Meet Jamie and Jay. They’ve just opened their second New York Pizza Shop after leaving the location decision up to the public on an Instagram poll!
Jamie:
During 2019 I was living in Sri Lanka with a goal of opening a dive bar there. Unfortunately, lockdown came and put those plans on hold.
I have always had a passion for food and cooking at home. After spending eight months in Sri Lanka, I returned to the UK with the intention of starting my own food business.
I had no prior experience of working in restaurants or kitchens; everything I knew was self-taught. I’d been working offshore pretty much all of my life.
I started selling food from home during lockdown, and things just went crazy with orders; I was selling out every night, a week in advance.
As restrictions were lifted, the demand started to plateau, and I decided to use that as a chance to get some real experience of working in the food industry and learn from my peers. I took a year to work at Barrio Comida in Durham for a really great chef—Shaun Hurrell.
I quickly learnt the difference between cooking at home and how kitchens actually work.
After that year, using the skills I had learnt, I decided to go on my own again and make a business for myself, so in January 2024, that’s what I did.
This business officially started by making Italian sandwiches here at our first kitchen in Hartlepool. We would do a pizza night once a week, and those would be more popular than the sandwiches, so I took that as a sign to go all in with the pizzas.
Pizza was something I’d always wanted to make a business out of. I just LOVE pizza; everyone loves it; it’s the most popular food in the world.
Jay was one of my first ever customers. We had a brief conversation on Instagram about the process, as Jay shares my passion for pizza. Through those conversations, he pretty much came on board straight away.
At the time I had the kitchen in Hartlepool, and I was cooking food and selling it through my messages on Instagram.
I went from doing 20 pizzas a night if I was lucky to immediately selling out every night through Jay’s marketing.
When he came on board, it felt like the business became a lot more legit; he took over the socials, the marketing, and things just took off.
Jay:
Since the age of 17, I’ve built businesses across fashion, nightlife, and the food industry.
When COVID hit, I lost three ventures and hesitated to start another. However, my passion for spotting standout products never faded.
I had followed Jamie’s journey in the food industry for some time as both an admirer and a customer. From the early days, the food he created stood out—unlike anything else on the market.
When Jamie got me to try one of his first pizzas, I knew that there was a gap in the market for it. With my experience in scaling businesses and marketing and Jamie’s focus on the product, we decided to team up—Jamie would perfect the pizza, and I would drive the marketing.
Jamie:
When it comes to selling food, I’ve always made what I actually wanted to eat.
If I haven’t been able to get a tasty sandwich that I want, or a good burger that I want, I’ve started making them and selling them.
That’s how these types of pizza came to be. I wanted some 16″ tasty New York-style pizza, and I couldn’t get it in the area, so I started making them.
One of our hurdles was getting people to recognise the difference in pizza.
People have kebab shop pizzas ingrained into them; it’s all they have known. So getting people to try this new style of pizza, which costs a little more, was one of the big challenges.
You can have the best product in the world, but unless people know about it, you’ll never sell it.
That’s where Jay excelled; his marketing strategies have enabled us to sell out of pizzas every night at both locations.s.
We have done this by showing that we make outstanding pizzas. We make everything in-house in our Hartlepool kitchen. For instance, our dough mixes for eight hours and then ferments for three days to get the perfect base.
We infuse our oil with garlic in order to brush our pizza crusts; we then turn the garlic bulbs into our garlic sauce, which we can top with pesto or chilli.
We do it this way to make sure we are selling the best and tastiest products for our customers. I made a lot of bad pizzas to learn how to make a good one. I take pride in the care and thoughtfulness that we put into our food.
Although we are only open Wednesday to Sunday, we have people working every day prepping ingredients and making our sauces.
We decided to open a second location because business was good and demand was high.
We had a few new location options and left the decision up to the public by putting a poll out there, and Stockton came out on top!
We run our ordering process in a very specific way, which is also quite unique compared to what people are used to.
All of our orders are done online; you pick the time slot you want and then collect your food at the hatch at that time.
Since every time slot gets taken in advance, we have the amount of dough we need for pizzas for that night, and we know how many we can make in that time period. That’s the whole reason there’s no waiting area and why you can’t just walk up and order.
This isn’t your traditional pizza shop, and things have gone amazingly; selling out every night is a great sign.
Jay:
Marketing Stupid Good Pizza starts with having a product that truly stands out—something that gets people talking. From there, we use social media to drive traffic to our ordering platform, combining organic reach with targeted ads and retargeting strategies.
A lot goes on behind the scenes that people don’t realise, especially when it comes to getting customers to reorder. That’s always a challenge, but Jamie’s relentless focus on perfecting the product makes it much easier. When the pizza is that good, people keep coming back.
To drive customer loyalty, we run a Priority Slot Club, giving our most loyal customers early access to order pizza.
Every Monday, we release the week’s slots—those who sign up receive a secret link at 6 PM, allowing them to order before the general public at 8 PM.
It’s our way of rewarding those who support us, ensuring they never miss out on Stupid Good Pizza.
We have a solid growth plan in place, focusing on standardisation and quality control at every level.
To ensure consistency across all locations, we’ve built a central kitchen, guaranteeing the same high-quality product no matter which store you visit.
Right now, we’re putting in the hard work behind the scenes—laying the foundation so that when it’s time to scale, we’re ready to grow without compromising on what makes Stupid Good Pizza special.
Our goal is to make Stupid Good Pizza available to everyone, nationwide.
If we were giving others advice when starting in business, the biggest thing we’ve learnt would be to make sure it’s doing something you love; otherwise, it will take a lot more from you than it gives back to you.
