So… it has taken: months of detailed planning to build a business
from scratch; visits to several oven suppliers to find our perfect
orange beauty; a training course in Devon (on how to use the magical
wood fired oven properly); training courses in Naples (on how to
make the perfect Neopolitan pizza); painstaking research to develop
the best dough recipe and proving technique; multiple tasting
sessions to build our menu during which we tested no less than
twenty different suppliers; countless tests of tomato sauce recipes to
find what we believe to be the ultimate base. We have laughed, we
have (almost) cried, we have had sleepless nights and long days but
we made it – we finally set up our Gazebo and oven in full view of the
general public at the Railway Tavern in Hungerford on Thursday 12 th
April!

The idea was to start slow – a low-key, unadvertised pitch outside the
pub, to test with Kevin where best to set up and just to generally
check out our processes one last time before trading for real. This
was to be a dry run if you like – with a few free pizzas thrown in for
good measure to give everyone a taste of what was to come.
The set up went remarkably smothly and we have to say – the
Gazebo, oven and accompanying van looked a damn site better
outside the Railway Tavern that it did perched on the patio in the
back garden!

It looks better here than on the patio!

The only fly in the ointment being a rather smokey batch of dry wood
(maybe it was rained on in the night!) which blew right into the
covered Gazebo and made our eyes water a bit – not to mention
smoking Kevin’s bedroom out a tad above the pub – oops – one to
work on for next time…

Feedback from the customers enjoying the free tasters was awesome.
The dough is the star of the show it seems and the decision to make
our dough ourselves rather than use the mass manufactured ready-
made balls is proving to be an excellent choice. We knew it was the
right decision of course – the difference in taste is amazing even
though we say it ourselves!

Our favourite comment of the night “I used to be a chef and it makes
such a change to taste a pizza sauce with some decent seasoning” We
worked hard to get the taste just right but to hear it from a complete
unbiased stranger made us proud as punch!

And to top it all – even though the pizza was free for the evening we
even took four orders from people who wanted to pay to have a
whole pizza to themselves!

Wow – thanks to all those wonderful customers and passers by at the
Railway Tavern who made our first proper outing utterly
unforgetable.