Papa Murphy’s: Oh, Papa!

“You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.” – Yogi Berra

You could call me a Papa Murphy’s fan. I’m not sure they’ll ever win any ‘Best of’ contests, but I think the pizza is tasty and the convenience they offer for a fresh pizza when you want it is fantastic. I don’t think any other pizza takeout place can match that. Plus, they send out enough coupons which makes their pizzas more than affordable.

I’ve never been unhappy with a Papa Murphy’s pizza until I brought one home just about a month ago. I was a little surprised at how heavy it felt when I picked it up but it wasn’t until I unwrapped it that I noticed how poorly the pizza was made. This was a Cowboy pizza and if you’ve never had one before it’s pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms and black olives.

When I unwrapped the pizza, I found a ton of toppings. Like a Cowboy pizza with extra everything. Normally free extras would be nice, but the problem here was that there were more than just extras, toppings were just dumped across the pizza. And the other problem was there was very little cheese. My first thought was they ran out of cheese just as they started to make my pizza and tried to cover it up with toppings and my second thought was, oh well, just get it into the oven and eat.

Cooking the thing. That was my mistake.

The timer dinged and I pulled out the pizza to take it off the backing tray to crisp up the crust and found that the weight of the toppings, and the moisture that cooked out of the mammoth amount of mushrooms and black olives heaped in the center of the pizza soaked through the crust so that when I lifted up the end to remove the tray, the center broke free and stayed on the baking tray.

One pizza. One trashcan.

One lost pizza isn’t the end of the world and it’s not the poorly made pizza that bothers me and made me write this. It’s the Papa Murphy’s company. If you’ve ever had one of their pizzas, you know they invite you to complete a survey in exchange for a coupon for a future visit. I filled out the survey and let them know I was unhappy and at the end of the survey I was asked if I wanted to be contacted about my visit. I clicked yes and left my contact information, and you know what? Here we are, a month later, and not a peep from Papa. And that’s the part that peeves. Why ask me if I wanted to be contacted if you have no intention of contacting me?

That’s sad, Papa.

For what it’s worth, in the last month I’ve discovered that Pep’s Drafthaus Original pizza is pretty darn good for a frozen pizza. Unfortunately, they’re not availably nationally, so if you’re south of Atlanta, or west of South Dakota you’re either out of luck or in for a road trip.

“Unless you are a pizza, the answer is yes, I can live without you.” – Bill Murray