You just reminded me of something from when I worked at a pizza place. Most of the time we sold pizzas cut the normal way. Either 6, 8, or 10 slices using a circular cutter. The normal style you might have in your kitchen.
But one Wednesday each month, we had a massive lunch order for a local school. Hundreds of individually-boxed slices, delivered just before 11:30. The slice box was sized for a 1/7 slice of our extra large pizza. We had to use a "wagon wheel" type slicer for those. It was a huge stainless thing that must've cost a fortune.
I always wondered why it was 7 slices and not 6 or 8. The best theory I could come up with was that these slices all had to be the exact same size; no variance from sloppy cutting. And the only way to ensure that would be to specify it as an odd number to make it impractical for the normal cutter.
Did you have to use a different cheese as well? My brief stint in the field had us dragging out school district special cheese and a wagon wheel cutter as well (although it was 8 pieces). I can only assume that you're correct about strict tolerances in slice size. My. imagination creates a scenario where somebody got a small slice once and somebody overzealously mandated more equality.
I don't think so. I was a delivery driver and so was also responsible for pulling the pizzas off the end of the oven conveyor, slicing them, and boxing them, so I can't be sure if some special government cheese was used in the prep line. But my memory of the pizzas was that they were the same, just sliced different.
But one Wednesday each month, we had a massive lunch order for a local school. Hundreds of individually-boxed slices, delivered just before 11:30. The slice box was sized for a 1/7 slice of our extra large pizza. We had to use a "wagon wheel" type slicer for those. It was a huge stainless thing that must've cost a fortune.
I always wondered why it was 7 slices and not 6 or 8. The best theory I could come up with was that these slices all had to be the exact same size; no variance from sloppy cutting. And the only way to ensure that would be to specify it as an odd number to make it impractical for the normal cutter.