Fundraising with the Pizza-Porta
We set out to do something helpful in the time of Covid19. By holding a neighborhood fundraiser we could keep busy, support the moral of our cooped up neighbors, and raise some money for an organization on the front lines. The Pizza-Porta was designed to help you have fun and make really great pizzas for your friends and families. We extended that a bit for this special event. If you choose to use your Pizza-Porta for fundraising, here are a couple of lessons learned.
1) Pizza takes a little time to cook:
From working with our friends on the Rustic Pizza food truck we know that it is challenging to produce and deliver a lot of pizzas at the same time. We also wanted to avoid having a line in the yard waiting for pizza. To manage this, we set up a Calandly event invite (a free online scheduling program) that offered 5 minute appointment slots. For this event we set up 30 slots from 5:00 - 7:30 for 40 pizzas. Neighbors chose a slot and listed the pizzas they wanted to order. We also printed out a spreadsheet of the schedule so that we knew who was picking up what pizza at what time.
2) KISS (keep it simple):
Usually we cook multiple different pizzas to show off different ingredient combinations. To keep our shopping and number of ingredients to a minimum, we offered Pepperoni, Cheese, and Margherita pizzas. And, thankfully, everyone loves pepperoni pizza!
3) Cooking for an Eggfest and cooking for paying customers is not the same thing!
When we cook at events, we set our pace and keep loading pizzas as fast as we can until we run out of dough. When cooking to order, you have to know whose pizza it is, and what should be on it. It takes a little more attention to the timing.
4) Role assignments:
Beyond the setup, dough making, and outbound invitations it is helpful to assign certain roles to your team (or unsuspecting family members). What worked for us is to have: 1) One person tending the oven 2) One person stretching and making pizzas (the oven tender is backup and help) 3) One person boxing, cutting, and delivering the pizzas.
5) Boxes are a must:
Boxes are a must for delivering whole pizzas. Amazon and other suppliers sell packages of 50 for about $30. Having boxes folded and labeled for the next customer is a great system.
6) Hygiene:
It is always important to follow food-safety protocols. We made sure that all surfaces were sanitized, all ingredients were kept at food safety temperatures, and our team did extra hand-washing and changed gloves frequently. As this was held during Covid19 we all wore face-masks and did non-contact transactions and hand-over.
A note about Operation BBQ relief. We chose them because of their commitment to respond quickly to natural disasters. We have met the people who run the operations at various events, and have seen their work in the Carolinas and in Florida. We were happy to support them with this fundraiser.
Enjoy!
Cortlandt