(Editor’s note: This is the 15th installment in a series about opening a mobile pizzeria by Jason Cipriani, co-owner of Sips & Pies. You can read the other articles here.)
Coming off the high of our successful private preview in October, I was certain we were ready to immediately open. But with winter looming, going through the licensing process and paying all the necessary fees just didn’t make sense. And so, we decided we’d officially open in the spring, a full six months later. So, we continued to learn and ideate while we waited.
I’ll never forget the very first order we took for Sips & Pies – not because it was a milestone I’d dreamt about my entire life, but because of how horribly wrong it went.
Everything started according to plan. We got to an empty lot next to my wife’s office with plenty of time to set up, get the fire roaring and have everything in place for a 4 p.m. opening. Our kids arrived shortly after school let out. The five of us were nervous but excited.
We were ready early, and with a line already forming, I took our first order around 3:45 p.m. My wife began stretching and topping each of the three pizzas. When the first one was ready, I slid it onto the launch peel, walked over to the oven and, as I began to slide it off onto the oven floor, a giant hole appeared. It stuck to the peel. First pizza ruined.
After getting rid of the mess, I turned around and put the second pizza on the peel, double-checked it wasn’t sticking, and went to launch it into the oven, when it happened again. Another giant tear, another ruined pizza.
It was now 4 p.m., we had a line of at least 15 people, already had five orders on the board, and the first two pizzas we sold were ruined. I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and tell my wife we needed to remake another pizza.
What the Heck Am I Doing?
I vividly remember resting my head on the oven’s shelf as my mind filled with self doubt about whether or not we could even do this. What was I thinking? Why did I think I could open a mobile pizzeria? Should I turn around and tell everyone we were just going to close for the day? Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this.
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that feeling frustrated is a sign that you’re learning, and it was time to learn.
I walked over to my wife, let her know we needed another remake, and strategized potential fixes with her.
By this point – probably 4:15-ish – the line was longer than I imagined it being on our opening day, we had a stack of tickets, and we hadn’t even finished the first order yet.
But the five of us regrouped and started to slowly and methodically work through our orders. Our ticket times were far too long, a problem compounded by a giant gust of wind blowing all our tickets off the prep station, mixing them up in the process, but we kept moving.
We must have apologized for the long wait and thanked customers for their patience at least 100 times that day.
By 7 p.m., we’d sold 76 pizzas, had $1,382 in sales and were as exhausted as we were relieved.
Did We Make Any Money?
The next day, after licking my wounds, I sat down and looked more closely at the numbers. I created yet another spreadsheet to track how much money we spent on that service, including supplies, commissary fees, paying our kids and our amortized insurance, and within that silo, we’d made $491 in profit. Not too shabby. (Granted, my wife and I are not paying ourselves yet. We’re investing as much as possible back into the business for now, so our profit percentage is going to be higher than normal.)
As proud as I was of my wife and kids after our private preview, I was even more proud of them after our first service. We got our butts kicked, but we kept working hard together, as a team, and got through it.
We learned a lot that night. I learned a lot. And that’s exactly what I’ll cover next week in the last installment (for now) in this series.
JASON CIPRIANI is the owner of Sips & Pies, a mobile wood-fired pizzeria serving Neapolitan-inspired pizza, in Colorado.
