Top This! Deep-dish, gourmet, stuffed or extra-thin--no matter how you slice it, pizza delivers profits for entrepreneurs. Here's how to get your piece of the pie.

Recall the anticipation . . . anxiouslyawaiting the delivery of tantalizing tomato sauce and thick, oozingcheese atop a soft, chewy crust of happiness. Whether it serves asfuel for an all-night cram session or an inexpensive attempt tosatisfy a troop of voracious Girl Scouts, the wonderment known aspizza has provided instant happiness to cafeteria-weary collegestudents and cash-strapped slumber-party facilitators foryears.

An inexpensive favorite, usually sufficing for both dinner andthe following day's breakfast, pizza represents all thenecessary food groups and offers extreme edible ease (i.e., no needfor those annoying utensils and plates). According to Doskocil FoodService Co. LLC, a leading U.S. supplier of branded andprivate-label pepperoni and pizza toppings for the food-serviceindustry, pizza has gained title as America's best-loved food,outnumbering the country's ordering of both hamburgers andchicken. And according to the Gallup Organization, pizza ranks asthe preferred food among kids ages 3 to 11. So if you'restarting to get hungry--and simultaneously contemplatingentrepreneurship--one route to consider is to turn this Americanfavorite into a profit center by getting into the pizza business.Starting out 1,000 years ago as herbed foccaccia bread, today'spizza evolved from dough created by a baker in Naples, Italy. Sinceits migration to America after World War II, pizza has grown toaccount for 24 percent of U.S. entree consumption, according toDoskocil--surpassing the growth rate of all other food-serviceitems.

"For a menu item that is popular, profitable andeasy," says Kevin Kreutner, marketing manager for Hutchinson,Kansas-based Doskocil Food Service.