We were lucky to catch up with DANIEL CORREA recently and have shared our conversation below.

DANIEL, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Originally I wanted to start a wood fired pizza restaurant back in 2015. I was working in the wine and spirits industry and was tired of the commuting, traveling and overall stress of working for somebody else. I proposed to my wife the idea of leaving my job to pursue a small business in food service and she (after puttering herself through college bartending and recently leaving that world) admittedly was not that stoked on the idea. However one day at a winery in the foothills we came across a pizza vendor that had a mobile oven. For us this was the compromise – low overhead, and the ability to turn it on and off whenever we want. So we saved our money and bought our first pizza oven in June of 2018. In our minds we thought this would be a fun weekend activity while we worked our full time jobs and could make a little extra on the side – that quickly changed. As we grew quickly and people started to notice a difference in our pizza versus others quality ingredients and overall coolness of a MOBILE PIZZA OVEN we started getting events during the week, oftentimes being booked Tuesday through Sunday with only one day off. Sometimes even after work. With the natural progression we opened our Food Truck in 2020 just before the pandemic to expand our business. This move although at first seemed like a whole new business endeavor, and it truly was. We had to educate the county on our new style of food truck that had an actual wood burning flame, and educate the public on what true Neapolitian style pizza is. The business from there just exploded. We were running catering for weddings of all types, and then also operating the food truck for huge pop-ups and corporate events. In the Spring of 2022, a spot opened up for lease down the street from our house that we always drove past and said “if that place is ever available, that’s our restaurant location” and so it was meant to be. We’ve been renovating the space since August of 2022, and we are set for our Grand Opening next month.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’d say we are most proud of our versatility and ability to service events as large as one thousand people and as intimate as twenty and still provide excellent quality pizza. I think its this ability to perform and execute quality repeatedly that sets us apart from other mobile pizza vendors. FIRED Pizza started off working small events such as parties, small weddings, winery events and as we grew and became more comfortable with our craft we expanded into other markets like corporate events with clients such as Amazon, Tesla, Frito Lay, Apple to name a few. These types of events taught us how to adapt and produce quality pizza with expedited service. Our largest event to date was a 24 hour – 4 shift event for Frito Lay when we provided over 1200 pizzas over those hours and shifts with only 2 crews of 4 people. What we learned during those types of events have given us the opportunity to bring those skills to smaller events like a wedding with 150 guests and be able to execute at our highest level.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

My wife and I collectively worked for years to build our savings up. In 2015 when I initially wanted to start FIRED it wasn’t the time, we had some money but not enough to go all in. I didn’t want to be in debt with a bank loan so we saved and invested for three years when in 2018 we finally had enough money to invest in our business. Our total start up costs were about 25k – this included all of our equipment + trailer, licenses and start up costs. We paid for this in cash weso we did not have to answer to anyone. Since then we have always saved enough to expand our business with our own cash and none others. With the success of our first two years 2018-2020 we were able to purchase our food truck cash outright then again fund and build our restaurant that is slated to open in 2023 without any bank or outside investors. We are proud of the fact we have worked for everything we have earned.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Ive always been drawn to punk rock, DIY culture – I feel our approach to social media is a non traditional method compared to others. We are brash and bold with our content. We don’t follow the social media trends of posting trendy stories or reels with songs everyone else is using. We use genuine creativity and blast in out in our own way. Often times when it comes to sharing photos of our food we let the image speak for itself leaving our followers hungry and asking for more. I think sometimes social media can often make people feel alienated, or often times missing out of things, With ours we make so everyone feels welcomed without exploiting certain groups. We take pride in everything we post and share with our audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fired-pizza.com
• Instagram: @fired_pizza
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/firedmobile/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/fired-mobile-pizza-oven-stockton

Image Credits
FIRED PIZZA