"They don't make salads there. They don't make sandwiches. They just make pizza," Batoff said. "Everything comes out of the oven. Everything they produce is baked. That makes it a bakery.
"People don't come in, order and sit down and eat there," he said. "They just come in and pick up their pizzas and leave. Besides, there aren't any tables for them to sit at."
Batoff noted that a bakery could open, unchallenged, in a commercially zoned area. The spot where Pizza Hut hopes to open a "bakery" - in a strip shopping center at 5808-10 Rising Sun Ave. in the Crestville section of the city - is zoned C-2. Great for bakeries, difficult for pizza parlors.
The only thing that doesn't come out of the ovens that is sold there, Batoff said, are soft drinks. And if that makes the "bakery" a ''restaurant," then the 7-Eleven store next door is a restaurant, not a convenience store, he said.
Batoff advanced his arguments without opposition. Zoning board members chuckled and Tom Citro, administrative aide to district Councilman Jack Kelly, smiled.
Citro, appearing on behalf of community organizations in the area, told the board that all differences had been "ironed out" with Pizza Hut. Batoff added that "even the owner of the pizza parlor across the street" had signed a petition on Pizza Hut's behalf.
Board members voted unanimously to approve the request for the zoning variance.
In other action, the board:
* Legalized a roof sign for Total Video at 1342 Cottman Ave. Owner Harold Nerenberg said his business would be lost in a sea of commerical signs without it.
* Continued a hearing on a subdivision at 15201 Bustleton Ave. sought by Gary E. Thompson. The delay was granted to give Thompson time to discuss the plan with the Somerton Civic Association.
