Preserves: The Manitoba Food HIstory PODCAST

KENT DAVIES: You’re listening to Preserves: A Manitoba Food History Podcast. Exploring the rich, flavourful history of Manitoba food and the people who make it, sell it and eat it. From the packing table to the dinner table. From restaurant specials to grandma’s secret recipes. We consider the cultural, social, and commercial aspects of Manitoba food and what it means to us. I’m your host Kent Davies. As per usual I’m joined by food and business historian, Professor Janis Thiessen.

JANIS THIESSEN: Hi Kent. What’s in the pantry for us today?

KENT DAVIES: On this episode we’ll be showcasing some of the student research from our summer class. Can you talk about the class Janis?

JANIS THIESSEN Sure, this was a brand new offering this year: History 3504, The Manitoba Food History Truck. So students who were largely in third year took the course. We spent one week here on campus training folks, with the assistance of yourself and Kimberley Moore from the Oral History Centre, and then the second week students met at the location of the truck, which was parked at the Sir William Stevenson library –– thank you to Winnipeg Public Libraries for partnering with us. And they recorded interviews with members of the general public who came on board the truck and cooked. Except for two instances where people who owned their own food trucks came and brought them to the library and we cooked on their trucks instead.

KENT DAVIES: And this podcast is actually based on the interviews from one of those trucks. Can you talk about some of the interviews and some of the people we met?

JANIS THIESSEN Yes, we had folks from a bone broth company [Bones and Marrow] come and tell us about their product and how it does and does not differ from soup stock; we had individuals who came who were chefs in summer camps and produced their own cookbook; we had the owner of Red Ember, the well known Winnipeg wood-fire pizza truck come out with his truck. So that was an adventure for us. It’s the largest food truck in the city and it’s...

KENT DAVIES: That thing is massive.

JANIS THIESSEN Right? Yeah, with a fire burning within it. So talk about safety and health issues –– it makes ours pale in comparison.

KENT DAVIES: Yeah, and I believe the course was diving into the history of food trucks right? That was part of it?

JANIS THIESSEN Yes, we read a great book, From Loncheras to Lobsta Love, about the origins of food trucks in mid-twentieth century California.¹ Students read those and then after conducting their interviews they turned them into podcasts episodes and story maps.

KENT DAVIES: So in this episode we feature Emily Gartner and Trent Brownlee, two students who interviewed Anthony Faraci, of Faraci Foods, on his food truck.

JANIS THIESSEN: Without giving too much away, the Faraci family are known for their snack foods and one snack in particular that Anthony’s uncle Paul invented.

KENT DAVIES: Now, if you don’t know what we’re talking about, you’re in for a treat, because it is an amazing snack food that was invented right here in Manitoba.

JANIS THIESSEN: An amazing snack food and an amazing story. Let’s have a listen.

 

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EMILY GARTNER: When I was a little kid, one of my favourite snacks was Pizza Pops. I remember racing in through the door after school, throwing off my shoes and backpack, and hurrying over to the freezer to pull out a bright orange box with a Pillsbury logo on it. A minute and a half in the microwave later and I would be munching away on a doughy, saucy treat, which was definitely not healthy, but always a lot of fun. Growing up pizza snacks and pizza treats were a staple of my childhood, same as a lot of North American kids. My dad used to tell me, though, that when he was a kid pizza pops were made locally and tasted better than today. Now he always said a lot of things were better back in his day, so I never really believed him –– well that is until I met someone else with memories of seven-year-old Emily’s after school snack. Memories which strike a much more personal chord than my own.

ANTHONY FARACI: It was one of those treats that we didn’t make all the time, but it was definitely one of those special occasions when the uncle would come over and we would try to recreate it for the family.

EMILY GARTNER: Meet Anthony Faraci, owner and operator of Faraci Foods, a local food truck, and the great-nephew of Mr. Paul Faraci, innovator of the original pizza pop. Anthony let us join him on his food truck this spring, where he told us all about how the pop was invented.

ANTHONY FARACI Well, from what I understand from the stories is that it originated in Winnipeg back in, I guess sixties and seventies, so well before my time. I guess a lot of trial and error trying to get a product down pat. So from there it kind of just took off from something that just got made in a kitchen to kind of a mainstream well-known food product.

EMILY GARTNER: But how did it take off? This was something I was very curious about going into the interview. How did the Pizza Pop go from an idea his great uncle had in the back of a Sargent Avenue restaurant to my kitchen freezer. And how had it changed so much from the recipe Anthony’s family cooked in their food truck to the very different boxed product of today? To understand how this happened, how a simple snack made by a gentleman in Winnipeg could become a product popular across Canada, it’s key to look at the past, the trends, and the changes in our society that led the Pizza Pop from the backroom to the front pages. So in the next few minutes we’re going to take a bit of a walk down memory lane as we figure out what made the Pizza Snack what it was and what it is now.

The rise of pizza came in the 1950s; following World War II there was influx of interest in international foods in Canada and the U.S., as returning soldiers had gotten used to different varieties while overseas. Pizza became popular as the food that appealed to children and young adults as well as their parents.² Originally from Naples, it was the food of the working class, but was versatile enough to be adapted to many environments.³ Thus, as people took a greater interest in international foods, pizza and the tight Italian food communities were there to meet them.⁴Many Italian families got into the food industry, as food was representative of status in Italian culture.⁵ They opened stores, restaurants, and other industries. And the Faraci’s, when they came to Canada, were no different.

PAUL FARACI My grandfather on my mother’s side was Sam Guirino and he got--I got all my ambition, I think, or whatever you want to call it, from him. My grandfather, originally, when I was about six, I would go and I guess you would say work with him. But he had an open-air fruit market on Colony street just down from the Hudson’s Bay on Portage avenue. I would work with my grandfather every summer holiday until I was thirteen.⁶

EMILY GARTNER: That’s Paul Faraci. He’s speaking here in a short video, created by Anthony’s father, Phil Faraci, Paul’s nephew. As Paul grew up he took his grandfather’s ambitious spirit with him and worked in different fields. He was working at restaurants and at a driving school when inspiration struck from one of his students.

PAUL FARACI I went to work for a company called Joe Vine's driving school to be a driving instructor. From there I had a customer that I was training and he said to me one night “You know, you keep talking about finding something different.” So I did, so I was talking about these things. So he said to me, “Okay, try this place!” It was a restaurant on Sargent –– on Ellice Avenue. Go there and ask for a panzerotto, which I did.

EMILY GARTNER: Paul apparently tried the panzerotto and came up with an idea of how to make it his own. From the back of the restaurant he part owned on Sargent Avenue, he began to make his own version of the food.⁷ This became his Pizza Pop, which he started selling at the restaurant as he continued to perfect it.

PAUL FARACI If I thinned out the crust and added pepperoni to it and mushrooms or things like that. So eventually I ended up calling it Pizza Pop. I kept experimenting and I did that for almost seven years. Then eventually, I decided it was time to try and put it in the stores.

EMILY GARTNER: Paul and his business partners opened a manufacturing location on Higgins Avenue in Winnipeg, and began producing pizza pops to be sold across Canada. They were part of a massive growth in snack food popularity that started following the war. Frozen food and food production technology became more available and snack foods graced the aisles of many stores.⁸ Often this was because more women were entering the workforce, increasing the need for quick and easy meals for families.⁹ Different takes on the pizza and the frozen pizza were ideal for this. These conditions made the Pizza Pop very popular very quickly. Soon Pizza Pops were on shelves everywhere.

Paul left the Higgins Avenue business in the early 1980s due to differences with his manufacturing partners.¹⁰ In 1987, the Pizza Pops brand was sold to Pillsbury, which continued to manufacture them in Winnipeg.¹¹ By then, there had been a rise in massive snack food companies, and they bought out smaller businesses and each other regularly.¹² Pillsbury was later acquired by General Mills, the largest snack food maker in North America back in 2001.¹³ Changing owners meant changing recipes too, and Paul’s Pizza Pop stopped tasting very different from the way people remembered.

ANTHONY FARACI: I guess the way the story goes is there’s kind of a few separations between my uncle and where it is today. So we don’t have a direct correlation to the company that is currently selling them. I think for us now the big thing and the comments from the customers how the recipe has changed so much over the years. I think that one that we would focus on is keeping the recipe the same because that’s what the people are kind of coming back for, time after time. I think if we get to that point we would ensure our recipe does stays the same, just on a larger scale. I couldn’t tell you why they changed or how they changed it. Ingredients do change over time, but whatever the new owners I guess decided kind of varied quite a bit from what was truly meant to be.

EMILY GARTNER:Over the years, Paul and his family talked about bringing back the original recipe to the public, but they never felt it was the right time. For years Paul, Phil, and later Anthony, Faraci contemplated how they would go about it. But the concern existed that the public interest wouldn’t be there if they brought it back.

ANTHONY FARACI: Yeah, my uncle and my dad had a close connection. Like they would talk two, three times a week, even when he was living out in B.C. So, I guess it was one of those things where it was always a good idea in their brain to want to bring it back, but it’s kind of how do you go about doing that? So, it’s...

JANIS THIESSEN: Right? Yeah. A lot of work.

ANTHONY FARACI: And I think since the request came in after he passed away, I was like “Oh, wow!” It’s like maybe it’s time to—to try it out. EMILY GARTNER: Paul Faraci passed away in February of 2018. News outlets across the country reported on his passing, including the Winnipeg Free Press and the CBC. News of Paul’s passing spread across the country and Canadians began to take note. People sent their condolences to the family and started talking online about what they loved about Paul’s original pizza snack recipe.¹⁴

ANTHONY FARACI: There was so much response from people, you know, across Canada, you know, I guess with their condolences and just their memories of the original. So I think from there all the requests to have it brought back kind of, led us to finally just, you know, end up doing it. See what happens.

EMILY GARTNER: Continuing Paul’s legacy, Anthony and his family decided to try to bring back the original recipe Pizza Pop, which they now dubbed "Paul’s Original Pizza Snack." But how would they do this? Making the snacks was one thing in their kitchens, but selling them was another.

Well, luckily, they had a food truck. Anthony Faraci started his own food truck back in 2014 and has been working the food truck scene in Winnipeg ever since. Over the last decade or so, food trucks have become increasingly popular. Shows like Eat Street have made it a cool option to get your lunch or dinner from your local food truck.¹⁵ Their fun, informal, and diverse nature has made them a part of many cities’ cultures across North America, including in Winnipeg.¹⁶

EMILY GARTNER: Would you say there’s a really strong food truck community?

ANTHONY FARACI: Definitely. Yeah I’ve gone to this, and this is my fifth year, and I’ve definitely seen the numbers grow. I think we were, uh, when we got involved, there wasn’t tons and tons, but I think now, I think one of the big food truck festivals they have is Manyfest, down on Broadway, and I think there’s, like, anywhere between like thirty to fifty different trucks that are from the area that come and set up. So the presence is very strong.

TRENT BROWNLEE:Anthony Faraci had a path to success that few are brave enough to take, he left his part-time job at a pizza restaurant to start his own food truck business. For him this was no easy gamble. The start-up costs for a business like his are not cheap, and securing financial capital was the first step.

ANTHONY FARACI: That was probably one of the scariest things, going from working a part-time job to, you know, working with the banks to get everything kind of settled up. I mean, a pick-up truck and a trailer is not cheap, you know, all the cooking equipment we have inside. It is a big first investment. I guess that was the biggest risk I was willing to take to see what would happen. And I’m still here standing so I guess it wasn’t so bad, but it’s definitely a lot of work and a lot to consider before getting into it.

TRENT BROWNLEE: So have you ever gone to a bank to request a loan of anything like that before?

ANTHONY FARACI: No, that was my first time. It wasn’t necessarily the smallest of loans either when you’re considering purchasing all this stuff up front. There’s a local business called Futurpreneur, to kind of help I guess young entrepreneurs kind of get the ball rolling, so they helped out rather well for me. Just putting me in contact with different financial institutions and different programs. Kind of make sure your mind is right to want to pursue this even further.

TRENT BROWNLEE: Some studies suggest that the barrier to entry into the food truck industry is rising. In fact, in an article for the academic journal Contexts written by Amy Hanser and Zachary Hyde it is noted that the very success of the food truck that makes it an attractive investment is also driving up start-up costs as increasingly more gourmet and well-equipped trucks gain strangleholds on the metropolitan market.¹⁷ It remains to be seen if this trend will spread to smaller markets like Winnipeg and affect local trucks like Anthony’s. Anthony didn’t start his business by imitating his great-uncle however, he had no intention of taking a short cut. Anthony, with help from his father, began their first food truck with The Bannock Factory, and later adding The Pretzel Factory. Drawing from his family’s Métis heritage he was inspired to cook all kinds of unique bannock dishes for the adoring crowds that would soon line up at his window.

ANTHONY FARACI: I guess it was just an idea. I guess I’ve always kind of liked to cook, and my dad has owned his own sign business over the years. So it’s kind of one of those things where we figure give it a shot. We started with the Bannock Factory, so we did bannock hot dogs, bannock burgers and fries and that sort of thing. From that we went to the Faraci’s Pretzel Factory so we did a wide variety of gourmet soft pretzels, pretzel dogs and fries. And I think since we introduced the Paul’s Original Pizza Snack, which was the original flavour, that has kind of taken more priority now just due to the demand of the product.

EMILY GARTNER:So the first one was the Bannock Factory? How did you come up with the idea to sell bannock out of a food truck?

ANTHONY FARACI: Well it’s kind of a funny story. I guess years before that my dad came up with a product called Bannock in a box. So we kind of looked at the food industry and kind of figured, tried to look at a niche market for ourselves. Being in Winnipeg we’ve been to a lot of events where bannock is kind of that, I guess, tasty treat that everybody does know and enjoy –– so something a little bit different that we tried to do. From that we have done trade shows and different events that people were requesting, “Oh this is so good, but you should try to make it burgers, try making sandwiches.” So we kind of took that idea you know into the food truck to see where that went and everything kind of stemmed from there.

TRENT BROWNLEE: Anthony chose to go his own direction, forging ahead on a path that was uniquely his but never forgetting his roots and that of his family. The two sides of his family that inspire his cooking are Italian and Métis, and his talent as a cook shows in both culinary traditions. It is certainly worth noting here that the popularity of a Métis inspired culinary experience like The Bannock Factory is a sign of change and the resilience of the Métis Nation who have often faced systemic discrimination and whose cuisine is rarely cherished by the public even here in the heartland of the Métis Nation.¹⁸ The re-assertion of Métis culture in Manitoba on a larger scale is certainly helped along by the entrepreneurship of young Métis people in Winnipeg.¹⁹ The Faraci family has a long history of culinary entrepreneurship; the oldest story they know of consists of a distant ancestor who sold peanuts and ice cream from his horse drawn buggy.

ANTHONY FARACI: Yeah there’s a relative way back when... What was it dad? He had roasted peanuts and ice cream or something like that? Yeah, it was pulled by a horse and buggy trailer. So that was the original… I guess original food trailer towed by one horse power right?

EMILY GARTNER: Did you consider the ice cream and peanuts route when you were coming up with this?

ANTHONY FARACI: No, I didn’t. And even looking back at that picture - I mean a wooden horse drawn carriage selling ice cream? I wasn’t sure how they managed to pull that off back in the day, but I guess they did.

TRENT BROWNLEE: There certainly is a lot of history behind this family, and many options for the revival theme. But as you might have guessed, there wasn’t that same clamour from the public to bring back nuts and ice cream. So, having picked the most anticipated item to revive, Paul’s Original Pizza Snack. It was time for Anthony and his father to perfect their recipe and ensure they could live up to the high standards Paul had set for them.

ANTHONY FARACI: I think that’s kind of like our primary focus now, kind of the Italian theme menu. So we’re doing you know meatball subs, sausage subs, we’re still doing our delicious fries and I think the highlight would be Paul’s Original Pizza Snack, which everybody is asking for.

TRENT BROWNLEE: One of the keys to success in the food truck industry is playing by the rules. Regulations can be strict but as Anthony told us, the rules are there for a reason.

ANTHONY FARACI: I’m not against them at all. I mean you talk to some people who don’t like them but I mean if you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing... We have a great relationship with the health inspectors and the fire inspectors. When you’re not doing anything wrong there’s no issues to be concerned about that. I think it’s probably for the best you do comply as much as you can. I mean it’s for the safety of your customers too. If you’re not following those... I don’t want a line up of sick customers because they ate at my place. You know, our fridge is the right temperature, you know, we have our hand washing in place, so there’s nothing to worry about on our end, which is nice. So, it’s one of those things that is not a huge deal, you just got make sure you’re following all the steps you need to take.

TRENT BROWNLEE: Regulation and food safety have long been a concern surrounding food trucks, back in 2012 there was already debate raging in municipal politics across North America about how to balance supportive stances towards entrepreneurs, fairness for brick and mortar restaurant owners, and most importantly public health concerns.²⁰

The food truck industry, much like the wider restaurant industry, is not easy to survive through let alone thrive. With a pretty well-known study from the Ohio State University stating that 60% of restaurants fail in the first year and 80% within the first five, it’s pretty clear that jumping into the food services industry is not a decision to take lightly.²¹

ANTHONY FARACI: You definitely see a rotation of people from time to time. Like I said over the last five years is when I’ve really seen a large flux of them coming to market. But there was people doing it two, three, four, five years prior to myself even getting involved. So, there is definitely people who stick with it a long time. If you find something they like doing and it can be a pretty decent way to make a living.

Like I said it’s not necessarily the easiest thing, you know being in Winnipeg it’s a rather a seasonal business, I mean only three, four months. Definitely you've got to keep yourself busy in the off months. It all depends on how hard you want to work. You see some guys that aren’t out necessarily all the time. I mean over the years we’ve been kind of getting gradually busier and busier. So you’re trying to focus on getting out more and more. It’s all in how hard you want to work.

TRENT BROWNLEE: Anthony told us of the challenging times following a workday that lasted nearly twenty-four hours.

ANTHONY FARACI: There’s been days, I mean I think the longest day I work would probably be close to full twenty-four hour mark, when you’re, you know, busy doing events and when you’re prepping food, serving food. There’s one day that we did an event, we kind of figured that we’d prep for the whole weekend. This is back to the ManyFest, the big food truck wars. And you’re getting a pretty good head start on what you would sell for the weekend. So it comes Saturday about six o'clock we ended up selling out of everything that we had brought for the weekend so. That kind of left us at a point where okay, well we kind of got to finish up the Saturday event and you’re there until about midnight, and then you’re up at four o’clock in the morning to bake some more product for the next day because you still have full day of the event.

TRENT BROWNLEE: Or the struggle of cooking in full winter gear during the colder months that nearly broke his spirit.

ANTHONY FARACI: The nice cold winters we have here in Winnipeg. I mean when you open up this window and you got your exhaust fan sucking air in, you basically have to be in your winter gear on the inside cooking your food so it’s not necessarily my favourite thing to do when it’s minus forty out and you got to, you know set up the outside be on the inside that is still rather cold so...

TRENT BROWNLEE: So what keeps you going when you got those kinds of events?

ANTHONY FARACI: I guess knowing that I kind of brought this on myself. It’s one of those things that I kind of got to keep going. There’s no real choice to, you know, not work today. You know I can’t really call in sick on a day when it’s your own thing. I guess that’s my big push and drive because it’s something I want to see succeed. So, like I said you go though a lot of difficult times –– but nothing is going to be that easy if it’s worth it right? So it’s just one of those things you got to tell yourself that you know you got to keep going.

TRENT BROWNLEE: Through working together day after day, Anthony and his father Phil, and their shared love of cooking has made the food truck a family project.

ANTHONY FARACI: It’s one of those things that not a lot of people have that opportunity to stick around with their folks time after time especially working with them. You can imagine there’s ups and downs the same as everything right. You got your co-worker that's your dad, right. But all in all it’s still good.

TRENT BROWNLEE: Anthony Faraci did things right, he worked hard and built his business from the ground up. He also took seriously the legacy his family had left him, and only when he was truly ready to honour Paul’s legacy in the way he deserved did he revive the recipe that made Paul Faraci a local legend.

ANTHONY FARACI: That’s something I’m not going to touch. Especially the original with the mozza, the pepperoni, the tomato sauce, that's kind of like the standard that started it all. He’s [Paul] done different flavours in the past on the inside, so I think adding not necessarily to this recipe but you know maybe making a ham and pineapple or something a little bit different. But I think when it comes down to it, it’s going to be the dough on the outside that really sells the product.

TRENT BROWNLEE: Unlike the microwave variety those from my young generation will have grown up with, there is a mouth-watering texture and smell to Anthony’s faithful re-creation of Paul’s Original Pizza Snack that informs the senses that this was made with care.

ANTHONY FARACI: I think for us off the bat we deep fry fresh, per order, so you’re getting that nice light crispy crunch when you bite into it. And the ingredients on the inside, the cheese is melted and peperoni is, you know, nice and soft. I think it comes down to the sauce we use which is a bit of a secret recipe on the insides.

EMILY GARTNER: Paul’s Original Pizza Snack was reintroduced in Winnipeg in the spring of 2018. The media, which had been covering Paul’s passing and the renewed interest in the Pizza Snack that had followed, quickly jumped on board the story, and people turned out in droves to the food truck to try the recreated treat, with the City’s mayor being one of the first customers.²²

ANTHONY FARACI: Yeah it has definietly been a wild last summer, and into the beginning of this summer. It’s just unbelievable to see people, you know, follow us around and show up day after day. It’s like, wow!

TRENT BROWNLEE: With demand mounting again for this special treat Anthony has found himself coming up to the same complication that stared down his great-uncle back in the sixties… How was he going to keep up with demand without compromising the quality of his product?

ANTHONY FARACI: Well, in the past when we started this last year we were making it all by hand in a small prep kitchen, so there was a lot of very labour intensive work to make our... I guess make our product, the prepping part of our product which is the dough that we would use to make the pizza snacks. In fact those sold out days where you would go through so much product. There’s only so many days in a week to kind of prep, versus you want to be out selling too. So we’ve had a couple local bakeries that we’ve talked to and we’ve found the one that was able to help us with our dough production. So we basically provide them with our secret mix of spices and they have... I guess they have a larger assembly line of equipment that help us along, making these a lot simpler to get versus us slaving away all those hours.

TRENT BROWNLEE: But Anthony wants to bring his goods to market too, he hopes to be able to sell Paul’s Original Pizza Snacks on grocery store shelves someday soon. And so, he has been searching for just the right suppliers and business partners to make that dream come to fruition.

ANTHONY FARACI: I had a lot of requests. People across Canada want to be able to bring this home and enjoy it. Just unfortunately out of food truck right now it’s not one of those things that we can, I guess legally get into a grocery store because we don’t have the proper manufacturing codes for the truck. So, it’s something I want to do, just again, it’s larger start-up costs. It's definitely something we are planning, hoping to get to in the future. Can’t say if, when, or other that we will be doing it, but it’s definitely on the brain.

EMILY GARTNER: For Anthony, though, he believes that if they do it right, bringing back Paul’s Original Pizza Snack will be worth the risk of it changing again. They have learned from his uncle, and moving forward it is their top priority.

TRENT BROWNLEE: But Anthony is undaunted, he knows where the stumbling block that ruins the pizza snack is; the microwave. According to Anthony it’s about the worst way to cook it, as it will make it soggy instead of crispy –– the very opposite of the desired texture. I don’t know about you but I’m going to keep that in mind for a lot more of my cooking going forward.

EMILY GARTNER: In the story of Paul’s Original Pizza Snack we find that both Paul Faraci and Anthony Faraci’s experiences are actually quite similar. Both men come from a background of family entrepreneurs, and they had their own businesses in the food industry before they brought in the Pops. For Paul it was his restaurant, and for Anthony it was his food truck. They both started cooking and serving the snacks, but later worked towards getting them in stores. Each of them were creating businesses that took advantage of trends in the food industry that were growing at the time. Paul’s Pizza Snack’s were introduced along with a huge growth in the snack food industry, when frozen and prepared foods were at their height. On the other hand, Anthony’s food truck fits with the contemporary love of street food and casual dining. Both made choices that took advantage of Canadians’ food tastes, hitting close to home with their products. Paul’s Pizza Snacks were invented when the love of pizza and curiosity for international cuisine had peaked. Later, when Anthony brought them back, his recipe was marketed toward an audience nostalgic for a treat from them and their city’s pasts. Of course, today there are some differences. Anthony has the advantage of a lot of press surrounding the Pop’s return. He also is living in an age of social media, where advertisement and connection with his customers has become more frequent, and much simpler.²³ Even so, the comparison is clear and undeniable. They share a lot of similarities in the Pizza Pops’ rise and fall.

So it turns out that the story of Paul’s Pizza Snack is a lot more complicated than I probably thought when I was munching on my Pops when I was a little kid. It is a snack whose popularity comes from its history, memory, cultural relevance, which allowed it to appear, popularize, and evolve the way it did. It also comes from the fact that they are just plain delicious.

ANTHONY FARACI: I might sound a little bit biased, but I think the Pizza Snacks are really delicious. I mean when you bite into them... I've never tried something similar to that. So, that’s just my opinion.

EMILY GARTNER: What the future of the Snacks will be is unknown now. But we do know is that Paul wanted it to continue on, and passed his story and the recipe just for that reason.

PAUL FARACI: Now I’m going to pass you over to my nephew, who I’ve been teaching just in case something happens to me. He at least knows everything –– or pretty well everything –– I know. Because I’ve been telling him things and showing him things. We’ve been doing the recipe together.

EMILY GARTNER: So cheers to the Faraci’s and Paul’s invention! Looking forward the Pizza Snack will continue to be a part of Manitoba's history, and a fantastic example of how the food industry has grown and changed over the years.

SOURCES

¹ Julian Agyeman et al., From Loncheras to Lobsta Love, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017).

² Michael P. Mariono and Margaret S. Crocco, "Pizza: Teaching US History through Food and Place," The Social Studies 106, no. 4 (2015): 149-158.

³ Carol Helstosky, Pizza: A Global History, (London, UK: Reaktion, 2008).

⁴ Marino and Crocco, Pizza, 149-158.

⁵ Marino and Crocco, Pizza, 149-158.

⁶ Paul Faraci, “Paul Faraci the Inventor of The Pizza Pops,” posted January 18 2018, YouTube video, 00:06:26, (accessed, May 27, 2019).

⁷ Kevin Rollason, “Pizza Pops king leaves savoury legacy,” Winnipeg Free Press, February 27, 2018, (accessed, May 27 2019).

⁸ Marino and Crocco, Pizza, 149-158.

⁹ Janis Thiessen, Snacks: A Canadian Food History, (Winnipeg, Man: University of Manitoba Press, 2017).

¹⁰ Bryce Hoye, “Pizza Pop founder dies, leaves savoury legacy to Winnipeg family,” CBC News, February 27, 2018, (accessed, May 27, 2019).

¹¹ Bryce Hoye, “Pizza Pop founder dies”; Tamara Forlanksi, “Did You Know? Pizza Pops are made in Manitoba,” Global News, March 18 2016, (accessed, May 27, 2019).

¹² Janis Thiessen, Snacks: A Canadian Food History, (Winnipeg, MB: U of Manitoba Press, 2017).

¹³ Michael Moss, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (New York, NY: Random House, 2013).

¹⁴ Hoye, “Pizza Pop founder dies”; Rollason, “Pizza Pops king leaves savoury legacy.”

¹⁵ Amy Hanser “From Hippie to Hip: City Governance and Two Eras of Street Vending in Vancouver, Canada,” in Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice: From Loncheras to Lobsta Love ed. Julian Agyeman et. al., (Cambridge, United States: The MIT Press, 2017), 129.

¹⁶ Hanser, “From Hippie to Hip,” 138.

¹⁷ Amy Hanser and Zachary Hyde, “Foodies Remaking Cities,” Contexts 13, no. 3 (2014): 44-49.

¹⁸ Patrick C. Douaud, "Canadian Metis Identity: A Pattern of Evolution," Anthropos 78, no. 1/2 (1983): 71-88.

¹⁹ Janique Dubois and Kelly Saunders, "'Just Do It!': Carving Out a Space for the Métis in Canadian Federalism," Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne De Science Politique 46, no. 1 (2013): 187-214.

²⁰ Keith Berk and Alan Leib, "Keeping Current: UCC Food Truck Regulations Drive Controversy," Business Law Today, (2012): 1-2; Ginette Wessel, “Relaxing Regulatory Controls: Vendor Advocacy and Rights in Mobile Food Vending” in Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice: From Loncheras to Lobsta Love, ed. Julian Agyeman et. al. (Cambridge, United States: The MIT Press, 2017), 23-45; Martin, Nina. “Why Local Regulations May Matter Less Than We Think: Street Vending in Chicago and in Durham, North Carolina,” in Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice: From Loncheras to Lobsta Love. ed. Julian Agyeman et. al. (Cambridge, United States: The MIT Press, 2017): 207-224.

²¹ H. G. Parsa, et. al, “Why Restaurants Fail,” Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 46, no. 3 (August 2005): 304-322. 

²² Kelly Geraldine Malone, “Great-nephew of Pizza Pops inventor bringing original recipe back to Winnipeg’s streets,” Canadian Press, (accessed, 5 June, 2018); “Pops relaunched,” Winnipeg Free Press, (accessed, May 27, 2019).

²³ Scott Wallsten and Corwin Rhyan, “Social Media and Entrepreneurship: The Case for Food Trucks.” Technology Policy Institute, (2014): 1-14.