Sunday May 18th, 10:48 pm. The weekend of 6 gigs plus 6 days of Doughjo service is officially over for the staff at Fist of Flour. From robotics to drugs, beer enthusiasts, partiers, neighbors, to our biggest wedding to date, we’ve covered some serious bases, all within like 10 miles of home. This was the first of many weekends to come over the next 6 months, and this was just a warm up. It felt good to be back out in the field. Though I should remember to wear sunblock on my neck and arms.
We’ve been working towards this weekend for the last several months. Figuring out all the scheduling, managing the new shop, and slowly but surely booking more gigs out in the field. Things have taken their toll on us all, but we’re still here, still breathing, still slingin, and still full of love for this life I’ve chosen. A big thanks must go out to the crew who’s been with me this whole time, I know I don’t say thank you enough to them, and instead get hung up on the smaller details. But as the old saying goes, the Devil’s in the details, no? We’re only as good as our best efforts, and one can’t attain greatness without paying attention to the tiniest of those details. I want to make people happy. I want to make awesome pizza all the time, no matter where we are.
Speaking of making people happy, one question we do get a lot is “Why aren’t you open more?”, or open for lunch at the Doughjo? Well the simple truth is we’re out and about making a lot of pizzas, and the rest of the time we’re prepping for our daily Dinner service, and all of the events on the weekends. Our kitchen space is fairly small, so selling food and prepping are hard to do at the same time. Our ingredients don’t arrive prepared in any way. Everything comes in fresh, and either gets hand made, mixed, sliced, cubed or diced by the team every day. It takes all of our space to do this every day, so we’re looking into other spaces and a possible mini expansion, but right now its just an idea.
The take away restaurant aspect of the business is really secondary to our main attraction, Wood-fired pizza where you are, via catering or public events. With over three years handing out business cards and stickers, people call, email and message us all the time. Especially right now, as summer approaches I can barely keep up with correspondence. We have 22 gigs on the calendar for this May. That alone is a full time job, which is probably the next position I should start looking to fill. For now, I’ll manage that end as best I can. In the mean time, we are still looking for pizza makers to help out through the summer and into fall, so if you know some pie slingers we’re hiring!
We’ve got a great season of events already lined up, and we’re really looking forward to summer! Nothing like sweating your brow off in front of a 950°F oven on a hot summer day, or trapped inside four walls, up against two 56″ gas stone deck ovens running at a cool 620°F for 8 hours a day alongside our newest addition to the kitchen, a mini slice oven that also sits at a cool 450°F. This heat, coupled with stress, a strict diet of other food trucks’ cold food (eaten well after it’s been delivered to you at a festival and probably the only actual “meal” of the 12+ hour work day), and supplied cocktails from groomsmen, and Beer Maidens with pitchers of all kinds of beers all weekend long add up to weight loss and nothing but trouble for the post-gig wrap up. And we’re lovin every minute of it. Wouldn’t do it any other way. Time to lighten up, put our heads down, and get to work!