'We've grown £11m pizza delivery sales with no experience'

Friends since their teens, entrepreneurs Nick Buckland and Johnnie Tate built a pizza oven in the back garden where they lived together in Hackney, east London, ran regular supper clubs, tested out 18'' creations on friends and had dreams of making London’s best delivered pizza. They have held true to their independent business beliefs ever since.

A decade after launching Yard Sale, their pizza delivery service, the duo now have 12 sites across London, a thirteenth opening in Bermondsey in September, and anticipate £11m in sales this year. Having launched before the rise of Deliveroo, co-founder Buckland says the key has been to remain independent and entwine with local communities with each of their site openings.

"We’re not on third party apps and we really need to break through that force field of convenience for potential customers,” he says. “Not everybody goes out of their way to find an independent pizza place anymore.”

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Growing a pizza chain in London has undoubtedly been a challenging one for the duo, who grew up in south-west London. With no hospitality background — Buckland a graphic designer and Tate a photographer by profession — they initially spoke to industry experts and the majority told them to steer clear.

“That’s probably why we did it as we didn’t have too many pre-existing ways of how hospitality should be run,” smiles Buckland.

“We have done it our own way and in our own mould. We had seen people who we looked up to fall by the wayside. Thinking outside the box has helped us grow super organically.”

Yard Sale’s first site opened in Clapton, east London on a shoestring budget in 2014, while their marketing was given an early boost when they successfully managed to get Home Alone actor Macaulay Culkin and his Pizza Underground band (Velvet Underground covers with pizza lyrics) to play behind the counter at the shop’s opening.

For several months, the business took handwritten orders over the phone before it could afford to change to a modern system. Yet the duo were adamant they had spotted a gap in the market.

“There were pizza places who delivered with a really strong brand, but in a lot of cases had a questionable product,” says Buckland. “There were good local restaurants who couldn’t compete with the bigger chains. We could deliver that with a great service, creative fun branding and there was a big market.

“We have never bowed to pressure and we have kept over 150 bikes [mopeds and e-bikes] on the road. We have chipped away and at times we felt we might not be able to compete with the likes of Domino’s (DOM.L), but we track our delivery metrics every day and we’re glad to say we compete to the highest industry standards.”

Yard Sale's pizzas are bulk fermented overnight before chefs produce a second rise the following day. Dough balls are produced by hand in store, while they source mozzarella and tomatoes from Naples, having used the same supplier from inception.

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With the founder of a Chiswick restaurant, Napoli On The Road, currently holding best in class in the world’s 50 top pizza awards, can London lay claim to having its own style?

“America and Italy have lots of regional pizza styles and more people are asking that question,” admits Buckland. “When we started 10 years ago, Neapolitan sourdough was the trend, now it’s going to a more New York style which is changing people’s taste a bit.”

Yard Sale’s in-house team, many of whom started out working in their shops, track their sites live via an app called Mission Control while forging relationships with pub partners which has also been a key cog in their brand growth.

“Because we do our deliveries directly in house, it enables us to have these amazing relationships with our local neighbourhood pubs where it may be challenging to operate a kitchen,” adds Buckland.

In a bid to stand out from bigger competitors when opening new sites, Yard Sale have also seen success with community engagement strategies. These include giving away pizza to an entire street when opening in new neighbourhoods via their "Win pizza for your street" competition.

Buckland says: “It’s a great way for everyone to get them talking about us and almost doing promotion for us. We can then reward them for that.”

Yard Sale are now seeing the rewards in financial returns; to such an extent that the co-founders believe they have the capability to open 150 sites.

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“We have built on steady growth and feel like we could do those sites across the UK,” says Buckland. “There are plenty more opportunities out there.”

Behind the brand: Co-founder Nick Buckland on how to grow a successful pizza chain

Challenges

There were learnings along the way around how we were handling deliveries where we would group up orders instead of taking single orders. The more single drops you do, customers are getting a fresher order. By doing that, you get more repeat customers. 100% would be great, but our general target is 80% single drop delivery. One of the reasons why we have progressed so well is constantly challenging every part to do better.

Bettering delivery times

We used to handle smaller volume of sales at such higher delivery times on a Friday night. We could have sat there thinking that we were in demand. But we kept pushing to improve greater numbers at much lower delivery times and frustrating fewer people. It was about finding out what the top competitors out there were doing and chipping away over time.

Branding

We don’t have one de facto logo and each site has a different sign and design. It is more difficult but it replicates our handmade, hand-delivered element that we’ve had since the beginning.

Not all all our pizzas are the same or perfectly round; they are handmade by natural process and we strive to get a brand to replicate that and one that isn’t too polished. So much of that is down to collaboration with artists, illustrators and top London chefs, which have seen kebab, Punjabi and African flavoured toppings.

Raising awareness

When we go into ‘up and coming neighbourhoods’, we don’t want to come in and take away from a community. We speak to local businesses and drop off free pizzas and give prizes away in raffles. Neighbourhood is such a big part of our brand. A lot of it is standing outside train stations and there is no better promo than getting product into hands and showcase what great people we have working for the business.

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