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.
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...
