A Night At Anthony's Pizza

When you walk into Anthony’s Pizza the first thing that you notice is the small amount of space between the counter and the entryway. This leaves the customer kind of confused on how they should line up, and also makes you bend your neck at an uncomfortable angle to see the full menu at once when trying to make your decision. This is the first aspect that makes Anthony’s an overall agitating atmosphere. The layout of the store overall is awkward with eating areas on the left and the right of the counter, but accessible through a hallway that makes the restaurant overall in three sections. After you order and either pick the pool table arcade side or the more traditional booth side to sit, you await to hear your name. But with a generally loud atmosphere and an impatient staff covered in flour from head to toe, all you can react like when they are frustrated at you for not hearing them yell your name is a laugh and head shake.

However, it’ hard to imagine this mix of negative customer experience is completely on accident. This type of marketing strategy, or ones similar to it, has been used with other things as well. Like minimal marketing, where companies do almost no advertising of their logo, with a goal that when you see it you feel special or like you made a certain cut. Similarly, when you get served food at a place that is rude to the customer, the rest of your experience rests on one thing, the food. When the food tastes good and has good value, like it is at Anthony’s, you are willing to put up with an untraditional service atmosphere.

The people in Anthony’s are pretty hilarious overall, especially on $1 slice nights. I spend most of my Monday nights recovering from the first day of the week at $1 slice night. This particular experience’s highlights were a scraggly-bearded man in his mid-50’s buy a beer and invite himself to sit down too near for a good looking graduate student. He then proceeded to tell her how beautiful she was at every opportunity he could until she decided it was time to down her pizza slice and tell the man she had to go. Secondly one young man I saw was wearing a shirt that said “I <3 MILF’s” which is incredibly tasteful in itself, but he took it one step further by being with a child no older than 3 (that I assumed to be his and my friend agreed), and woman who had to have been the mother, and either his own parents or his in-laws, overall it was quite a comical situation to observe. In the same room were a group of fraternity guys from University of Denver, a more normal family with two kids around 15 years old that looked like they had just finished basketball practice, and a group of 5 college students talking about one of the classes that they were all in.

The spread of age, gender, overall appearance, and educational backgrounds varied immensely in this one fairly small restaurant. In an article written by Northeastern’s professor Jack Levin, he discusses how a restaurant can tell a lot about the area that it is in as far as socio-economic levels, ethnicity, and age of inhabitants. He argues that you can completely map out the demographics of Boston by simply looking at the type of restaurants are most in certain neighborhoods.

Anthony’s is in a University district, where the majority of its customers are college kids. This is why they have hugely popular $1 slice nights that flock in the college students (including myself). But what is interesting is how it attracts generally wealthy white kids along with some fairly odd people that don’t seem to be socialized in the same way that DU students are assuming that most students here would not where an “I <3 MILF’s” shirt in front of two generations of their family or hit on girls that are inappropriately aged with no shame in a public setting.

Taking full advantage of $1 slice night is something that is incredibly acceptable for a college kid, but kind of odd once you get out of your mid – late 20’s because of how personal definitions and expectations change over time. For example, college students can generally afford to eat poorly and still remain fairly healthy because of their age. If my dad was to come to Anthony’s and eat as much pizza as I did it would probably shake his health up. However, the people that were at Anthony’s that were not from DU seemed to be from a lower socio-economic place. For a family of four, a meal out could cost $50 whereas at Anthony’s it only has to cost around $10 - $15.

Eating habits at different life stages can illustrate the socio-economic demographic that an individual is in, much like how the types of restaurants in different sections of Boston map out demographics. Everyone enjoys eating out, but the luxurious nature of it often limits possibilities of where to go. At Anthony’s it was clear that people could afford it, but also enjoyed it despite the fact it wasn’t the healthiest, or the best at serving.

Works Cited:

Levin, Jack. "The Sociology of Boston’s Restaurants: Where Diversity and Good Food Meet." American Sociology Association: Footnotes. 36.5 (2008): n. page. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/mayjun08/rest.html>.