Recipe for success

A recipe for success

Making pizzas started as a hobby for Sam Corban (main picture) after his move to Cambourne, Cambridgeshire, and has since evolved into 400° Pizzeria - a thriving pop-up business that offers freshly made wood fired pizzas.

FOOD FOCUS

With a background in food photography, Sam Corban says that he has always had a keen eye for detail and is no stranger to the kitchen, his business having continued to grow since he first fired up its oven in February 2017.

He soon became a regular at the Cambourne Cricket Pavilion every Friday night, and due to customer demand he’s gone on to hire his first member of staff to help him fulfil all of the orders. His pizzas have become well known in the local area for their incredible crusts (he took six months to refine the dough recipe, he reports, slowly proving it for 24 hours to create his signature pizza, before placing them in his wood fired pizza oven at 400°C). 400° Pizzeria’s pizzas range from the classic ‘nduja to the Debbie – a signature creation named after one of Sam’s customers. Other customer favourites include prosciutto and rocket, garlic and Parmesan, and goat’s cheese and chorizo – although the business isn’t afraid of trying out new flavour combinations, and regularly takes custom orders.

“I love to experiment with toppings, and my most recent creation packs a punch, combining a tabasco crust, sriracha, ‘nduja, pepperoni and chorizo – certainly not one for the faint-hearted! And when it comes to dough, my most recent experiment was beer-based!” he adds.

However, like many small businesses in the hospitality sector, Sam Corban has had to adapt his offering in order to keep the pizza oven fired up week on week. Just one of the ways he has managed to keep his business alive was by re-thinking how he took payments, having originally taken cash and card payments. However, with safety fears around the use of cash in recent times, he looked to implement contactless payments as a solution, so as not to deter customers, by moving with the times to help keep his business going strong.

LOCKDOWN LESSONS

If there’s one thing the lockdown has taught small businesses in the food and drink sector, it’s that you must be bold in the face of changes to your business. As the pandemic swept through the nation, every business owner has had to re-evaluate their day to day operations, as well as the future of their business - all while keeping trade afloat.

Seemingly overnight, new trading conditions emerged in the hospitality sector, with businesses adapting their offerings to support the local community by including online ordering, contact-free delivery, as well as the rapid adoption of contactless and digital payments technology. The number of cashless businesses in the food and drink sector has skyrocketed from 8% in January, prelockdown, to 33% in July (Square’s UK Cash & Pandemic Report, 2020).

As restrictions began to ease, businesses have responded to customers’ demand for more hygienic ways to pay, and contactless has come out on top, with one in three businesses no longer accepting cash. The pandemic has seen a new trend emerging in which customers’ spending preferences have moved significantly towards cashless and omnichannel payments, with the food and drink sector taking the lead.

Sam Corban says that one of his main motivations for running his own business is the freedom it gives him to spend more

time with his family and the community he serves. When he had his lightbulb moment to create an artisan pizza pop-up, the local council helped to get his business up and running, and with the success of his Friday night pop-up, other local artisan street food providers have started trading too, creating a space for Cambourne to gather to kick-off their weekends.

When lockdown was introduced, Sam Corban says that he was committed to continue serving his local community and managed to pivot his offering to provide customers with the weekly pizzas they craved, and also offered home pizza making kits - an afternoon of fun for families who jumped on the home baking trend.

He also stocked his van with dry goods such as flour and pasta, acting as a mini mobile market delivering to those who couldn’t leave the house. By connecting with his customers and responding to their needs, Sam Corban feels that he managed to keep his business running, whilst allowing him to make tweaks which would have a positive long-term impact, including experimenting with new recipes and ensuring his high-demand items were well stocked. “Pineapple definitely stayed off the menu,” he reflects. “Artichoke, however, was a surprise hit with customers.”

CASHLESS

Sam Corban is no stranger to cashless payments. When he first opened his pizza pop-up, he initially accepted cash and card payments, though he says that he preferred it when customers paid by card.

After trying out a few different card machines, he came across Square Terminal, and was impressed with its ease of use and the flexibility it provided for his business in allowing contactless payments. This move has allowed him to run his business cashfree, enabling him to process orders much quicker, he says, and without having to deal with hygiene issues posed by taking cash.

On top of this, the checking order feature on the Square Terminal removes any ambiguity for customers when making a purchase, and which has helped to transform his business, he adds. In fact, thanks to his forward-thinking, Sam Corban found that he didn’t have to make any major adjustments when lockdown began, as he’d already got many of the necessary ingredients in place to get through the pandemic and beyond. Having now run his business cash-free for the past two years, he can now ask customers to place their order online, even when standing in the queue.

He has also discovered that his cashless system has made his customers feel more comfortable with coming back to his pizza van each week, as contact with other people is kept to an absolute minimum. He is also now using Square Online to offer self-serve ordering, he reports, whereby customers can simply scan a QR code to order pizza to their car, further enabling him to keep running his business safely and efficiently during the pandemic.

Contactless payments are perhaps no longer a choice for many business owners in the food and drink industry but a necessity. Ultimately, however, Sam Corban’s success stems from his pure passion for hand-crafted oven-fired pizzas, his dedication to serving the local community, combined with being able to offer contactless payments and online ordering.