When Sookie Orth sat down to write her college essay last fall, something quickly occurred to me.
A pizza box.
Orth, then a senior at Pasadena’s Sequoia School, begins the draft by declaring, “I learned how to fold a pizza box when I was nine.”
She told the story of her years-long bond with Altadena’s Venetian Pizza, where she often dined with her family as a child. One day, the manager invited her to assemble a box. The woman was impressed with Ors’s speed and told her she could work in a pizzeria when she grew up.
Eventually, Orth got the job—one that changed her life by showing her the value of hard work.
“Folding these boxes feels different now,” she wrote.
Sookie Orth works at Venetian Pizzeria in Altadena.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
This is a special kind of box. The used dining room features a work of art from the pizza kitchen: there’s a brick oven, shelves stocked with ingredients, and, notably, two mismatched chefs at work. One is lifelike, the other is a simply drawn cartoon, with just a few curved lines for his smile. On the bottom of the box is a slogan: “Enjoy your delicious moment!”
This makes for a strange picture.
“When you look at it, it’s definitely a bit chaotic,” said Orth, an 18-year-old pizza waiter in Venice. “Everything feels very cut-and-paste. And that line, ‘Enjoy your delicious moment!’ ” — What if I don’t do this? It’s like a command.
Internet users have long been fascinated by the box, which can be found in pizzerias across the West, including many in the Los Angeles area. Social media users posted information about the chefs and their different appearances. There have been nearly a dozen posts on Reddit devoted to the box since 2013, including one from May. The longest review has about 1,000 comments.
“Maybe the chef is all business, but he has an eccentric sous chef. He may be playful, but together they make a lot of money.
“One guy is tall, one guy is really tall,” said another.
The “Tasty Moment” command has also received attention.
“I’m fucking trying pizza boxes. I’m trying,” one X user Written in 2020 Next to it is a picture highlighting the slogan.
It’s even filtered into mainstream media: In 2010, the Portland Mercury published an article asking, “What’s going on with this pizza box…? Who designed it? Where can I see more of them?” works? Do they have these boxes everywhere? Are there any other pizza boxes weirder than this?
These problems persist. Digital media expert Jamie Cohen said online curiosity about the box reflected “interest in collective investigations” of the type spurred by true-crime podcasts and docuseries.
Venetian Pizza executive chef Victor Chacon boxes pizza at his restaurant in Altadena.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
“People are just interested in how people solve problems,” said Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies at Queens College in New York. “There’s something new in the community. Food should be a collective experience. When the box came out, most people threw it away, but some sat and stared at it. They put it on Instagram and made out of it Emoticons.
In these tough times for the Los Angeles restaurant industry, even choosing which pizza box to use is something belt-tightening owners are considering. And because Tasty Moments boxes are cheap—restaurateurs say a pack of 50 boxes costs between $10 and $15—it maintains a strong foothold in local restaurants.
Jennifer Febre, a co-owner of MacLeod Ale Brewing Co. in Van Nuys, said she appreciates the box’s low price but relies on it only occasionally. She said that when it showed up at Macleod’s, it “usually meant I messed up and didn’t order it” [custom] Just in time for pizza boxes.
However, Orth has only a direct connection to the penalty area. She said she recently got an opportunity to repay the money while working at a Venetian pizzeria: “I taught a kid how to fold boxes, and I said, ‘When you’re old enough, you can come here and get a job. ‘”
veil raised
Some observers may not know the box’s provenance, but to the countless venues that use it, it’s no mystery.
The boxes come from Restaurant Depot, a wholesale food service provider in Whitestone, New York.
Author Scott Wiener explains how a closer look at the artwork revealed the secret: “The olive oil bottle on the table and the jars on the shelf in the background hint at its origins. Supremo Italiano, Isabella and Qualite are all Restaurant Depot’s house brands .
Jamie Woolner, co-owner of Venice Pizzeria.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Weiner’s book notes that the box only appears west of the Rockies and calls it a “cult favorite.”
“The fact that the phrase above is so magical and strange – and the chefs don’t match it,” he told The Times. “It’s huge: that box has more prints than famous works of art. That box and Starry Night — I bet they were printed in a similar way.
Venetian Pizzeria co-owner Jamie Woolner almost certainly knows the box better than most owners – customers often ask if the people in the box are him and his business partner Sean St. John Sean St. John).
“A lot of customers say I look like the guy rolling out the dough out front,” said Woolner, who estimates he has folded about 20,000 boxes.
mysterious origins
Restaurant Depot appears to have only publicly acknowledged the box lore on one occasion.
In 2021, the company posted a photo of it on Facebook, noting that “14 years ago, this iconic pizza box was created and distributed to our West Coast customers.”
“With everything going on in the world today, we urge everyone more than ever to enjoy their delicious moments!” Restaurant Warehouse wrote.
Below the post, a Facebook user asked who made the box. His inquiries received no response.
Restaurant Depot will not be involved in this story. After an initial promising back-and-forth via phone, email and, oddly enough, LinkedIn, a company spokesperson ignored multiple requests for an interview.
The author, Weiner, said he “strongly speculates” that the artwork was created using computer cutouts. “A lot of these boxes weren’t designed by artists — they were designed by people there … maybe administrative assistants,” he said. “Then the box was printed millions of times.”
He believes Restaurant Depot’s boxes are made overseas, which would explain its oddly worded slogan. It “falls into the uncomfortable category of translation,” he said. “That’s obviously not a direct way of saying anything.”
However, perhaps because of the odd choice of words, this sentence is more than just a taste command. “It’s deeper and more beautiful, but in an accidental way,” Weiner said.
Venice Pizzeria co-owners Jamie Woolner (right) and Suki Orth.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Chefs and restaurateurs have come up with various theories about the box concept, even suggesting artificial intelligence is involved. But Cohen dismissed the idea: “There’s no way artificial intelligence could mess things up that bad.”
Still, this box has its champions. Adam Nadel, 40, owns Tramonto, a wood-fired pizza truck whose pizzas are named after the movie character played by Nicolas Cage. Nadel said some boxes are too fragile. Others do not absorb oil effectively. But the guys from Restaurant Depot can get the job done.
Nadel said he experiences it hundreds of times a week. So, he spent a lot of time staring at mismatched chefs. What does he think of them?
“People in the back would say, ‘Man, I wonder what time the bar closes?'” Nadel said.
As for Orth, she ultimately didn’t write her admissions essay about the “Tasty Moments” box. She said one of her teachers convinced her to take a different tack.
“We decided,” Orth said, “that university administrators really didn’t want to hear about folded pizza boxes.”
This fall, she will attend Bard College—less than a two-hour drive from Restaurant Depot’s headquarters.
