It's been a long time coming, but tomorrow it all becomes very real. This weekend is our first 'big one'. We are doing three days on the spin and hope to serve well over 500 pizzas. If we do we will be off and running, ready to take down Pizza Express in no time. If we don't, major rethinks could well be in order.
The lead up to this weekend has gathered pace over the last few weeks. A house warming pizza party last weekend confirmed that we have a great product. If we can get the production right this weekend we'll be onto something. Doing the sums on 600 pizzas has brought home some realities, so we have taken the plunge and bought a van! I traded in my trusty Fiat Punto, friend and companion for the last 4 1/2 years and am now officially a van man. Just need to get a copy of The Sun and a Big Mac wrapper and the transformation will be complete. After loading it up this evening with two fridges, 48kgs of mozzarella and 500 pizza boxes, we wondered how we thought we could ever cope without one. Hopefully it will serve us well this summer.
More good news and excitement today when our first catering size delivery of ingredients turned up. After many a long night searching for suppliers we finally found one we were happy with. They make their own mozzarella everyday in London and deliver down to the south coast so we are delighted. However, after simply phoning through an order and promising cash on delivery we really were wondering if all our stock would turn up. But it did, and we are currently the proud owner of over 50kgs finest Italian pizza flour, a full fridge of mozzarella, 10kgs of meat products and litres and litres of tomatoes. All we have to do now is turn it all into hard cash. No worries.
So at 9:30pm I'm writing this with a glass of red to take my mind of things with a trailer, car and van all loaded up and ready to go. We leave at 8am tomorrow morning, for a weekend that really could shape the rest of our lives...
Piu Pizza had to move. Our house in the dodgy estate, was too close to the pikey caravan site and we couldn't risk 'losing' any of our gear over the summer. In actual fact in order to get the trailer out of the garden we had to take the fence down, which wasn't ideal, and was boring the second time let alone doing it all season.
The move was scheduled to be from the 5th, over a smooth two days followed by a short trip to Petersfield rugby club to sell some pizzas to the walkers and supporters of the 'Walk for Dreams' event, a twelve hour charity walk. Ryan got us off to a flier announcing that he has got the dates wrong and we actually only had a day to move. Not ones to back down from a challenge, and with a lot of help from friends we nailed the majority of the move in an evening. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it meant that we could prepare for the event at a leisurely pace on the Saturday morning.
Decisions, decisions. Small events are always going to be tough to judge which has given us more determination to get some big bookings. Bringing too much stock to a small events and throwing it all away is not good for the profit and loss account, and is very difficult to stomach for someone who hates food waste. So after a lot of deliberation we settled on bringing enough dough and sauce for around 40 pizzas, with an even split of toppings. Prepped, packed and ready to go in loads of time, things were going well. We even managed to get the marquee into the car instead of tying it to the trailer. Which begged the question "what the hell did we have in the car for the Petersfield market!?". Not ones to dwell on such trivialities and feeling confident we had packed everything we needed we pressed on.
Rolling into Petersfield Rugby Club we were greeted with the astonishing sight of perhaps a dozen walkers doing laps of the pitch. Cheering them on along the sideline were a few gazebos and twenty or more chairs. And a few people. We approached an elderly gent to explain who we were. After a brief explanation it turned out that he had know idea what we were talking about. Wrong person. After a while we found the right person and sat down to watch the action.
After half an hour or so we managed to tear ourselves away from the enthralling pitch lapping entertainment and decided that we may as well set up and fire the oven. It was good publicity if nothing else, and at least we could cook our dinner. Setting up was a breeze and we were in danger of looking professional. Then disaster as the air pump to get the oven going quickly wouldn't work. Ryan took this badly and decided that perhaps he could make the air pump feel better if he didn't work properly as well.
With smoke bellowing out across the playing field we were certainly attracting some interest. Before long the oven calmed down and we were ready to cook. Our first customer came to be promptly ignored by Ryan and walked off. What was up with him? We pressed on and served some pizza to friends. This bought the crowds in and we had orders to meet. In a dreamy state Ryan was serving them out and getting the paying public to make up their own boxes. Turned out that it was worth setting up after all. We sold out of pepperoni in no time and ended up just about selling out of everything. We even felt good enough to donate some of our profit to the charity. Well actually if we were paying ourselves a wage we wouldn't have made any money, but it feels good to give, and I guess one day it will come with some good tax benefits.
The heavens opened as we began to pack up, but we discovered that we can pack up pretty efficiently without getting too wet. Another good learning. And another positive event. Plenty of business cards given out and interest for a wedding and a christening. Positive feedback from nearly everyone bar an "I thought pizzas were supposed to be round?" teenager. Not from Piu Pizza they're not, just round enough! So all in all a good afternoon's work. All we need now is to start shifting some volume, and answer the burning question. "What was up with Ryan?" Hopefully the doctor will be able to tell us this week...
Piu Pizza had to move. Our house in the dodgy estate, was too close to the pikey caravan site and we couldn't risk 'losing' any of our gear over the summer. In actual fact in order to get the trailer out of the garden we had to take the fence down, which wasn't ideal, and was boring the second time let alone doing it all season.
