Twin Cities pizza restaurants prep for busy Thanksgiving Eve
PLYMOUTH, Minn. — All the time we'll spend in the kitchen on Thursday makes Wednesday a big night for takeout.
Thanksgiving Eve is a date circled on the calendar for many Twin Cities pizza restaurants.
Bring out the paper plates and hold off on the nice tablecloth. Thursday we're all Americans — on Wednesday we'll eat Italian.
Danny Latuff is the general manager of the Plymouth restaurant bearing his family name. Cousin Julie is helping out with the special bread. Friends Alessandro and Brandon handle the pies.
READ MORE: Shoppers squeeze in last-minute grocery run before Thanksgiving
By dinner, Latuff's will have seven chefs to handle an extra 100 orders more than usual, which could mean 75 pizzas an hour.
"You gotta order extra lettuce and dough and flour. You got to order the tomato sauce, the spice. There's just a lot that goes into it that people don't really realize," Latuff said. "Happy to have the employees we have and all the customers that keep us moving forward."
And while Latuff's has a big team, over in St. Paul, Tommie Daye at Tommie's Pizza is a one man show.
"We make our own dough, our own sauce, our own sausage," Daye said.
But you won't hear him complain. A big night for business is just another reason to be thankful.
"I'm very thankful to be doing this for myself after doing it for other restaurants and organizations for 35 years," he said. "My wife was the one who basically pushed me into doing this. She was like, 'You need to open your own place.' I'm like, 'Well, yeah, I guess so.'"
Hard work, dedication, the flavor of family. Now that's a great recipe.
READ MORE: How kids can help with Thanksgiving dinner
Maybe Thursday is a day off, but then it's right back to work on Friday. Leftovers can only last so long, and then we've got Vikings on Monday night.
According to a restaurant trade organization, some larger companies estimate that they will sell more than 1 million pizzas on Wednesday.
