by Becky Graham

Created on: July 03, 2009   Last Updated: July 07, 2009

Look in your local yellow pages when you're craving pizza, and there's no doubt you'll find an overabundance of choices. You can choose one of the chain pizza restaurants that everyone's already familiar with, or you can choose the little place right down the street. Either way, you're looking for a tasty pizza, with the best ingredients, the way you want it. While you already know what you're going to get with a chain pizza, you might want to take a chance with the not-as-famous local guy, not just for quality and price, but also to support your local community.

Are you really getting the best ingredients from a pizza chain? When we explore the profit margin of any big chain corporation, we can see that more often than not they will sacrifice the quality of products and service to make a profit. Why would it be any different in the pizza business? If you visit your favorite pizza chain establishment, and request to know exactly what ingredients they're using, chances are pretty high that even the general manager will be clueless. They make what their corporate office tells them to make, using the products they've been sent, without any questions. After all, they're just doing a job.

A local pizza place is by far the best choice when it comes to the quality of ingredients and service you'll receive. Small establishments don't have anyone dictating what ingredients they'll use to make their pizzas, and the owner will be the only person to shoulder the criticism and any loss of business resulting from poor quality. They lack the security of millions of dollars in financial backing to bail them out if the business isn't a success, and so they will labor vigorously to thrive. Many rely solely on repeat customers to stay afloat in this dog-eat-dog world, so poor quality and service simply isn't an option.

It is quite possible to find a better special price by going through a pizza chain, but the items on the regular menu are often times ridiculously over-priced, and are only offered in minuscule portions, forcing us to bite the bullet in regards to our budgets. Customers can either order whatever special deal the chain is promoting, or order what they really want, which leads to paying way too much money for way too little food. How many times have we, in the spirit of being frugal, taken the cheaper deal only to end up feeling dissatisfied and taken advantage of? That's the corporate way.

Small pizza joints don't have a lot of overhead. They're not concerned

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