We recently connected with Brittainy and Nick Ward and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Brittainy and Nick 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?
The seeds for our business were planted in Northern Japan. I am a retired Air Force fighter jet mechanic and was stationed at Misawa Air Base in northern Japan from 2016-2019. In a shopping center right out the front gate was a Neapolitan pizza restaurant. My wife, Brittainy and I were not familiar with Neapolitan pizza but were hooked immediately. We ate there so often my wife bought me a Bakers Stone pizza oven. It is the kind that goes on your BBQ and is not a stand-alone system. She also bought a book on Neapolitan Pizza and that is all it took. We used to invite neighbors over for pizza parties. I would make the dough the day before (it was not good by our standards today) and our friends would make their pizzas and I would cook them. We did this fairly regularly for a couple years. I learned a lot but with the Operational Tempo of a Fighter Base that close to North Korea, it was hardly a priority.
When it came time to return to the United States we found out we were coming home to Seymour Johnson AFB. I am from Northern California and my wife from North Eastern Indiana but we were both stationed at Seymour for a long time and really considered Eastern NC home. When we arrived I thought I had a couple of years of service left in me but as soon as I was eligible, I applied for retirement and wend to work in civilian aviation. In my first year outside of the military my wife and I spoke often of opening a food truck. My first job lasted a year and I decided my skills were best used back on Seymour as a civilian contractor. I went to a the 336th Fighter Squadron and worked as an Aircrew Scheduler. About four months after taking that job the unit deployed and we civilians were left behind. There were a few aircrew left behind and I would make 20 dough balls on occasion and make the squadron lunch in my charcoal BBQ and Baker’s Stone pizza oven. Fighter pilots are the WORST, however, they really are exceptional at giving honest feedback. This folks gave me amazing insight into what they liked and disliked. They really helped hone our recipes and solidify my belief that this was a good idea.
After years of talking about opening a food truck my wife finally said, “Either buy a food truck and start chasing your dreams or shut up about all of it”. I did a bunch of research and finally put a plan and some money together and things started to come together. When we were trying to decide in a name there was only one choice, when my wife and I started dating in 2011 “celebrity names” were very popular where clebs would combine their names to make one. “Bennifer”… “Branjolina” and so on… her friends made a joke one day that our celeb name would be Brick!! We laughed and thought it was better than Nickainy and it went into the back of my memory. I wanted a name that represented both of us and Brick’s was the obvious choice.
So we found a trailer, bought an oven and hired a company to outfit the trailer to fit our specific needs. This was a long and frustrating process. We were given a timeline and planned accordingly for a soft opening and a grand opening in our small town. Both of these dates came and went and two months after the first date, we got our trailer. In NC you must have a commissary, an industrial kitchen where you prepare the food you sell. Because of the nature of our product and some research I had done we were the first Mobile Food Unit to act as it’s own commissary. We had to install a restroom and a few other things but we did not have to spend thousands of dollars renting a space or building a structure at our home. Our trailer is 24′ long and 12′ is enclosed and 12′ is a back patio. We wanted to do this so we were not trapped inside a small room with a 900 degree oven in the middle of the NC summer. We have a door to close and cool off under the AC when it gets really hot. These are all things that kept me awake for three months before we purchased the trailer and a a couple months in the building our process before we opened.
We finally had our soft opening and completely fell on our face. It was not pleasant. We decided on a POS system with online ordering so we enabled it and opened the window. A lot of our friends from the 336th came to see us. As soon as we opened 15 people ordered online and we were in an immediate hole. It was chaos but we learned a lot. It was a very humbling lesson about our capabilities. We have refined our processes and our recipes and six months later our abilities are lightyears from where they started.
Brittainy and Nick, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
As I mentioned, I am a retired Air Force fighter jet mechanic, specifically an Avionics Specialist. I spent my life far away from the food industry. When we started, we tried to find people in the industry to help and advise us. Everyone asked if we worked in the restaurant industry before and when I told them I hadn’t they all gave me the same condescending look. A flightline is a very chaotic environment. We typically fly jets twice a day. Usually ten in the morning and when they land we “turn” them for a second group of sorties and eight go back up. Managing the maintenance on an average of twenty jets both long and short term and dealing with problems that arise constantly has made me adept in long-term planning but also in immediate triage and troubleshooting. This being said, I know I would be more adept at running a kitchen than those people were at running a flightline. I am happiest when things are most chaotic. I figured this business would be similar to running a flightline and I was correct (but it’s way easier).
We work hard to make the best pizza we can make. I don’t just mean the best pizza we can make in our truck, but the best pizza we can make anywhere. When we started I knew I needed some type of training. I was a “YouTube pizza chef”. Everything I learned came from watching videos and trying to do what they did. I started researching Neapolitan pizza schools and came across Pizza University in Beltsville, MD. I signed up for their three day class and it was worth every penny. The school is owned by Marra Forni ovens so there is a lot of product placement and advertising, however, those guys really care about sharing information and building better pizza makers. Our instructor was Giulio Adriani, one of the best pizzaiolos in the world. Giulio was an incredible teacher and I learned more in three days than I had in three years making pizza on my own. It completely changed our way of operating. As soon as I returned I focused on making a dough so good that you do not want to dip the crust. This is the south and we dip everything in ranch, except our pizza crust. I knew what I did not know and really focused in the journey of learning and it has really paid off. We were using a large planetary mixer to make our dough. I learned in school a spiral mixer is much better for the development of gluten in the dough. So, we invested $4K immediately in a quality spiral mixer and our customers have noticed and responded loudly. We are so thankful for Pizza University and Giulio Adriani for the tools they have given us.
We have achieved a fair amount of success in the six months since we have opened, however, we fail constantly. We have hired helpers and they feel bad when they make a mistake or ruin a pizza. My answer is always the same, I have cost this company way more money in the mistakes I have made. This is obviously not a bragging point but failure is always an option. We make mistakes, learn the lesson and move on. Repeating a mistake is never an option. My thoughts and opinions have been cast aside for years because of my rank or position in a company. The hierarchy made my superiors believe my idea was not worthy because I was in a position beneath theirs. We are building a company of people that are told how much they are valued and paid an amount commensurate with what we are telling them. I want to build a team that is not afraid to correct me when I am making a mistake and I want them to have the confidence to identify and correct their own.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Our first oven was a 52 inch dome style concrete oven that was built in place on the back of our trailer. Every time we went somewhere i would see pieces of concrete on the floor. Long story short, the guy that built it had no business building that oven, the steel table the oven sat on was mounted to the floor with simple self-tapping screws that ended up ripping themselves out of the floor. Additionally, the oven was never secured to the table. So as we would drive down the freeway and hit bumps the oven moved on the table and the table moved in the trailer effectively disintegrating ad we drove. In three weeks our $6K oven was ruined.
I was faced with a choice, either rebuild our current oven that was very heavy and would take a couple weeks to fix, or go a different way. I did a lot of research and learned Gozney makes the perfect ovens for our application. The next day I rented a forklift, removed our old oven from the trailer and drove to Virginia to buy two Gozney Domes. I was not certain that was the right decision but I knew it is better to make a bad decision than to make no decision. The decision turned out to be the right one. Our old oven weighed about 2,000 pounds and was literally bending the frame. The new ovens weight 250 combined and are just as efficient. We may add a third but for our small operation the ability to cook two pizzas at a time is all we really need.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
When we started we were helped a lot by a couple guys that own a local brewery and taproom. Both of them spent six years in the Air Force and we knew each other from the flightline. They regularly have food trucks at both of their locations and advised us over and over to be real professionals. They told us how often food trucks would flake and leave early or just not show up at all.
We have taken this advice seriously and I use all the professionalism I garnered during my time in the military and that is how we operate. I arrive early, use over the top customer service and stay the entire time no matter how sales are. We will walk pizzas inside to customers every chance we get and are overly polite at the window.
We do a lot of private events and operate autonomously in the background. We under promise, over deliver and leave. I want people to know that we do not treat this business like a food truck but a high end pizzeria on wheels. I shake peoples hands, respect their boundaries and do exactly what we say we will do in the timeframe we say we will do it.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @brickswfpizzaco
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083183709296
Image Credits
Main photo taken by Kevin Stuart Photography.