Hot Lips Pizza

When David Yudkin gets up in the morning, he can’t wait to get to work. He runs Hot Lips Pizza and Hot Lips Soda, two locally-owned food operations in Portland, with his wife and partner Jeana Edelman. Currently they have five pizza stores, a central commissary, and a beverage company that makes soda -- all from locally-grown ingredients.

When they started calculating the real profit in their livelihoods about a decade ago, it became clear that working with local farmers played a major role in that equation. After all, these were the people who could supply the highest quality ingredients with the lowest impact on the environment. And they had real relationships with real people. “My wheat farmers are in here every 8 weeks” says Yudkin. “These guys are really bright, great people. They come in and want to see their wheat made into dough. They’re really proud of the pizzas.”

Each day local farm ingredients arrive at the Hot Lips commissary to be made into high quality sauces, sodas, condiments and pizza toppings. But on any given day, what comes through that door will vary. That’s because Hot Lips has a strict commitment to using only high-quality seasonable foods that can be produced locally – down to the tomatoes in their pizza sauces. As a result, they have to change their menu 3-4 times a year, and find a way to explain that to customers.

“One of the key things I never anticipated was how communications-intensive it would be to make seasonal menus. When we get a phone call from a farmer saying he can’t deliver tomatoes because he had a frost, that information needs to get from the farmer to the managers to the Hot Lips counter people” Says Yudkin. “When customers come in wanting that great tomato pizza they had last week, Hot Lips staff have to be able to explain why they should try the new potato bacon kale pizza instead. Because we’ve built trust with the community, people are willing to give that a try.”

When Hot Lips had the opportunity to build a new store in 2001, they brought in architects, store managers, the building owner, and the city of Portland for a charette. Together they analyzed how Hot Lips could deliver pizza with the least amount of impact. To lessen the impact of delivering pizzas, they moved to compact cars, electric vehicles, and even bikes. They put a heat reclaiming system into place, thanks to a grant from the city, which allows them to turn off the hot water heater and use recovered heat exhausted from pizza ovens instead at hand sinks, dishwashers and washing machines. They also designed the whole store around a key piece of equipment -- the walk-in cooler -- which helped them cut electrical consumption by two thirds, while decreasing freeon emissions and the need for A/C inside their eateries.

All that hard work as helped Hot Lips build a thriving business that puts out top-quality products with limited impact. But most importantly, it has allowed them to build a healthy, sustainable community -- at the pizza counters, inside their commissary, and out on the local farms that supply them. They’ve even ridden in the combines. It’s a happy, holistic partnership that keeps the staff clocking in, day after day.