Sid Backlund and Dolly Smith display one of the many frozen pizzas the company hopes to sell throughout portions of a five-state area. Sid and Dolly have spent many long hours and traveled many long miles over the last three years to make this project happen. The pizzas will be made in Siren, Wisconsin and delivered to market by Upper Lakes Foods.
“I might have tiger by the tail here,” said Sid Backlund Jr. sounding somewhat happy and somewhat terrified at the same time.
Backlund was referring to his placement and sales of frozen Sven & Ole’s pizza in three locations in the county. Well, that and a lot more.
“We sold over 700 pizza in two weeks. I would have thought we would have done really, really well if we would have done half of that. That would have been very good for this time of the year. That kind of blew me away.”
Actually, Backlund planned for a slow rollout, but social media took it to another level.
“I was just promoting the frozen pizza sales at the Tofte Holiday station, Ryden’s Gas Station at the border and Trail Center up the Gunflint Trail on Facebook. It literally blew up and got over 37,000 responses from people with 138 shares, 781 likes and 200 more page likes from late Friday night to Sunday night. I was absolutely shocked by the response from the public,” he said.
That was three weeks ago, but this is just the start of a much larger rollout from the iconic pizza maker. Before long five varieties of Sven & Ole’s pizzas will be available far beyond the Tip of the Arrowhead.
Through Upper Lakes Food Distribution, residents of Fargo, North Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Des Moines, Iowa and places in between will be able to purchase a Sven & Ole’s pizza. What will happen to the Sven & Ole’s Facebook page when that happens is anybody’s guess, but Sid knows that his Sven & Ole bumper stickers are often seen throughout the lower 48 states, as well as in many countries, so his brand is well known. “Now I will get a chance to see if our brand can translate into sales outside of our immediate market areas,” he said.
To produce frozen food products containing meat and to sell across state lines, the product must be produced in a USDA plant with an inspector on site. Because of this the pizzas won’t be made locally. But they will be made to Sid’s exacting standards and recipes. Backlund has spent the last three years researching and investigating the frozen pizza market. Along the way he has visited many USDA food production plants and places that make frozen pizzas, but one stood out far above the rest.
“I really liked Square One Foods in Siren, Wisconsin. They are easy to work with, have a nice professional staff and have the ability to produce a lot of handcrafted pizzas in a short period of time,” said Backlund.
“I needed to find someone who could make a large quantity, but more importantly, keep up the high quality. The last thing I wanted to do was put out a pizza with my label on it but then it didn’t taste like a Sven & Ole’s pizza. I’ve seen that from other pizza makers before and it doesn’t work. Square One has spent a lot of time experimenting with me to get things right. I’m really happy with the product we can put out to the customer.”
The 12-inch pizzas will be built with the same bread dough recipe Sid’s mom, Betty, gave to him years ago. It is the bread dough that helped launch Sven & Ole’s on 9 West Wisconsin Street in Grand Marais in 1981.
The Dough Shop in Burnsville, MN, a company that has worked with Sven & Ole’s for the past 16 years, will make the dough and the crusts and ship them to Siren within a day of pizza production, Sid said.
“It’s a ‘tweeners crust’, he said. “They aren’t thin crust or thick crust, but something in-between those two crusts.”
The Dough Shop had a special machine created in Chicago and a 75-foot-long oven from Germany that makes crust that is very similar to their hand tossed crusts. “They are going to make too many pizzas to hand throw the crusts. It just wouldn’t be possible. But I really wanted to keep the crusts as close to hand thrown as possible. It took a long time to find the right way to closely recreate a hand tossed crust, but it was worth the wait.”
Once in stores or bars, customers will be able to find up to five varieties of pizzas in the freezers: Mozzarella Cheese, Pepperoni, Italian Sausage, Sausage & Pepperoni Combo and the Uffdah Zah (supreme).
“We actually have 10 varieties, but five are specialty pizzas like Chicken & Wild Rice w/Alfredo Sauce, Slow Smoked BBQ Beef Brisket, Buffalo Chicken, Chicken/Bacon/Ranch and Hawaiian BBQ Chicken pizzas. We will put them out for a limited time in freezers. If one or more of them have extremely strong sales, we may offer it all of the time,” Backlund said.
Backlund will meet with Upper Lakes Foods on Wednesday, February 4. “They said they have a big surprise for me. I don’t know if I should be excited or afraid,” he said with a laugh.
Whatever Backlund learns on the 4th, the process is picking up speed like a dough ball rolling down a steep hill.
“Upper Lakes Foods hasn’t started distributing our pizzas yet, but will be distributing them in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northern Michigan, most of Northern Iowa including Des Moines and Omaha, Nebraska and into North and South Dakota,” Backlund said.
“The plan is to roll it out system wide. Upper Lakes has a team working out the marketing and logistics at this time. Once that is done they will make an initial order of pizzas. After that we will do a presentation with their sales staff covering the details of our pizzas and discuss sales strategy with them. The pizza will be pretty much ready to roll after that.”
The labels will feature the popular Sven & Ole’s characters. Backlund worked with local computer graphic artist Jayne Richards on the design. “Grand Marais photographer Bryan Hansel took our pictures for the labels, billboards and other production materials, Backlund said, adding that he will keep working with Richards, Hansel and others on more labels and point of sale material as the project unfolds.
Once the pizzas hit the broader market, Backlund knows there is a lot more work to do. “We know we will be popular in some pockets—some areas of the Northland—but we also know that we will have to build our brand in other areas where we aren’t so well known or totally unknown. We will work with marketers and presenters to have our pizzas out for taste tests in those areas. Where we have done that, it has worked well for us.”
A subsidiary of Sven & Ole’s named North Shore Food Specialties, LLC has been created to sell and market the frozen pizza line.
After all of these years Backlund admits, “I still like this business. At times it’s wearing. And like anything else it can be frustrating. Especially in the winter when it can be slow. But overall it keeps me interested and I find myself excited about the prospects of what is to come. We will change the menu some in the restaurant for the upcoming season.
“There are also changes to the building itself that need to happen. There are always things on the horizon, but for now, I’m excited about this rollout. I can’t wait to see what will happen next.”
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