When Sookie Orth sat down to write her college essay last fall, one thing quickly occurred to her.
A box of pizza.
Orth, then a senior at Sequoyah High School in Pasadena, began her draft with a statement: “I learned how to fold a pizza box when I was nine.”
She told the story of her long-standing relationship with Pizza of Venice in Altadena, where she used to dine with her family as a child. One day, the manager invited her to assemble a box. Impressed with Orth’s speed, the woman told her she could work at the pizzeria when she was older.
Orth eventually got that job, and it changed his life by showing him the value of hard work.
“Folding those boxes feels different now,” she wrote.
Sookie Orth at Pizza of Venice in Altadena.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
This was a particular kind of box. The one used by the restaurant featured artwork depicting a pizza kitchen: there was a brick oven, shelves packed with ingredients, and, above all, two incongruous chefs at work. One was realistically depicted, the other was a simple caricature, his smiling face just a few squiggly lines. On the bottom of the box was a slogan: “Enjoy your delicious moments!”
It's a strange picture.
“It’s a real mess when you look at it up close,” said Orth, 18, a server at Pizza of Venice. “Everything looks cut and pasted together. And the phrase ‘Enjoy your delicious moments!’ … What if I don’t? It’s like an order.”
Netizens have long been enthralled by the box, which can be found in pizzerias across the West, including many in the Los Angeles area. Social media users have posted messages about the chefs and their different looks. On Reddit, nearly a dozen threads dedicated to the box have been posted since 2013, including one from May. The longest had about 1,000 comments.
“The head chef may be a pro, but he has that CRAZY cooking partner. He may be a little spicy, but together they add up to a lot of money,” wrote one Reddit user in 2013.
“One guy is high and another guy is really high,” another said.
The “delicious moments” directive also receives attention.
“I'm fucking trying for a pizza box. I'm fucking trying,” said one user X wrote in 2020 along with an image that highlighted the motto.
It’s even made its way into mainstream media: In 2010, the Portland Mercury published an article asking, “What’s up with this pizza box? Who designed it? Where can I see more of their work? Do they have these boxes everywhere? Are there any other pizza boxes that come even close to being this weird?”
These questions have lingered. Digital media expert Jamie Cohen said online curiosity about the box reflects a “crowdsourced investigative interest” — the kind of interest fueled by true-crime podcasts and documentary series.
Pizza of Venice Executive Chef Victor Chacon prepares a pizza at the Altadena restaurant.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
“People are interested in how people solve problems,” said Cohen, an adjunct professor of media studies at Queens College in New York. “There’s a novelty to the community. And food is supposed to be a collective experience. The box shows up and most people throw it away, but there are people who sit and look at it. They put it on Instagram, make memes out of it.”
Amid a tough time for the Los Angeles restaurant industry, even the choice of which pizza box to use is something owners looking to tighten their belts are considering. And because the “delicious moments” box is inexpensive (restaurant owners say it costs them between $10 and $15 for a pack of 50), it has maintained a strong presence in local restaurants.
Jennifer Febre, co-owner of MacLeod Ale Brewing Co. in Van Nuys, said she appreciates the low price of the box, but only relies on it occasionally. Its presence at MacLeod, she said, “usually means I made a mistake and didn't order it.” [custom] pizza boxes on time.”
Orth, however, has only positive associations with the box. And he said he recently had the chance to return the favor while working at Pizza of Venice: “I taught a kid how to fold the box and I told him, ‘When you’re old enough, you can come and get a job here.’”
A veil is lifted
The box's provenance may be unknown to some observers, but it is no mystery to the countless establishments that use it.
The boxes come from Restaurant Depot, the wholesale food service provider based in Whitestone, New York. This fact was pointed out 11 years ago in a book about pizza boxes, Viva la Pizza!
Author Scott Wiener explained how a closer look at the artwork revealed the secret: “The bottle of olive oil on the table and the cans on the shelves in the background provide clues to its origin. Supremo Italiano, Isabella and Qualite are Restaurant Depot’s own brands.”
Jamie Woolner, co-owner of Pizza of Venice.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Wiener's book, which notes that the box only appears west of the Rocky Mountains, calls it a “cult favorite.”
“It’s the fact that the phrase on it is so magical and strange, and the chefs are so disparate,” he told The Times. “It’s prolific: that box has been printed more than famous works of art. That box and ‘The Starry Night’ – I bet they were printed at about the same time.”
Jamie Woolner, co-owner of Pizza of Venice, has probably heard about the box more than most owners: Customers regularly ask if the men pictured on it are him and his business partner, Sean St. John.
“A lot of customers have said I look like the guy out front rolling out the dough,” said Woolner, who estimates he has folded about 20,000 boxes.
Hidden origins
Restaurant Depot appears to have publicly acknowledged the story surrounding the box only once.
In 2021, the company posted a photo 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, now more than ever, we urge everyone to enjoy their delicious moments!” Restaurant Depot wrote.
Below the post, a Facebook user asked who made the box. His question went unanswered.
Restaurant Depot declined to be involved in this story. After an initially promising exchange of views conducted by phone, email and, oddly, LinkedIn, a company spokesperson ignored multiple interview requests.
Wiener, the author, said his “strong speculation” was that the artwork was made using computer clip art. “A lot of these boxes are not designed by artists, they’re designed by people who are there — it could be an administrative assistant,” he said. “And then the box is printed millions of times.”
He believes the Restaurant Depot box is made overseas, which might explain the strange slogan on it. “It fits into that awkward translation category,” he said. “It’s clearly not a direct way of saying anything.”
And yet, perhaps because of its strange diction, the phrase is more than a simple gustatory command. It is, as Wiener said, “much deeper and more beautiful, but in an accidental way.”
Jamie Woolner, co-owner of Pizza of Venice, right, and Sookie Orth.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Chefs and restaurateurs have floated various theories about the box's conception, even suggesting that artificial intelligence was involved. But Cohen dismissed that idea: “AI can't screw this up that much.”
Still, the box has its champions. Adam Nadel, 40, owns Tramonto, a wood-fired pizza truck whose pizzas are named after movie characters played by Nicolas Cage. Nadel said some boxes are too flimsy. Others don't absorb grease effectively. But Restaurant Depot's get the job done.
Nadel said he goes through hundreds of copies a week, so he's spent a lot of time watching chefs who don't fit in. What does he think of them?
“The guy in the back said, ‘I wonder what time the bar closes,’” Nadel said.
As for Orth, she ultimately didn’t write her admissions essay about the “delicious moments” box. She said one of her professors convinced her to pursue a different path.
“We decided,” Orth said, “that university administrators really don’t want to hear about collapsible pizza boxes.”
This fall, she will attend Bard College, less than a two-hour drive from Restaurant Depot's headquarters.
