Today's Local News - July 27, 2008

PHONY-FOOD MAKER FINAGLES HOLLYWOOD STAND-IN WORK
by Pat Sherman | pat.sherman@tlnews.net

When ABC television needed to fill a rotating display case at “The Pie Hole,” the fictional restaurant in its quirky comedy “Pushing Daisies,” its creative team discovered that using real pies in each scene had its drawbacks.

The network would freeze, thaw and reuse the same pies, creating a gloppy mess that just wouldn’t do for prime time.

A representative from the network eventually contacted Vista-based Fax Foods.

A representative from the network eventually contacted Vista-based Fax Foods.

“He said he was tired of spending money on disgusting pies,” said Jennifer Hardesty, office manager of the company, which produces finely detailed food replicas.

Hardesty solved their problem by creating plastic apple, blueberry, kiwi, strawberry and peach confections with a shelf life the network can only hope its show will enjoy.

“Those are my pies!” she said, beaming.

ABC isn’t the only Tinseltown entity to seek the services of this North County business, which reproduces everything from steak and sushi to cheesecake and pecan pie.

Their phony food can be seen in the upcoming Walt Disney Pictures production “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” starring Drew Barrymore and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Owner Judy Prestininzi, a former office manager who purchased the company this year through a Small Business Administration loan, said she considers it the company&squo;s “most prominent” gig.

“Me and my daughter went down to Puerto Vallarta last year as the food designers,” Prestininzi said. “They needed food to look real on camera that would not distract the dogs.

“You can’t keep throwing out food and expect your animals not to want to stop and eat the sausage.”

Animals aren’t the only creatures that have been fooled by the company’s wares, Prestininzi said. A Costco employee mistakenly sold a Fax Foods cruditè platter to a customer who also believed it was the real deal.

Hardesty once brought a Fax Foods chocolate pie to her mother’s house for dinner, replacing it with the real item only after her mother had been tricked.

“She was so mad at me,” Hardesty said.

Employees at a Barnes & Noble sandwich shop threw away imitation Panini sandwiches at the end of their shift, believing they were real food that had sat in the display case all day.

“These are not cheap,” Prestininzi said, holding a plastic Panini in her palm. “(The manager) wanted to kill them.”

Fax Foods got its start making trophies almost two decades ago. At the time, Japan largely dominated the industry.

“We were in a different business altogether,” recalled Fax Foods’ founder, Francesco Dorigo. “We were approached by a restaurant chain to make a replica of corn on the cob and before you know it, we were making pieces of chicken and mashed potatoes.”

Learning the craft was a process of trial and error, Dorigo said.

“We tried to automate, but there isn’t much that you can do because everybody is so different,” he said. “Everyone makes their cheesecake or carrot cake a little different.”

The company, which brings in between $1.2 million and $1.5 million annually, has 15 employees. During a recent tour of the facility, rows of replicated brownie sundaes lined a table, part of a large order from Texas Land & Cattle Steak Houses, an East Coast chain that also ordered models of its Jack Daniel’s flavored pie.

Other employees shaped and applied gloss to pseudo soft-serve ice cream cones, an order placed by Rita’s Italian Ices. most cases, for a dessert to be reproduced to exact specifications it must be frozen solid, packed in dry ice and shipped overnight to Vista.

The cones for Rita’s were particularly taxing, Prestininzi said.

“They kept changing the height,” she said. “Then they finally settled on, like, a twist and a half. Well, our nozzle didn’t look like their nozzle, so we finally just had to hand-sculpt them.”

Most products are modeled on actual food to assure that the shape and texture are authentic. A silicon mold is made, into which a food-grade polyvinyl chloride is injected. Layers of plastisol inks are used to get just the right color and shading.

“It can be complicated,” Prestininzi said, pointing to a mock chicken Caesar burrito sitting atop her office desk.

“We make a mold for the tortilla, and that’s how you get the unique feel of it. Then there’s generic stuff that we’ll use for the filling, the chicken pieces and stuff like that.”

The company’s hottest-selling item is a less-than-popular vegetable: kale.

“People use that in their food displays and salad bars” as a decoration, Prestininzi said. “A lot of companies are contacting us now because kale is very expensive. It only lasts a day, day-and-a-half at the most, and you throw it away and you start over again.

“This, you wash with warm soapy water and it’s ready to go the next day and looks just like it did the day you bought it.”

Using replicas on a dessert tray can save restaurants thousands of dollars a year and prevent waste.

“Sometimes they’ll change the dessert trays two and three times a day, just so that it looks fresh,” Prestininzi said.

Because the product is petroleum-based, the cost of fake food is rising along with the cost of real food.

“Rising oil prices have kind of got us,” Prestininzi said. “We’ve had four price increases in one year. Unfortunately, we have to pass that on.”

The company has a stockroom filled with commonly requested items, from jumbo submarine sandwiches to pizza, milk shakes, lattes and nearly every fruit and vegetable imaginable. Special orders can take up to 10 days to prepare.

“ ‘Ugly Betty’ wanted pizza to throw at each other,” Prestininzi said.

“It didn’t work out, because what we have they would hurt each other with. ... (Lightweight pizza) is something that needs to be made.”

Though the injection molding process is fairly standard, some techniques are highly guarded industry secrets, such as how the company gives its peaches, kiwis and apricots a fuzzy skin or its breads a flour-coated texture.

The company’s products are often stolen from in-store displays, after which the thieves get a a rude awakening.

“Denny’s calls us a lot to say, ‘Someone stole our pie,’” Hardesty said.

Fax Foods items also are used in theatrical productions, television commercials and for in-store training.

When she first started working at Fax Foods, the products made her hungry, she said.

“But it smells so not so great all the time,” she said. “It’s pretty odorless ... (unless) they burn something.

“When the product comes out of the oven you get a little bit of burnt plastic on the outside that gets filed off.”

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