We recently connected with Jonathan & Kellie Traylor and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jonathan & Kellie , thanks for joining us today. How do you think about spending on the little things / small joys when finances are tight?

We have all seen the cost of food and fuel rising at a the highest rate in recent history. As a business, we have had to adjust the way we do business to combat these costs. Our radius of travel had to be reduced, we also had become very selective as to what venues we accepted invitations from as some have fees associated.
As far as products go, we have not changed the quality of our ingredients due to inflation. We instead reduced the size of our pizzas to increase profit margins. We did initially take a small financial hit due, to this change, but this was a great move for us in the long run.

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?

Item9 Pizza started as a fun hobby for the both of us. We were just trying to make our favorite food the best way we knew how. We started from making flatbread pizza in our air fryer and eventually started making our own pizza dough. Kellie and I started posting pictures of our pizzas on social media and soon people were asking how they could get some of our pizza. We ended up taking donations for pizza and our list for those waiting ballooned into 300 people before we knew it!
With the donations and some capital from investors, Item9 Pizza food truck was born!
We now operate as a mobile kitchen. We are available for any milestone celebrations and other catering needs.
Item9 is dedicated to quality. All of our pizzas are handcrafted using high quality restaurant level ingredients. We pride ourselves on a consistent delicious product you can trust.
Our menu has all your basic pizzas that you know and love. Thing thing that makes us different is we have innovative specials each week. These include but aren’t limited to: Crab Dip Pizza, Nashville Hot Chicken pizza, wagyu meatball pizza, Big Mac pizza and an amazing taco pizza just to name a few.
Rest assured, we have something for everyone!

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Driving your business around has its own set of risks. But we had one instance that was more dangerous than normal. We were going to a lunch service when we heard a noise under the hood. Traveling about 50mph, our brakes went out! We were very fortunate that we were very close to a warehouse owned by one of our investors. Kellie and I were able to limp into the parking lot. Then we had to frantically pack our supplies into another truck and hook it to our trailer. We actually made it to service in time!! Thankfully that’s our only story like this!

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

We have found that keeping an open line of communication with each other and our employees is key. We work together about 80% of the time and we live together 100% of the time! We also have a toddler, so the balance of work and life is delicate, but communication is the key. With our other employees, we try to keep them fully trained so they are confident in their tasks. We also encourage them to ask questions and make suggestions to improve our processes.

Contact Info:

• Website: Streetfoodfinder.com/Item9pizzanc
• Instagram: Item9_pizza
• Facebook: Item9 Pizza Food Truck