Your next slice at this Grapevine pizzeria may have been designed by local students
A group of Grapevine High School culinary students is working with a local pizzeria for class credit — and a chance to get a pizza featured on the menu.
The school is partnering with Wise Guys Pizzeria’s Grapevine location to make a new pizza. The students, working in groups of two, must come up with the concept, cost, market research, ingredients and advertising for the pizza. The winners will be determined by customer sales and feedback, and the winning pizza will remain on the menu for a limited time.
The partnership between Wise Guys and the Grapevine-Collyville school district’s Career and Technical Education program, now in its second year, gives students the opportunity to get hands-on experience on the business side of the culinary industry. The school also partners with the Gaylord Texan Resort on paid student internships.
The culinary CTE program starts with students learning the principles of hospitality, with students learning how to run a business. Students then move on to hands-on kitchen experience in the culinary class, where they learn the basics of cooking and baking. The advanced class is where these students are now for the Wise Guys project.
The pizza concepts that the students came up with for the assignment are:
- Concrete Jungle: Inspired by pizza classics, and topped with Alfredo and marinara sauces, mozzarella cheese, garlic chicken, red bell peppers, sausage, capicola, hot honey and red pepper flakes. The pizza is finished with a pepperoni and cheese stuffed crust.
- Gym Rat: Built for protein lovers, this stuffed-crust pizza is topped with marinara sauce, pepper jack cheese, sweet and spicy sausage, cooked bacon, capicola and red and green bell peppers.
- Capone Veggie: A thin-crust option topped with pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, red bell peppers, red onion, fresh arugula and Italian seasoning.
Jose Uscanga and Melina Olvera came up with the idea for “Gym Rat,” a high-protein pizza packed with different types of meat for those who are working out at the gym. Uscanga said they used the demographics of the area to come up with their idea.
“If you have ideas and just open up your mind, and if it’s good, just put it out there,” Uscanga said.
Olvera said their pizza went through different renditions until they came up with those specific ingredients.
Colt McMaster and Emma Balding created the Concrete Jungle pizza and said the culinary program gave them more opportunities to use their hands and make a product.
“I really like catering and I think I really learned how to balance my time and learn how to cook for large groups of people,” Balding said. “We’ve also catered for the Parent Teacher Association, the homecoming, the school board and all the GCISD principals. It’s really cool that we get to go out and go cook in different kitchens and then serve to all these different people.”
McMaster said he learned more about cooking during this elective class than he has anywhere else, and now knows all the techniques.
The third team of students, seniors Trenton Venable and Eden Matongo, worked on the Capone Veggie, the only vegetarian pizza in the competition. The pair said they liked the taste and how light their pizza turned out.
“We wanted to make a pizza for people that are on a health journey, because our pizza has no meat on it, so this is just a pizza with vegetables that are mixed together.” Matongo said.
Culinary instructor Kaylie Kotecki said part of the pizza challenge is research, and students do this by going on the Wise Guys website and seeing what’s on the menu, what different items are called and the common ingredients the restaurant already uses.
“Being able to work with Wise Guys and other different community partners helps them learn from the business side of things and to see what’s out there for the future,” Kotecki said.
Wise Guys Pizzeria Grapevine co-owner Kevin McNamara told the Star-Telegram this is all a learning opportunity for the students.
“That’s the key, because it’s a work in progress, and they get to see the real side of that,” McNamara said. “I shared with them last week that even if you have a good idea, sometimes that doesn’t translate into sales. So they have to just keep trying and making tweaks and pivots to what the guest actually says.”
