“We’re generous with the cheese ….
“We’re generous with the cheese on it,” he said. “There’s a good portion of cheese, and the garlic and seasoning we put on it makes it pretty flavorful compared to some other ones.”
The pizza fries that made their way to the local supermarket start with a coat of garlic spread sauce and are covered by generous amounts of cheese and seasonings — with an all-important side of marinara sauce for dipping.
The cheese itself is one thing that will be changing soon. After meeting with a sales rep from Burnette Dairy — and trying some of their samples — Ingersoll decided to switch to their product.
“We’re going to start pushing their logos on our menus and on our pizza fry stickers,” he said, noting that he likes working with smaller businesses.
The next step is to expand their in-store options to include meat toppings. Ingersoll said they’re currently going through all of the “paperwork and procedures” to get their meat-processing license for wholesale products. He said this requires instituting sanitary, hazard controls, and recall procedures and preparing for regular health inspections.
With a bar to run, Ingersoll and his employees have had to make use of whatever downtime they have to keep up with demand for the in-store pizza fries. The bar is closed on Mondays, so Ingersoll and three of his employees spend nine to 10 hours just making pizza fries.
When they’re fully in gear, he said it takes just under two minutes to make a full circle of pizza fries.
They have an assembly line process set up, but Ingersoll said he’s hoping to make it even more efficient with help from his uncle, Dale Hammel, owner of Combat Parts in Abbotsford. The company has made a special sauce dispenser just for Frickin’ A.
“He does a lot of work for Tombstone, and builds a lot of their equipment,” he said, referring to the signature pizza brand invented in Medford.
Ingersoll said he’s also looking at upgrading the way they shrink-wrap and package the fries. He pointed out that all of the stickers on the packages are made by ZB Designs, a graphic design company run by Zach Brockhaus in Colby.
One of his more ambitious plans is to actually expand their building so they have more kitchen space to make pizzas while the bar is open.
“Right now, with the space we have, you’re kind of butting heads if you’re taking care of customers here and trying to do that at the same time,” he said.
Frickin’ A’s menu includes 14 different types of pizzas plus a ‘‘build-your-own” option with a huge range of available toppings and sauces. The Meat-Eaters Loaded Pizza and Chicken Bacon Ranch are the top two sellers.
Once they get their meat-processing license, Ingersoll said they’d like to debut the Chicken Bacon Ranch as the next option for in-store shoppers.
This upcoming November will mark the six-year anniversary of Frickin’ A’s opening, which took the place of D.C.’s Breaktime at the corner of CTH A and Front Street about five miles west of Dorchester.
At first, Ingersoll said they relied on widely known brand-name pizzas, such as Lotza Mozza, to feed their customers, but about six months in, they got a full kitchen up and running and started making their own.
Donna Geiger, owner of D.C.’s Breaktime, was “a big help” in getting them started in the pizza-making business, Ingersoll said.
“She was known for her homemade pizzas, so she showed us what she did, and got us going,” he said. “We took her recipes and made our little twist on them.”
Ingersoll went to school for heating and cooling and was working for Jakel Plumbing, Heating and Cooling when the opportunity presented itself to get into the bar business “I didn’t bartend or work in food service whatsoever before that,” he said.
Still, Ingersoll said he’s always wanted to try owning and operating a bar and restaurant, so he let Geiger know he was thinking about it just as she was about to close her operation.
“She pulled in my driveway, asked me if I was still interested, and I decided to give it a whirl,” he said.
The first six years of business have gone well, he said, though “there’s a little more to learn” getting deeper into the food service.
“We’ve got a good group of regulars,” he said. “As we were growing and learning things, they were pretty patient with us and supported us the whole way.”
KEVIN O’BRIEN/THE TRIBUNE PHONOGRAPH
