Pizza-maker joins convoy of mobile merchants

Property taxes are high. Rents are brutal. In cold months shopkeepers have to pay both when many of their customers are away or snowed in. Grr.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your company could shed all that brick and mortar and simply roll free to where the business is?

Some people are doing just that.

Trucks and vans are bringing beauty parlors to your parlor. Pet groomers make the rounds with spas on wheels. Massage went mobile years ago. Auto detailers are also, fittingly, on the road.

In the Hamptons, Dr. Seth Gordon realized a while back that lots of East End vacationers didn’t have local care for their kids. “In the summer you get an influx of 200,000 kids out here, and the pediatric centers don’t have the capacity to handle them,” said the part-time East Hampton resident in a New York Times story.

“Seeing a niche,” he created a practice that has no office. Instead, he supplies something your elders might remember: house calls. His only trappings: a cell phone, a medical bag and his car. Starting small, “soon he was inundated with calls for his services,” said the Times story, and his fame and portability went viral.

What’s next? Pizza, of course.

But not just any pizza. Gourmet, wood-oven pizza baked fresh at your backyard party on the back of a fire-engine red 1943 International Harvester truck. It’s the creation of 26-year-old Matthew Michel of Greenport, and the name of his new business tells it all: “Rolling in Dough.”

Michel came to the North Fork from West Haven, Conn., and went into partnership with Barbara Michelson, then of Cutchogue, a well-known caterer and Cordon Bleu chef. “She’s brilliant,” he said. “I learned a lot from her.” Their two-year collaboration ended recently when she moved to New Hampshire.

Looking for his next venture, Michel remembered seeing a catering truck in New Haven, Conn., and, with the help of its owner, went to work on his own version. The 1943 farm truck, found on the Internet, came from Maryland. A $10,000 pizza oven was shipped from Florence, Italy. Wheeler’s Garage in Southold got the motor cranking and Ted’s Auto Body in Peconic applied the flaming paint. Michel built tables. An awning, refrigeration and a freezer were added, along with a cappuccino machine and gelato trays, and already the oven on wheels is firing up people’s imaginations.

“I’ve got 10 parties booked,” Michel said last week. And that was before the photo spread came out in Vogue. That’s right, Vogue, whose editor, Anna Wintour, saw the truck at a function, “fell in love with it and wanted to do a spread,” Michel said.

With such boosts, the young entrepreneur hopes that someday his business really will be rolling in dough. “If I had 100 parties per summer, I’d really be doing well,” he mused.

But first he had to take the leap, and it was a big one, an investment of more than $100,000 on a style of catering new to the East End. Was it scary? “Very much so,” he said. “But I’d rather do something than nothing. You’ve got to take a little risk.”

Some advisers were leery of the idea. “They thought people wouldn’t catch onto the idea of just pizza,” Michel recalled. “I disagreed.” He’d seen a similar venture succeed in Connecticut. “It works,” he said. “It’s definitely gimmicky, but it’s fun and people like to have it at a party.”

What would Michelson, his Cordon Bleu mentor, think of it all? “I think she’d be very proud of me,” he said.

A big plus for him was the minus factor – no property taxes or rent. His only overhead is gas, maintenance and permits, plus a marginal outlay for small amounts of time in earthbound kitchens doing prep work. “I skip a lot of expenses,” Michel confirmed. Finding help hasn’t been too hard, since he was able to call on friends and friends of friends who like the quirky, outdoorsy spin on the catering business.

And when the weather turns bleak and customers go south, he might migrate with them. He’s also weighing the idea of trying a season at a ski resort. When your catering hall has wheels, why not?


Jeff Miller / Long Island Business News / July 24, 2009