So yeah, ice was traumatic. It was one of thosesituations where you live and learn, I still wake up withcold sweats thinking about ice.Will you continue sending Pizza in the Post, eventhough your restaurants are back open?When we started looking into it, we discovered thatmost of our basil comes from Israel, and it has tobe flown in because it’s a fresh plant. This was amassive red flag of for us!Absolutely. We’ve opened up our own dedicatedproduction facility. We’re really focusing on tryingto perfect and increase the product range. It’s reallymaking a big difference at this time, as restauranttrade 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 righttools to do a job. But it was just so far away from thatsituation, it was a confusing time as no one had aclue what was going on. Everything was stressful.It was a real challenge to keep on the track. But therewas this amazing wartime spirit going on, wheneveryone pulled together to keep moving forward,despite all the constant setback.You have a book release in November, is it aboutpizza by any chance?It’s a love letter to pizza. We make Neapolitan pizzaand that’s where it all started for us, but we’ve gonedown this massive rabbit hole over the last eightyears. We love the passion, authenticity and history ofNeapolitan. But we also think there’s loads of room inthe world for New York pizza and Chicago deep dish.And actually, every culture in the world has got somekind of flat bread, so the book is just like a celebrationof everything pizza.So, we went to a food tech event, which was likespeed dating, they put different companies in a roomto throw around ideas. We met these guys who werestarting an open farm and said that they could helpus grow basil.It’s been ticking along and, 18 months later, we tookthe first delivery of our very own strain of basil, whichwe’ve worked with them on, to create the wholeflavour profile perfect for our pizzas.Within three months they are going to be able togrow all of our basil for the whole company, in onewarehouse, saving us a quarter of a million air milesa year. It’s genuinely such a triumph. And it’s only justthe beginning, we’d like to look at other parts of thebusiness that we could make more sustainable too.Watch this space!The book is a vomit of a million ideas, but it’s justmeant as a bit fun. There’s some history about howpizza started, around the world pizza city guides fromLA, New York, Chicago, Paris, Naples, London… there’salso our favourite pizzerias from the movies. We evenfeature a ‘how you eat pizza and what it says aboutyou section.’ We had body language experts helpingus figure that out.There’s some really good interviews in there withthe CEO of Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s.Everything focusses on the point that there’s no suchthing as a bad pizza, every kind of pizza is great. Funfact, the cover that’s made to look and feel like a pizzabox, 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’veever done. Before COVID kicked in we were reallygetting into figuring out how to become moresustainable and reducing our carbon footprint.‘A book by Pizza Pilgrims’ launches on the 12th ofNovember, make sure you get your mits on a copy herebefore they sell out!pizzapilgrims.co.uk@pizzapilgrims@pizzapilgrims42
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