A Bishop’s Stortford businessman’s love of pizza and motor racing were combined in a dream catering job.
John Petrucci, who owns the Petrucci’s Artisan Stonebaked Pizza concession in Potter Street’s Eat 17, was hired to cook up a storm for 400 people at the Williams Racing Formula 1 team’s staff party.
Petrucci and his staff transported their one-tonne trailer-based pizza oven to the Williams HQ in Oxfordshire before portioning out 120kg of pizza dough – proved in advance for 72 hours – into
dough balls.
Those were then hand stretched into pizza bases in front of the guests before being topped and cooked to order at 400C for the extremely long line of customers before them.
The team managed to successfully serve 400 pizzas in five hours as they called upon their 11 years of experience serving pizzas from mobile premises.
“Williams F1 has such a great race-winning heritage and is the second most successful race team of all time after Ferrari which, being of Italian descent, of course has a special place in my heart,” said Petrucci, who has operated his business from Eat 17 since the store opened in October 2017.
“After 400 pizzas and a very long day we were tired but very happy. We hope to be invited back next year.”
