Hot Take27:30
Hospitality operators share everything — other industries don't
“I don't think other industries do that.”
“the general consensus is the more restaurants there are in a place, the more footfall there'll be”
← All episodes
Thom Elliot09 November 2023
“I Quit My Job And Built A $10M Pizza Business” - Thom Elliot Founder of Pizza Pilgrims
3Frameworks
14Insights
Frameworks in this episode
Insights & moments
The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.
Hot Take· 3
Hot Take58:00
Founders' naivety as an asset: splitting tips 50/50 with the kitchen
“So, we changed that and we split it 50/50 and we still do.”
“And the more you kind of you know, have experience in the industry, the more you just kind of follow the herd.”
Hot Take55:30
Start early, because waiting crystallises your life around the risk
“the more your life is like crystallizing into a thing, and you have a mortgage, and you have, you know, kids maybe, and you have…”
“it annoys me that we don't encourage people straight after their A levels, definitely straight after university, to to to go and have a crack…”
Explainer· 3
Explainer12:00
Why food: the feedback loop you can't get from a digital business
“And it's like this is glorious feedback loop of like you can actually ask them what they thought, you can learn from it”
Explainer51:00
Market stall economics: £10 a day, £5 pizzas, 100 pizzas is a good day
“to be clear, the £10 a day gives you a lovely pitch, but like zero infrastructure”
“So, we sold pizza for five quid.”
Explainer1:06:30
The numbers today: 24 sites, 500 staff, £27m turnover, £2.4m EBITDA
“Uh we employ just over 500 people.”
“We've always reinvested all of our profit back in. We've never really taken it.”
Story· 6
Story07:30
The 2010-2012 street food window that let them start with no capital
“suddenly it was possible to you know, create a credible quality led brand but have no capital and start at the back of a food…”
“In 50 years time we'll look back on like 2010 to 2012 very much how we look back on like 1961 to 1963 in music…”
Story29:30
Buying a pizza van in Calabria that a jogger could overtake uphill
“We have footage of us being overtaken up a hill by a jogger.”
“the way to work out the speed of an Ape is to take the average on Google of the car time and the walk time”
Story33:30
How they got a market pitch: photographing the empty spaces
“we basically started going down to the markets taking pictures of us standing in empty spaces and emailing the council”
“How can you possibly tell me your market's full?”
Story52:30
Pitching Barclaycard on the UK's first cashless restaurant in 2013
“Can we be the UK's first cashless restaurant?”
“I think I basically had that argument once a year, every year, for seven or eight years.”
Story1:27:30
Pizza in the Post: the lockdown meal kit that saved the company
“And we sold the first 50 in like under a minute.”
“And we sold all 1,100 kits in 40 minutes.”
Story1:19:00
What Bertrand Russell told Paul McCartney at the peak of the Beatles
“You should literally enjoy it every single day. Make the most of enjoying it because it's insanely brilliant and like don't think about anything else.”
Tool· 1
Tool1:34:30
Pizza Academy: a break-even pizzeria built purely for training
“I personally believe you should go and do your university degree, then you should go and do a year working in a restaurant”
“if your first shift in Pizza Pilgrims is in Carnaby Street on Saturday night, it's busy and intense and not a good place to learn”
Takeaway· 1
Takeaway1:39:00
You grow the business to give your team somewhere to go
“there's no need for the company to grow, but if it doesn't grow, the whole mindset around it changes”
“So, yeah, I think you know, at a small level, you've got to grow to kind of give your team opportunity.”