Despite starting work at 7:30am or earlier for all of my working life, the sound of the alarm in the morning always physically hurts my head. And so it was at 6am on the morning of Wednesday 13th April when Piu Pizza was finally to take off and start trading to the general public. The previous nights sleep had not been too bad, some difficulty in dropping off with thoughts spinning, but on the whole I felt good and ready. After all we have been working on the business for at least 6 months.
The early morning went well, car and trailer loaded efficiently and we were on the road by 6:45, Ryan's check lists the night before obviously paying off. The main aim of the day we decided as we left Osborne Crescent was to have fun. After all, what is the point in starting your own business if you are not going to enjoy doing it? Conversation on the half hour trip was stunted, nervous looks in the mirrors to check that the trailer was still in one piece, dreams of selling out, laughs at what would spell disaster. But we arrived safely at 7:20am, and as we pulled into Peterfield town centre we were greeted with the sight of literally tens of market traders well on the way to having their stalls set up. However, a space free, between the flower sellers and a middle aged man selling china tat to old ladies had our name on it and we were to become market traders for the day.
We new the drill; trailer off, marquee up, oven out and lit, kitchen set up, dough made, make money. In the words of the meerkat, or perhaps Jay from the Inbetweeners depending on your persuasion - simples. Couple of problems, we'd never done it in public before and we didn't have the correct bit of kit for the power source. Never ones to let inconveniences like a lack of power to get in the way, in good farming fashion we ploughed on. Undeterred by the sideways glances by our fellow marketeers as our dominating marquee went up, the set up couldn't really have gone smoother. Ryan used his car to generate some power for the oven lighting system and soon smoke was bellowing out across the town centre causing more strange looks from the locals. We know the early stages of firing the oven creates a bit of smoke, and the reaction to this by other traders has always been a concern, but soon the smoke cleared as the oven got up to temperature and things were looking up. We 'borrowed' some power from the mobile butcher and soon enough had hot water to clean down the surfaces and begin prepping the toppings.
Indeed, a couple of phone calls to friends that came to our rescue and soon after 9:00am we had our own power supply. It's safe to say that by 9:30 we were good and ready to sell some pizza and the highs and lows of a trading day began. No custom. Lots of interest, but no custom. To be expected that early in the morning I suppose, but the realities of the day had set in. How much dough to make? Realistically were we going to sell more than 10? An hour or so of making ourself look busy, stunted conversation with the 'tat' seller and out of the blue a genuine, bone fide customer! Someone who until five minutes earlier did not know of our existence had decided that they wanted to exchange money for our product. Mild panic set in. I had to actually make a pizza. Ryan had to cook it. And make it and cook it we did. A perfect pizza came out of the oven, delicious smells flooded the market place and we were off and running. What is more is that the customer was interested in booking us for a party. This was not something we had considered, and the sales pitch was fragile at best, but she took our details and we felt good. Should we make more dough, we're going to sell out, this time next year we'll be millionaires! Or not, as another hour went past with the only sales to friends and relatives.
Smattering of sales came our way, and indeed we experienced what to a rookie pizziola could be described as a 'lunchtime rush'. The pizzas were coming out of the oven looking great. Customers eating them immediately were giving great feedback, and a few more inquiries for parties and events came our way. We were selling pizza to the public and it felt great. With the last pizza of the day served at 3pm, we were packed up by 4pm and home, washing up in the sink, aprons on a hot wash and exhausted on the sofa at 5.
Had we made any money? Well we hadn't lost any, but it was the most poorly paid job i'd ever done. But we had set up a business, taken it to a market, sold our products to the general public and what is more people had liked it. One had come back for more. One had thought we were good enough to cater for his daughters wedding. The adventures of two pizza boys had just begun...
