We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zach Farnsworth. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zach below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Zach with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
When i was 14, my dad pushed me into a summer job working for a local farmer picking sweet corn. I barely enjoyed a single minute of it, but I learned a lot about hard work from the mostly Latin-x workers that I worked alongside. the next summer, the Farmer hired me back on to help with his newest venture, sod farming. Stacking rolls of sod onto pallets all day was even harder work than picking corn the previous season. After that, I moved into food, and the work ethic that i developed on those farms transferred well and lead me to promotions and leadership opportunities very quickly in almost every restaurant i have worked in.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Along with my wife I am the owner of a food truck/pizzeria on wheels called Brutal Pie, and we are based in and operate around Grand junction, CO. I have been making pizza professionally for 18 years at this point, and eight years ago I decided to start working towards opening my own shop. Brutal Pie is a heavy metal themed food truck, as I have been a lifelong metalhead and wanted my business to be authentic to who I am as a person. Our pizza is 100% naturally leavened because we believe that commercial yeast is the real reason behind the prevalent gluten intolerances of today. We put our full focus into using only the highest quality of ingredients in every aspect of our food because we believe that a large part of hospitality is concerning yourself with what your customers are consuming when they dine with you. In a world full of chains that cut costs in every way possible, we are dead set on providing our customers with real food.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I would say work ethic, having the perspective to see the bigger picture of operations, and having passion for the science of breadmaking are the three biggest reasons that our business has been so successful in just its first six months. 18 years of working in pizza shops has helped tremendously, as we have been able to avoid most of the pitfalls that operators new to the industry fall into. but really, it’s all about the passion that I have for our product. the advice I would give is to follow that passion. Dig deep into the science behind whatever product you are trying to make, or the sociology behind the service you are trying to provide. When you begin to understand what is going on at such a micro level, your offering is bound to be superior to your competitor’s.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Right now, it is the tremendous amount of success we have had in just the first six months of operation. While I realize this is an amazing thing and a true testament to the quality of pizza we make, it has been a huge challenge with which to try to keep up. Our success means that we have quickly outgrown our ability for just my wife and I to run the operation, but at a point in time for the business in which we are still trying to pay back family members for their investments in the building of our food truck. we desperately need to increase our staffing, but we don’t really have any sort of nest egg to cushion the transition to higher labor costs. the result of this has been very long hours seven days a week in order to be able to be open for service just three days a week. It’s a bit of a catch-22, there’s no time to implement time-saving procedures. the only solution I have is to keep trudging along, saving every penny, until we can afford to staff the truck more efficiently.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://brutalpie.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brutal_pie
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrutalPieCO
Image Credits
All Pictures were taken by me or my wife
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
