THE MOBILE PIZZA MAKERS
Winnebago a COVID-19 innovation
Despite the COVID -19 lockdown, Pat Dogniaux is a man on the move.
His business is exempt from the provincewide curfew so he will spend the evening strapped into a seat in the back of a 24-foot Winnebago cooking custom pizzas. The food will come fresh and hot from the oven as he pulls up to customers' homes. More people at home means more potential customer satisfaction.
“We make the pizza on the way instead of just delivering it,” says the co-founder of Montreal's Pizzeria Bros chain. “With third-party deliveries, the food that shows up at the door can be damaged and cold. Our average delivery time is 10 to 12 minutes.”
Dogniaux and business partner Carl Sexton launched the mobilepizza-kitchen-at-your-door venture in December, though it was four years in the making because of endless regulatory challenges.
One roadblock was letting someone cook while the vehicle is moving. Communication is also mandatory between the driver and the cook, who must wear a seat belt while dressing the pizza. A bathroom, ventilation, refrigerators, and a special generator-powered oven had to be retrofitted into the Winnebago.
Fortunately, the Bros partners have a track record of clearing hurdles that pop up from doing things a new way. They opened their first restaurant in Old Montreal on Notre-dame Street at St-laurent Boulevard. in 2016. Since then, even as COVID-19 decimated the local food industry, they have added five more franchised stores across the Island.
About 100 employees work under the Pizzeria Bros banner, which stretches from Hochelaga-maisonneuve to Kirkland and includes a food preparation facility in Lachine. The growth is a dream come true for Dogniaux.
He spent 18 of his 37 years working in restaurants as a dishwasher, busboy and waiter before attending the Pearson School of Culinary Arts in Lasalle. The classic wood oven at one place inspired him to branch out.
“I always thought if I was to open my own place, I would take the whole pizza section and combine it with a service file like Subway. We'd assemble it in front of you, then cook it really fast to give you a high quality, freshly made product. Not fast food. Fresh food fast.”
The emphasis is on bridging the fast-food experience with the healthy food demands of today's customers. Dough, sauce, dressings are made in house. Nothing frozen. No preservatives. No fillers in the pepperoni or sausage custom ordered from a local butcher.
The recipe delivers more than tasty toppings. Estimates say 80 per cent of Quebec restaurants are barely scraping through the pandemic. About 10 per cent have reportedly closed permanently. Restaurants Canada, the food service industry association, released a recent survey showing 48 per cent of small and medium sized eating places across Canada could close within six months.
In Montreal, the website Silo 57 lists 39 establishments that have closed since COVID-19 began, including Le 2 Pierrots after 46 years and Ti-père BBQ after 56 years.
Dogniaux and Sexton have kept all six Bros stores open. Now, while the industry resembles COVID -19 roadkill, they're driving mobile dining-at-home with their Winnebago kitchen.
Dogniaux says he saw the threat that brick-and-mortar cafés faced well before COVID-19 erupted. Deaths of well-established eateries due to road work closures in Old Montreal and on the Plateau twigged him to the future being freshly cooked food delivered to the door.
Given that Uber Eats takes up to 30 per cent, and conventional restaurants add fees to cover delivery costs, the pandemic made it timely to experiment with the mobile kitchen.
Trucks can be sent to different suburbs and quickly relocated if one area doesn't pan out. More trucks can be added in places where sales are hot.
For now, Pizzeria Bros limits mobile kitchen orders to the St-laurent borough. They will know by March about expansion. The make-or-break threshold isn't high. Vehicle costs are minimal compared to $10,000-plus monthly leasing for restaurant space. Labour costs are negligible: Dogniaux's mom and dad love driving the Winnebago.
“I'll say `Look, I don't need you tonight.' They come anyway. They want to be part of the action.”
Low overhead, mobility, fresh product and customer satisfaction open a new means to test different markets without the encumbrance of personally guaranteeing a 10year lease, Dogniaux says. It's why he believes food prep on the go is a key to restaurant industry recovery POST-COVID.
“The whole world is becoming mobile and delivery-based. People have become comfortable getting everything brought to their doors. That's what we have to look to for the future: providing the best delivery experience so customers get their food faster and fresher than anyone else can provide it.”
And, he notes with a smile, Pizzeria Bros has at least a four-year head start figuring out how to cook up a fresh all-dressed while wearing a seat belt.
That's what we have to look to for the future: providing the best delivery experience so customers get their food faster.