Got a blog tip? Contact us
« Sly foxes | Main | Cheers for Costco, Jeers for Honda »
The Great Pizza Cup Mystery
For anyone out there with knowledge of how paper-cup distribution works, I beg you for enlightenment. For years and years, I've noticed that New York-area pizza places almost never print up their own cups. Rather, the cups are from random, far-flung establishments. Case in point: At a Hoboken, NJ, pizza place, I recently received my beverage in a cup from PNC Park, home of baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates. That's 314 miles as the crow files. But crows are not delivering these cups. Who is? Is this a nationwide phenomenom? A worldwide conspiracy? Somebody, please, clue me in.
Posted by Jack Silbert on 07/16/2005 | Permalink
Comments
A long, long time ago in a different New York (that means early 1980s) I walked into a little donut shop at Broadway and Canal on a hot day and ordered one Coke. It came in a plain-looking paper cup. When I looked at the cup closely, I saw a thick line printed near the top, and next to it the words: "FILL BARIUM LEVEL TO HERE." Tasted delicious.
Posted by: Rick Prelinger | Jul 16, 2005 8:54:24 PM
What killed me even more than that was walking into a restaurant supply place and noticing that they were selling Coke paper cups. God. Why would you? Does buying a cup that says "Coke" on it make you buy even more Coke? "Hey, what a great idea, I'll have a drink!"
So I'm imagining that perhaps restaurant supply places hoover up unused cups from failed businesses and/or seasonal/dated cups then sell them for cheap totally somewhere else. Even cheaper than Coke cups. That's my guess.
Also I like to place the cup over my mouth and chin and suck in a little bit so the cup stays there. I hold it like that the entire working day and on the commute home, usually. Now there's some other guy on my route who's also doing it as well. Poseur.
Posted by: Restaurant Supply Comment | Jul 16, 2005 10:32:07 PM
This is sort of related to this thread. Back in the day (as the kids say), I went to what was then called RCA Institute on W. 31st St. just off 8th Ave. Most of the students would go for lunch to a pizza place on 8th, just south of 31st.
I would always order a large soda with my slice. One day, a guy I was having lunch with, said, "You know, I don't think your large cup holds anymore soda than my small cup." I doubted him, so we took a "small" cup full of soda and poured it into my "large" cup. Guess what? Yup, although the cups had a different shape, they held the exact same amount of liquid.
I threatened to call the city about it but I left the school soon after and never followed through. I've wondered several times over the years how long they continued that rip-off and how much money they made by the fraud.
Posted by: Bob Pagani | Jul 17, 2005 5:32:55 AM
By the way, I notice that the "barium" story was posted by Rick Prelinger, of the Prelinger archives of ephemeral film. Man, that's cool!
Posted by: Bob Pagani | Jul 17, 2005 5:33:50 AM
i was wondering if this post was going to be about the pnc park cups! they're used for drinks at stella's pizza (9th avenue at 17th st) as well. when i first saw someone carrying one around chelsea market, i thought, 'that's a really long time to be nursing a soda.'
i'll try and ask around stella's tomorrow. maybe they can shed some light on this.
Posted by: maura | Jul 18, 2005 1:18:31 AM
Eisenberg's, the old lunch counter across from the Flatiron building, almost always uses random cups like this. I got one there from "Texas Burger".
Posted by: Damian | Jul 18, 2005 11:48:32 AM
I've always assumed two things: one, there are grey market restaurant supply houses that sell cut rate supplies that are part of some more or less stable aftermarket for overruns (by the cup manufacturers), bankruptcy sales, etc. (with over 10,000 establishment that sell food, the churn rate has to be high), or that the beverage suppliers provide cups gratis as part of getting the account, the trade-off being they are doing their own warehouse scrounding to minimize costs (for instance, when PNC contracts a beverage supplier for event the supplier either sets an artificially high minimum quantity, or they pad the estimate to cover the overrun, in both cases expecting to reciruclate the surplus to their regular accounts), or are getting paid by advertisers to distribute a fixed quantity (the prevelance of North Fork Bank cups for instance) as part of a media buy. Relative a commercial, insuring that you get a 15 minute brand placement on a prospect's desk every monring that also happens to contain the Most Important Thing in the World (one's morning joe) it a hell of a buy considering the cost.
Posted by: 99 | Jul 18, 2005 2:49:43 PM
I worked one summer for a firm that made printed paper goods like cups and plates. If you turn a cup over, there may be stock codes, filling capacity and the name of the manufacturer on the bottom of the crimped rim.
Posted by: a cup veteran | Jul 28, 2005 6:24:29 PM
What usually happens is that a restaurant or other food business goes out of business or changes their cup design, and a small business owner will go to an auction and pick up their old paper goods for dirt cheap. My dad owned stores on the Jersey Shore, and he would do that all the time. He once got dozens of cases of "New Kids on the Block" squeeze bottles after their downfall of popularity for, like $5 per case. And usually people don't pay that much attention to what's on their cup or bottle.
Posted by: cody wilmer | Aug 17, 2005 1:47:26 PM
