Two years after our first and unsuccessful attempt at winning a pizza competition, GoreMade Pizza is making its second attempt at taking home the gold at the NAPICS Pizza Pizzazz competition.
As documented from the last time I entered this competition in 2012, I was new to the game. I had never sold a pizza and recently purchased a mobile wood fired oven with the hopes of winning some cash to set up my new mobile business. I was up against seventy-something other Pros from around the country who had been making their submissions as regular menu items for a long time, where as I had to make a menu to enter the competition (regular menu items are the only pizzas allowed to be made for the competition). I had to decide my pizza submission within minutes of signing up, which was not wholly ideal. This time around, I’ve got several years of pizza notes to sift through and a lot of crowd response to boot. I’m entering both the Gourmet and Traditional categories to better my odds of success. Picking the pizzas to enter was still a difficult task. Another difficulty is that I’ve honed in my pizza making with respect to a high heat environment, from dough recipe to cheese selection. Having to switch from a 900º wood fired oven to a deck oven that will be hundreds of degrees cooler can change things drastically. My wife is away with our two children the week leading up to the competition, so I’ll be spending a lot of time experimenting with a pizza stone in my home oven. I’ve got to test out some new cheeses and get my pizzas to perfection in a little over a week. Looks like I’ll be eating pizza a lot while they're away! I can think of worse situations to be in. More as the story unfolds! In the mean time, wish me luck! When I started this crazy journey to open a pizza business, I was planning on it being a Brick & Mortar restaurant. It was scheduled for an opening date of March 3rd, 2013, and that date was set 5 years ago! A lot has changed since making those plans, but I'm happy to report that on March 12, 2013, after talking with Columbus Public Health for over a year, GoreMade Pizza has officially become a licensed mobile food establishment! (Can I Get A Woop-Woop!?!) The fact that it was 9 days after my target goal set 5 years ago is down right amazing, and just goes to show that it pays to plan ahead! I have this friend, Heidi, see. And she's amazingly creative and expressive and wonderful and is a very wonderful friend. She makes body puppets and has an amazing business around their creation and expression. For my birthday in July, she gave me a painted card with a coupon on the back good for one pizza body puppet. Of course this is awesomely rad, so I cashed it in and she began her work. I've received various text images on my crappy phone depicting what I can only assume to be the various stages and sketches of creation, but I was still pretty much in the dark about exactly what I would be receiving. Jump to December, the last pizza sunday of 2012. A friend was going away for the holidays and wanted some deliciousness before his trip, so he sponsored a pizza sunday with all the fixins. Deliciousness ensued.
My amazingly creative and expressive friend Heidi shows up after telling me she was up all night and wouldn't be able to attend the event. While on my mid-cook break, I asked her to tell me about this body puppet she'd been working on for months to get an idea of what exactly to expect. She told me that she has to go to the bathroom, but she'd oblige me as soon as she came back. And oblige me she did! Happy black friday, ya'll! It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I'd update you all on what's going on in the world of GoreMade Pizza. Above is an awesome photo by Brian Hockensmith documenting a delicious halloween of pizza.
Many new pieces of equipment are being collected. I've gotten some amazing deals from various places going out of business and awesome craigslist finds. I've bought practically everything used and it's making it possible to grow without any debt building up, which is the only way I'm willing to move forward. There are some really tragic stories attached to these used pieces of equipment, but I'm learning a lot. For instance, never sign a month to month least for a pizza shop unless you've got the money to deal with moving if your landlord sells his property to walmart. But hey, I got some badly needed dough trays for about $400 less than cost out of that one. The staff you see in this picture was my trusty walking staff for nearly 2 years (photo by craig bortmas). I found it in my back yard and cut it down myself. The stuff of fairy tales, I tell ya. I took it with me every time I went walking with my son, and spent a lot of time caring for it. It sent me on many crazy and interesting adventures, and started a whole new chapter of my life. Sadly, this year at comfest, the staff was stolen from the art car tent on the last day. Coincidentally, one of my art car friends, Bob Madrid, had recently started carving walking sticks out of wood he'd been drying out the last 5 years. He brought a small army of them to show off at the festival. He mentioned carving one for me in passing and I told him I had all the staff I needed, but appreciated the offer. That was until my staff was pilfered. Now without, he has agreed to carve me my very own staff. In exchange, I agreed to do a pizza event for his 25th wedding anniversary. That event was Sunday, July 28th. This illustration by Donn Ross was a gift for my 33rd birthday on July 12. The number 33 has always held a special place in my heart. So when my 33rd birthday was aligned with my brother and his new fiance coming into town, I had to throw a pizza party for myself so that they could try the wood fired deliciousness that I've been cooking up lately and all my friends would have something to gather around. The only downside being that I was working my pepperonis off my whole birthday.
Sunday, June 3rd, GoreMade Pizza went out to Powell for its first graduation party from 3:00-6:00 pm, asked to feed 30 people. One of the owners of Via Vecchia Winery, who are gracious enough to allow me to use their Commercial Kitchen for its commissary, had me out with the oven to make pizzas for their son's Graduation Party. It was such an awesome experience, excluding a couple things I'll know for next time.
I had the opportunity to do an interview for the Columbus Underground, an underground news website here in Columbus, Ohio. Check it out HERE.
They got wind of me after I began following them from my twitter account. A couple weeks later, they sent me an email asking if I'd answer some questions. They even sent out a photographer to take my picture last week. Interestingly enough, they used a couple pictures from my facebook account without my permission, nor did they give me credit for them. I felt a little violated, but I got 20-30 new facebook fans from it, so I think I can deal with the violation for the sake of popularity. Let the soul selling begin! After my oven being gone for about three months and the lull of non-pizza-making slowly sinking into my bones, I was finally able to take the oven home for a test-drive on April 20th. It still needed some work to the water storage tank and hot water system, but I had a gig on the 25th, so I took it to test out what had been completed thus far. The following week and a half turned into a whirlwind of pizza related things! I took most of the week off to spend with family and play with the oven and do all things pizza. It was awesome!
The first Pizza Sunday was like seeing an old friend. It felt so good to make pizza again. It took me a couple pies to get back into the swing of things, but I hit my stride and there was no looking back! It's always good to pick up something you love after a long pause. Reminds me of why I chose pizza! Tuesday, April 24th was the RDP Food Show. RDP is a Clintonville based food distributor that I've been building a relationship with for the past couple months. Every year, they invite all the companies that they distribute for to the columbus convention center to show off their products to both new and existing customers. Since I'm in the middle of moving from grocery store supplies to bulk suppliers, it was a golden opportunity to sample some of the many products they carry. Let me tell you, I made out like a friggin food bandit! 20- lbs of various cheeses from a high-end cheese company (!!!), 15 lbs of pepperoni from a columbus based company(!!), a pound of yeast(!) and some organic tomato stuff. I also got about 150 lbs of flour out of the whole deal! A savanger's dream come true, slowly fading into nightmare. I'm still trying to find the best way to store 150 lbs of flour, and we've been eating pepperoni and cheese on everything these last few weeks! The food portion of the food show lasted from 1-6, then continued at the Lifestyles Community Pavilion from 7-9:30, featuring the musical stylings of Cheap trick and all the free booze you can cram down your hole in 2 1/2 hrs! I was allowed to bring a guest, so I brought the guy who's been working on my oven, Mark Lamson. He had no problem getting his share of beer in him. I stayed surprisingly sober given the freeness of it all, being the responsible driver of the evening. The next day was our winter fling celebration! A little history first. Every summer, we get together and spin fire at a friend's house. These past few winters, we've continues the fun at Via Vecchia Winery on Front Street down town, practicing indoors with non-fire spinning in the colder months. This year was especially awesome with the addition of all forms of circus play and an amazing collection of people. Wednesday, the 25th was the last day of the Winter Fling for the season. In order to celebrate the end, I promised to make pizza for the event. It was awesome! Everyone had a great time. I got a request to do a graduation party from one gal and Button Le Bouton made a GoreMade pizza commercial and posted it on youtube. As you can see by the commercial, everyone enjoyed the free pizza! The final event in my run of pizza was pizza sunday on April 29th. I was pretty pooped by then, so it was rather small scale. We had a modest collection of people out back, and I was thankful for the slow pace of the event. I was pushing my limits cooking pizza three nights in one week, but needed to take advantage of the oven while it was still in my grasp. The end of the night marked the end of my test drive of the new oven features. There were several things that needed attention, but that's what testing is for. I'll be giving the oven back to Mark Lamson Friday, the 4th of May and should have a fully functional oven, complete with sinks and hot running water the next time I see it. Hopefully that's pretty soon, seeing as I've got a couple graduation parties to attend to later this month! Thanks to everyone involved for an awesome pizza week! Having the week off work and focusing on pizza and family made me question why I'm still working my day job. Soon, there will come a day when I will be able to do what I want to do rather than what I have to do to survive. (having trouble uploading photos. please picture all these wonderful things in your mind's eye... it's probably better there anyway!) To all my loyal pizza folk out there wondering what's going on with a very quiet GoreMade Pizza this last month and a half, let me bring you up to speed.
My oven has been at the Idea Foundry under the capable hands of Metaldelphia Metal Fabricators since the beginning of February. It is getting a full make-over, including 3 compartment sinks and a hand washing sink (complete with hot running water), a new oven door, a rebalanced and solidified trailer with the oven entrance now rear facing, a new smoke-stack, a collapsable 2'x4' stainless steel prep table in front of the oven entrance, a stainless steel shell around the oven, and all sorts of other little odds and ends that Mark Lamson saw fit to do. I must say, if you're in need of metal fabrication, Mark is your guy. He's a little nutty and kinda slow (unless you pressure him and pay for his speed), but he's the answer to metal fabrication needs on a tight budget! Word on the street is that I should have my oven back this weekend or so! If all goes well, we'll all be eating delicious pizzas on april fool's day! I'd also like to announce that I dropped my LLC application in the mail this morning, marking the biggest step for the business thus far! It was all a little confusing to me at first, but after talking with Ariana from the Small Business Development Center of Columbus, that all changed. I met with her last Monday, and it was a thing of beauty! She just took out her magic wand, waved it around saying a few words, and then I had everything I needed to submit the proper paperwork and get it all going. It was truly an amazing thing to behold, and I couldn't be more appreciative of her help!!! It is a weird feeling, making it official in the eyes of the government. Before, it was all just me playing with heat, dough and toppings amongst friends. But soon I'll have tax responsibilities, record keeping, customers, and all other sorts of responsible things to contend with. One step at time, I suppose. The only things left are to get inspected by the health department and start a business banking account and I should be set! ... More as the story unfolds! Thanks for your patience as I get where I need to be! |
AuthorNick Gore was a corporate peon by day who just made the leap to full time pizza geek. Follow his path to world class Pizzaiolo right here on the GoreMade Pizza blog. Archives
April 2020
Categories
All
|