HILLSBOROUGH: He uses T-shirts to sell pizza

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
   Can you connect the New York Knicks’ Jeremy Lin and pizza?
   OK. How about the Occupy Wall Street movement and pizza?
   Akhtar Farzaie linked them to his Bella Pizza business, lickety split, without using Twitter, email or Facebook.
   He used T-shirts to capture the day’s buzz.
   Mr. Farzaie, 31, the owner of the shop in Country Store plaza off East Mountain Road,
   Inspired by a trip to the city to deliver food to the camped-out residents of Zuccotti Park, Mr. Farzaie came home with the idea to design a shirt that plays on the words.
   ”Occupy” became “occu-pie.” He drop the W and the location become “all streets.” And so you have a T-shirt that screams reads, “Occupie all streets…We deliver…www.BellaPizza1.com.”
   He gives them away when people chuckle in admiration. His drivers wear them on deliveries.
   When the pro basketball world’s Lin-sanity was all that you heard about, Mr. Farzaie sprung to action again.
   Not a big fan of Carmelo Anthony, whose injury gave Lin the greater chance to shine, Mr. Farzaie made a team uniform jersey-like T-shirt that poked at the ailing star. A shingle with the name “Lin” mostly obscures “Anthony” across the shoulders. A number 1 was scratched in front of Mr. Anthony’s number seven to make 17, Lin’s uniform number.
   On the front, Bella Pizza takes the space as the team name. But there’s no town, no phone number.
   He showed the shirt on his Facebook page, and it seemed to hit. About 30 people said they would buy one for $10 apiece, he said. More are planned to be made. The money will go to a charity in Somerville, where he lives, said Mr. Farzaie.
   Mr. Farzaie is owner of one of the dozen or so pizza restaurants in Hillsborough, so any marketing edge is crucial.
   ”Everybody wears a T-shirt,” he said. “I think of every individual as a walking billboard.”
   Mr. Farzaie withdrew from Rutgers six years and scraped up enough money to buy the pizza shop. He knew the work from his own employment as a youth. While still making pies at times, he’s also enrolled at Kean University, pursuing a business management degree.
   ”I like to think and market outside the box,” he says.
   He’s Web at bellapizza1.com and on Facebook at bellapizzaofhillsborough.
   And he could be on a T-shirt coming down the street at you at anytime.