MOTO
Seattle, Washington
Concept:
MOTO “OddPizza” is a combined expression of all my pizza making experience, mostly inspired by my travels to the night markets in Asia and Europe, where I found unique, quality food from fast, efficient operators with just a couple of people putting out hundreds of plates in a very tiny space. This is the magic that spurred the addition of our popular seafood line of pizza that was part of the night market inspiration and in building the MOTO concept within 500 square feet.
Pizza Style:
We craft a high hydration dough, made into a deep dish, in our odd style combo of Roman, Detroit and a lil NYC “grit” that I like to call an “ODDPIZZA”. The dough is a playful collection of several sourdough starters, some over a 120 years old, that I’ve received from different chefs, bakers and family cooks I have become friends with, some of it in trade. I love to barter, and I love to collect and experiment with “BETTY” my frankenstyle sourdough!
Your preorders are sold out for months. Why did you initially start the pre-ordering and what has it turned into?
Our wait times and demand were so high, right when we opened, so we went to preorders to organize better. It reached three months in advanced for up to 250 pre-orders a night. I’m hoping to pull away from that model after all the hype dies down, but it’s been well over a year now. Our new larger second location has just sold out for two months within a couple of hours, but I don’t think that pre-sale will trend much longer with more expansion growth and as the novelty wears off.
Tell us more about your growth mode.
Our third location looks to open at the end of February, and we are finally implementing our Pizza Robot from PICNICWORKS to showcase the future of robotics and its role in production, and we are using NWFarms indoor vertical hydroponically grown produce and showcasing their farm grow technology on site. I am going to do an L.A. pop up this summer!
We are also in current talks with the sports stadium and have also presented our pitch deck to Venture Capital with some serious interest in our growth model. We are also bringing on a wonderful partner that is in the famous Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana family chain, that is investing and advising us. 2023 is gonna be an interesting year, to say the least. Buckle up!
What’s the biggest challenge you are facing in the business right now and how are you addressing it?
Our current challenge is handling this accelerated growth. We are addressing it with hiring slow, paying well and taking genuine care of our people and our customers. We anticipate mistakes, but find the key to overcoming these challenges is simply a positive uplifting attitude towards each other. We are also rebuilding and tightening our already well developed systems and processes for scale while being able to make quick decisions and keep the ability to pivot quickly as a small, tightknit, fun-loving productive team. I really believe MOTO is going to positively impact our industry in more ways than one!
