Shana Lewis started at Woodstock’s in Chico as an 18-year-old college student. Now, at 25, she’s the general manager of the Santa Cruz location, where she likes to enjoy a glass of Sierra Nevada Summerfest lager with a slice of pie. Emiley Stake began at Woodstock’s at 19 in Santa Cruz. Also 25, she became marketing director last year.
SCW: What’s your favorite pizza?
SHANA LEWIS: Pesto Primevera. I really like our pesto sauce and all the vegetables on it.
What sets your pizza apart?
SL: Unique toppings, gourmet toppings and unique crust. When you order a pizza from other places and get a pepperoni pizza, you’ll get one pepperoni here and another one there. It’s mostly cheese. If you’re lucky, you get a piece of pepperoni on every slice. Here you can taste every topping in every bite.
What’s the secret to your crust?
SL: We have sauce in our crusts, so we fold over the crust when we’re making pizzas. When we roll it out, there’s an inch over the pan. Then we sauce it, and we pull it back. That way, there’s sauce in the crust. It’s one of our signatures.
Are your pizzas nutritious?
EMILEY STAKE: We have wheat crusts, and we have gluten-free crusts, and we have Daiya cheese, which are all big things we try to push, especially in Santa Cruz County with the whole gluten-free movement.
If aliens landed in your parking lot, what should they order?
ES: I would recommend the pizza that didn’t win our online pizza contest. It was by Miles, and he’s worked at Woodstock’s for a really long time. His is called the Blue Buffalo or something like that. It’s got green onions, chicken soaked in spicy wing sauce, and it’s got blue cheese all over it. I’d give that to the aliens.
What’s the best part about being a manager?
SL: Getting to know every single employee. Another thing I love, ever since I became a general manager, is meeting new business people, really getting to know what they do at the chamber mixers.
The hardest?
SL: There’s the ups and downs of any job. Office work? I can’t pin down any one thing. Sometimes you run out of something, and you have to get it really quick.
What’s it like working with Shanna?
ES: It’s awesome I get to have A: a young boss and B: a woman boss. I feel like I never have to hide anything from her.
Why do you do community fundraisers?
SL: We take pride in supporting organizations in the community. The elementary, middle and high school programs are really big fundraisers. And UCSC has so many different clubs and programs.
It’s a sports joint. What’s your favorite sport?
SL: Basketball. I don’t have a favorite team. I played in high school.
How’s the work atmosphere?
SL: Fun. When I first started at Woodstock’s, I needed a job to get me through school. I would just go to work, do my job and go home, but there were always employees who hung around. I was like: “what are you doing? We were just here for six hours.” And then you become their friend and all of a sudden, you have a great time at work, and you’re one of those people sitting down at the table after work and hanging out and having a good time.
Craziest thing that’s ever happened at work?
ES: All Woodstock’s employees get 50 percent off beer and food, so we drink there. And we have morning breakfasts together, my favorite part. We just go to Trader Joe’s and spend 20 bucks.
What do you think of Yelp?
ES: There’s a lot of animosity going on with Yelp right now. It’s not just everybody’s opinion [in the comments]. If you don’t pay Yelp, they don’t let all the reviews go up. They filter them. You might get three awesome reviews, and one bad review, and they’ll take two of them off and say they’re randomly taken off. It sucks because we have a lot of really good reviews and a lot of really bad reviews. The bad reviews mostly all reflect product. Those are, overall, people who don’t like the style of pizza we offer. Across the board, customer service-wise we do very well, especially on Yelp.
