F&D Heroes Issue 1

So yeah, ice was traumatic. It was one of those
situations where you live and learn, I still wake up with
cold sweats thinking about ice.
Will you continue sending Pizza in the Post, even
though your restaurants are back open?
When we started looking into it, we discovered that
most of our basil comes from Israel, and it has to
be flown in because it’s a fresh plant. This was a
massive red flag of for us!
Absolutely. We’ve opened up our own dedicated
production facility. We’re really focusing on trying
to perfect and increase the product range. It’s really
making a big difference at this time, as restaurant
trade is still very precarious.
Lockdown was really hard, especially on the team,
when there’s no direction or real plan every morning.
Obviously, when you have a certain sized business,
everyone feels like they should be given the right
tools to do a job. But it was just so far away from that
situation, it was a confusing time as no one had a
clue what was going on. Everything was stressful.
It was a real challenge to keep on the track. But there
was this amazing wartime spirit going on, when
everyone pulled together to keep moving forward,
despite all the constant setback.
You have a book release in November, is it about
pizza by any chance?
It’s a love letter to pizza. We make Neapolitan pizza
and that’s where it all started for us, but we’ve gone
down this massive rabbit hole over the last eight
years. We love the passion, authenticity and history of
Neapolitan. But we also think there’s loads of room in
the world for New York pizza and Chicago deep dish.
And actually, every culture in the world has got some
kind of flat bread, so the book is just like a celebration
of everything pizza.
So, we went to a food tech event, which was like
speed dating, they put different companies in a room
to throw around ideas. We met these guys who were
starting an open farm and said that they could help
us grow basil.
It’s been ticking along and, 18 months later, we took
the first delivery of our very own strain of basil, which
we’ve worked with them on, to create the whole
flavour profile perfect for our pizzas.
Within three months they are going to be able to
grow all of our basil for the whole company, in one
warehouse, saving us a quarter of a million air miles
a year. It’s genuinely such a triumph. And it’s only just
the beginning, we’d like to look at other parts of the
business that we could make more sustainable too.
Watch this space!
The book is a vomit of a million ideas, but it’s just
meant as a bit fun. There’s some history about how
pizza started, around the world pizza city guides from
LA, New York, Chicago, Paris, Naples, London… there’s
also our favourite pizzerias from the movies. We even
feature a ‘how you eat pizza and what it says about
you section.’ We had body language experts helping
us figure that out.
There’s some really good interviews in there with
the CEO of Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s.
Everything focusses on the point that there’s no such
thing as a bad pizza, every kind of pizza is great. Fun
fact, the cover that’s made to look and feel like a pizza
box, was designed by the gorilla from Mighty Boosh.
So, we heard you’re growing your own Basil?
Oh my God. It’s awesome. It’s the best thing we’ve
ever done. Before COVID kicked in we were really
getting into figuring out how to become more
sustainable and reducing our carbon footprint.
‘A book by Pizza Pilgrims’ launches on the 12th of
November, make sure you get your mits on a copy here
before they sell out!
pizzapilgrims.co.uk
@pizzapilgrims
@pizzapilgrims
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