We recently connected with Maggie & Adam and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Maggie & Adam thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Terrible Gerald’s Pizza could be described as a weirdly successful experiment in bringing the front of house to the back of house. In its entirety, it was a complete accident. It just happened to turn out, we’re pretty good at making pies so we stuck with it.

We began in earnest. We began with a homemade pizza oven in our backyard and dry dough mix packets. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing, but it was fun. Over the next few weeks, Adam began becoming familiar yeast, learning the intricacies of working with a living culture. Pizza parties with friends in the backyard began happening at more frequent intervals, and everyone seemed to have something nice to say. Strange comments like, “you should turn this into a business” danced in our heads. So we gave it a name, formed an LLC, and our artist gave us Gerald.

After several months of more experimentation, we upgraded our ovens and hit the road as a local popup, using our connections to borrow kitchens all over the city. Our very first popup in April of 2022 sold out in 22 minutes, and it was an absolute nightmare. But it was our nightmare. We quickly learned what needed to be adjusted, how to manage dough, and how to work in literally any environment.

In August of 2023, we made the decision to retire our folding tables and build out a trailer. In November, the Dough-Jo was inspected, licensed and street legal. We are now a full-time team of two, overseeing all aspects of operation and branding. The rest, as they say, is history.

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?

We are Maggie & Adam, and we own & operate Terrible Gerald’s, a mobile Neapolitan pizzeria in Omaha, Nebraska. Our mantra has always been pretty simple: Unorthodox Neapolitan at a fraction of the cost. Having collectively 3 decades of service industry experience between us, we understand the intricacies of hospitality on a deeply entrenched, fundamental level. We took this knowledge and applied it to an idea that became a dream that became a reality.

Together, we built Terrible Gerald’s, a business committed to quality, transparency, and the constant pursuit of knowledge. We believe that food is a universal love language, and while everyone may not agree on everything all of the time, we hope they can agree that Terrible Gerald’s is some damn fine trailer pizza.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

At first, when we were just doing popups and using other people’s bars and restaurants, we had all kinds of wild experiences. There were many times we were just kind of winging it, or we forgot something at home, or the weather conspired against us. At the time, we operated with two portable Ooni pizza ovens which required propane as their heating source, which meant we had to work outdoors. We would bring a little tent with us, folding tables, our tools, etc, all of which we would jam into the back of a Chevy Traverse. Nothing could go wrong, right? Lots of lessons were learned, but with each lesson, it was like we “leveled up” and became more adaptable and flexible in any workspace.

When we finished the trailer, we had an entirely new lesson in resilience. Working in a mobile kitchen versus a stationary physical location is wildly different from any experience either of us had ever had. It’s like every day is moving day. There is a tremendous amount of physical labor that goes into operating a food truck, and it also requires a lot of care and maintenance. We’ve had water heaters explode in extreme cold, finicky propane regulators, broken refrigeration units. We’ve forgotten to bungee cord things into place, creating a nearly tornado-like aftermath in the trailer after travel. But each day, we improve, and we learn what works for us and what doesn’t. We’ve learned our limitations, managed our expectations and inventory, and really created a spectacular system from scratch.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

The entirety of Terrible Gerald’s, in all reality, was a complete risk. Oddly enough, our strikingly bizarre brand has been a huge part of our success. We literally put the word “Terrible” into our namesake, which in hindsight when we’re serving food, probably wasn’t advisable. The truth of the matter is, we weren’t trying to take ourselves too seriously. With the word “Terrible” in our name, no one was going to be expecting a glass of ’99 Pinot with their meal. If we were going to do this, we wanted to be sure we really leaned into it. We make a great product, but we decided early on that there was no need to be pretentious–we’d never have an ingredients list you couldn’t pronounce.

Once we decided on the name, we contacted our friend and local artist, Nate Gurnon, and asked if he would be willing to draw us up a fat redheaded kid eating pizza. 10 minutes later, and the original Gerald was born on a Post-It. After that, we chose to really take it a step further and a Garbage Pail-esque font was created for the logo. Over time, our logo has grown and evolved as our design skills have developed.

Somehow, our namesake coupled with the weird and mythical character of Gerald is so outrageous that it really works. A lot of time has been spent with our artist, building Gerald’s character and really giving him a personality. That was the brilliant thing about having this cartoon character as, essentially, our mascot–he was able to give our business a face, and there were no limits to what Gerald could do. If we decide it would be a cool idea for Gerald to be riding a combine or surfing, Nate is always eager and excited to create. We wanted Gerald to be relatable; sometimes cute, sometimes sassy, and always a harbinger of really good pizza.

It will never stop being a thrill when we’re driving down the street with the trailer and we see people excitedly waving at us. And in the case of those that aren’t familiar with us, watching them mouth the words “Terrible Gerald’s?” confusedly and as they reach for their phone to Google us. The shock value of our weird brand has been tremendous for our digital metrics. We took a chance adopting a cartoon as our logo. We took a chance putting a negative adjective in our name. We took a chance with the dripping garbage font. We took a chance plastering a carefree Gerald riding a motorcycle on the side of our trailer.

Gerald being an urban legend works. Off-the-wall marketing works. And because of this, the content & creativity are endless, and we’re always, always having fun.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.terriblegeralds.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terriblegeralds/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terriblegeralds/
• Other: Artist- https://www.facebook.com/Satisfactionnotguaranteed
  https://www.instagram.com/satisfaction_not_guaranteed_/