely recognized in America as one of the busiest and most celebrated days of the year while boosting sales for the food industry, especially pizza.
Despite which team you are rooting for this year, the love for food may be the best thing bringing everybody together.
Super Bowl pizza sales across the U.S.
According to the American Pizza Community organization, a coalition that represents thousands of pizzerias in the United States, over 12.5 million pizzas are anticipated to be sold on Super Bowl Sunday.
The Pizzeria, a family-owned pizza shop, has been serving customers at their Harlingen, Mission, Edinburg and Brownsville locations for over 14 years.
Omar Formacio, co-owner of The Pizzeria, says support from the community makes Super Bowl Sunday a busy and rewarding day.
“Regardless of the location, it’s always the busiest on Friday,” Formacio said. “So, of course Super Bowl always falling on a Sunday, it’s a bit busier than a busy Friday for us.”
Preparation for the Super Bowl at The Pizzeria starts with having the right team for the big day.
Game plan for Super Bowl Sunday
The Pizzeria is no stranger to preparing for the Super Bowl and receiving mass orders on game day. In 2023, they sold over 1,000 pizzas on Super Bowl Sunday at all four locations.
Prior to last year, The Pizzeria received a mass order where they sold 200 pizzas and 1,500 wings to the Marine Military Academy on a Super Bowl Sunday. The key to making their family-recipe pizza at a large scale is the right inventory and solid teamwork.
The Pizzeria starts preparing for the big day at least one week in advance by stocking up on enough pizza boxes, portioning out pizza toppings, maintaining refrigeration units and making their fan-favorite dough.
“Everything starts from our inventory from the week before to make sure we get everything on Monday regarding the dry goods,” Formacio said. “Then we start making our dough by Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.”
The Pizzeria’s generational family-recipe for fresh dough from scratch requires up to 72 hours of fermentation.
“So by Friday, we already made the last batch that we’re going to be using on Sunday,” Formacio said.
The dough is what takes the longest to make followed by labor intensive work by shredding bulky blocks of cheese.
“We shred and blend and make our own blend of mozzerella,” Formacio said.
It takes The Pizzeria up to eight hours to finely shred every ounce of cheese that will be used on Super Bowl day.
“By Saturday we’re going to have everything in our refrigeration units and ready to go Sunday morning,” Formacio said.
From The Pizzeria kitchen to your Super Bowl party, Formacio and his family are excited to share the gameday experience with football fans and pizza lovers.
“Our game plan to just be ready for for everything and once the day comes we can we can just do our best,” Formacio said.
The Pizzeria has up to 15 pre-orders of pizza lined up for Sunday with more orders expected to roll in leading to the big event.
