The Green Hills resident recently accomplished his dream of taking rolled bread topped with pepperoni and cheese to the mass market. The product, called PizzaBarz, is sold at some Dollar General stores and in vending machines. It was a quest that took more than 20 years.
No stranger to the restaurant industry, Ray worked many years as a restaurant manager and owner of his own bakery and restaurant. But nothing prepared him for the arduous process of taking something baked from the kitchen to mass-market manufacturing, he said.
It began in 1987 when Ray didn't want to waste the leftover cheese and dough after his staff produced cheese bread at his bakery. Instead of throwing away half a pound of scraps, Ray decided he would turn it into cheese sticks — foot-long breadsticks topped with baked cheese. Soon, the product became a popular treat and generated more money than anyone ever thought, Ray said.
Ray expanded his cheese stick business by selling the treats at Opryland amusement park. There, on a typical weekend, Ray says he sold more than 1,300 a day. Convinced he had a hot seller on his hands, Ray began selling his cheese sticks to amusement parks and festivals around the nation, including at Six Flags in Northern California.
Ray later met Randall Hall, a Subway franchisee and the two began dreaming of a machine that could make the cheese sticks utilizing four cheeses — cheddar, mozzarella, Parmesan and Monterey Jack. At the time, the businessmen focused on four flavors — pepperoni, bacon-cheddar, nacho-jalapeno and cuatro queso.
10 years to find machineRay spent the next 10 years calling companies that specialized in making machines for bagels and pizzas.
Some claimed they could make a machine that would work, but the difficulty was in processing both a dry cheese like Parmesan and a soft cheese like cheddar. The machine would get gummed up.
"We got left at the altar many times," said Hall, vice president of sales and marketing.
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