September '24: Saint Francis Apizza News and Reflections
I forgot what it feels like to start something new.
“Most newsletter suck. This one doesn’t” - an anonymous real reader of this newsletter
I'm the owner of the pizza restaurant Saint Francis Apizza in Cincinnati, OH. I write a newsletter most months to send out updates about the pizzeria, share my love of pizza and the travels I embark on to learn more about my favorite food, and the business behind it.
We started making tavern style thin crust pizzas in January 2023. The doughs for these pizzas need to be rolled out incredibly thin, i.e. a few sheets of paper thin, in order to achieve the crispiness we’re looking for. Above are some of the tools we used to achieve this quality:
~ 1 month (40 pizzas prepped): Wood rolling pin from my house (broke)
~ 2 months (45 pizzas prepped): Metal commercial rolling pin (too slow)
~ 2 months (50 pizzas prepped): Hand-crank dough sheeter from Etsy (too small, too slow)
~ 1.25 years til present (80-120 pizzas prepped): Electric sheeter I bought used from a restaurant friend for $500 (thanks, Dave!). It still works great.
Starting next week: Two-stage commercial dough sheeter I bought on Facebook Marketplace in Indianapolis
Generally, I believe in scaling processes and equipment only with business demand (and of course other critical considerations like safety, efficiency, morale). But until the new business can easily pay for the new equipment or staff with cash, we stick with what suits the stage we’re currently operating in.
When we were selling 40 tavern pizzas a week, a $25 rolling pin was a pain in the ass, but got the job done. And if it turned out you all hated our tavern pizzas, no big deal — we would be out $25.
Still, hand me a metal rolling pin now and I’d just laugh. There’s no way I’m going back to that. Unless reality requires that I do…
Great Things Take So Long
It never ceases to amaze me how fast I forget what it took to get where we are.
One day this summer, I looked up and found I was running a busy pizza business, with an outstanding team of 10, and a handful of viable opportunities for growth.
Whether that growth would look like a second takeout pizza shop, a large dine-in restaurant, a frozen pizza business, or a combination of any of those three, I had very high expectations. Accepting anything less would feel like going back to a stage of business and personal development that’s no longer where I want to be.
The last time I wrote here I described the idea of ‘flights and perchings,’ that life is essentially just periods when we push off and take flight, only to land at our next temporary perching.
I’ll admit it — I temporarily forgot what it feels like to be at the beginning of something new. Taking off requires flapping our wings as hard as we can. Only upon reaching a certain height can we even consider gliding.
Saint Franky’s Frozen Pizzas
Our goal is that most of our frozen pizza sales happen at farmers’ markets and out of our shop. We love our wholesale partners — currently ETC at Findlay Market, Taste of Elm in Ludlow, The Farmer’s Collective in Hamilton, and Golden Gelato in Covington — but the financials only work if we maintain a specific ratio of retail vs. wholesale (about 75/25).
The challenge is that we aren’t able to participate in farmer’s markets, which we see as our main sales avenue, until at least the end of October. Meanwhile we’ve purchased a delivery vehicle and committed to the requisite associated costs, invested in new equipment, and most of all, hired an amazing person, Mike, our Chief Frozen Pizza Officer, away from our restaurant team to run production and operations.
I haven’t felt this unique sort of startup pressure in awhile. Also, the last time I felt it, in 2021, I was more or less emotionally alone with that feeling. Today with our frozen pizza business, Mike is feeling the stress of propping up this new project with me. I’m not used to reassuring someone other than myself that we’ll find a way. While I don’t want Mike to feel anxious, it’s also nice to share the burden with someone else who cares a lot and is equally motivated to succeed. I’m doing my best to draw on my best business and maybe personal quality, which is optimism and unshakeable confidence that we’ll figure it out.
Until We *Knocks on Wood* Secure Spots in Farmer’s Markets
We can’t overcommit to the wholesale side of the business, because as soon as the markets begin, I anticipate that we’ll have a very different challenge. Instead of asking ‘how are we going to sell all these frozen pizzas?’ we’ll be scratching our heads wondering ‘how the hell are we going to make more frozen pizzas?’
We’re picking the low-hanging fruit first. A month ago we were making 50 frozen pizzas a week. After fulfilling wholesale orders, we usually had about 15 frozen pizzas left to sell out of our shop every week. They didn’t last long. Every pizza we sell at our shop has optimal margins and the comparative ease of ‘delivery’ is fantastic: rather than delivering them in an expensive vehicle, let’s carry them from our deep freezer to our retail one. Because we had so few frozen pizzas available to customers of our shop on a consistent basis, we were missing out on ‘easy’ sales to people who were already coming in to our shop anyway. There are now dozens of frozen pizzas available in our shop right as you check out, daily, and as you’d expect, our sales there have quadrupled.
What are we doing with the surplus? We’re calling on our industry friends, our community, across Cincinnati, asking them to host a ‘pickup spot’ on Sundays this month. Customers can pre-order frozen pizzas and pizza doughs, then meet us at the pick up point during a two hour window. Heads up Northern Kentucky — we’re coming to Golden Gelato in Covington this Sunday 9/22 from 12-2 pm (pre-order at the link below). The following weekend we’ll be setting up outside our friends at Two Seven Two bakery in Clifton (pre-order not available yet)!
In case you’re interested, I recommend pre-ordering at the button below, but we will bring a bunch of extras for walk up orders, too!
What’s next? I recently ordered a bunch of frozen wontons from Yee Mama, delivered directly to my front door in an insulated bag, packed with some toppings and their incredible bottled sauce. As I worked on opening the restaurant that became Saint Francis Apizza, I worked a couple days a week as a delivery driver at The Rhined, running cheese and club subscriptions all across the region. We’d love to try something similar. More details to come!
Pick a Cliché. Rome Wasn’t Built In a Day?
It took awhile for Saint Francis Apizza to get really busy. In order to sell our 1000 square foot house so that we could put that money toward bootstrapping a pizzeria, we had to scrape that money together, month by month, saving a little bit at a time for years. I left a career that I liked a lot — education — but didn’t love, to get my feet wet in restaurants, and started off with essentially no idea of how to run a restaurant.
But good things take more than time and patience.
I love this story about the early days of AirBnB. The first group of AirBnB hosts generally posted unappealing photos of the homes they listed, so travelers weren’t exactly jumping to rent them. This was holding the platform back when it needed to catch on. Fortunately, one of the company’s founders had a background in professional photography. He personally travelled to each host’s rental, took proper photos, edited and posted them to the site, all for free. Of course, over time the property owners learned that they’d need to invest in quality photos to have a chance in a crowded marketplace. But in the beginning, AirBnB’s founders knew their only chance to grow demand for their platform was to take care of the marketing photos themselves. Those ‘unscalable’ and often unsustainable steps we take in the beginning are the only way to prop up something new.
One of our friends/suppliers just stopped by to make a delivery, and we were talking business and the challenges of rapid growth.
“I can’t make that happen,” he said, in response to customer asking to double their order from him, “But I’ll figure out a way to.”
Where to Find/Order Our Frozen Pizzas Right Now
Saint Francis Apizza (link to order and pick up our shop, seven days a week!)
Taste on Elm 227 Elm St, Ludlow, KY 41016
The Farmer’s Collective 302 Main St, Hamilton, OH 45013
ETC Produce and Provisions 1801 Race St Unit 149, Cincinnati, OH 45202
Golden Gelato 130 W Pike St, Covington, KY 41011
Pre-order to pick up frozen pizzas this Sunday at Golden Gelato here
Business Stuff I’m Reading/Listening To:
This interview with the Chef/Founder of Homeroom, the mac and cheese restaurant in Oakland. Erin Wade made the news with a thoughtful and effective way to protect staff against harassment in restaurants. She also cites Open Book Management and a focus on a collaborative work environment as keys to the success of her business! [Link]
For now, thank you for reading, and thank you for trusting us with your pizza needs!
- Alex Plattner, Saint Francis Apizza
saintfrancisapizza@gmail.com