Pizza shop makes employees 'walk the plank' for burning pizza

BOISE, Idaho (KBOI) — To all pizza lovers out there: Recently there was a debate on if pineapples should be a topping or not. How about burnt pizza? Is it a punishable crime? Well one Idaho pizzeria seems to think so.

An average pizza at Pesto’s cooks pretty quickly. Sometimes it could take 6 minutes to bake, or it can be 2 minutes and burn. So how do you burn a pizza?

“Basically we do everything by hand here. It’s very difficult, we have a 600 degree oven that fluctuates so they get burnt,” said Lloyd Parrott, owner of Pesto's Pizza.

What’s the solution? Tossing the pizza, putting on a “I burned a pizza” suit and walking the plank.

“Well it was one way to remind all of us not to burn pizzas,” said Parrott.

Ol’ Smokey here was the first to put the suit to use. By simply not paying attention to time, he was chatting up with his co-workers enjoying just another day at work.

“And I waited just a little bit too long and it overcooked it, so I had to put on the suit and walk the plank,” said employee Sterling Hunt.

This was a broken pizza that couldn’t be fixed with tomato paste. With orders on the line, employees have to get to work on another pizza.

“Then we will make them a new pizza. Of course we don’t want to serve bad food, we would love to serve much better food than bad food,” said Hunt.

So why walk the plank? Well, this hut has a pirate theme. A fun inside joke to make the workplace enjoyable.

“We’re all good friends. We have a good time. It’s very hard work, we all love it so if we can’t be hard on each other then, you know we gotta have some fun around here its all in good fun,” said Parrott.

So if you ever drive by the pesto’s pizza on Goddardlook out for a man wearing a bright orange suit. He definitely just burned a pizza.

“It’ll happen again. Keep your eyes out. One of us will be out there again,” said Parrott.