My Story

Hi, I’m Franco.

I am the son of Italian immigrants. 

I grew up on top of a pizza shop. 

I’ve worked with food my whole life. 

This is my story

I was born in the seventies to a freshly arrived Italian immigrant couple. My parents were post-war babies from a small village in southern Italy where hard work wasn’t a thing, it was simply what you did!

Looking for better opportunities, they came to Australia and, like a lot of Italian immigrants of the day, my dad got a job in construction and eventually started his own company. Construction wasn’t his thing and, with Italy still in his heart, we headed back for a year.

At 5 years old, growing up in an Italian home and spending a year in Italy, I started school and still hadn’t spoken a word of English.

My parents had decided to buy a food business. At the time, my mum was working in restaurants and my dad drove trucks for a food wholesaler. I remember traversing Sydney looking at places to buy, excited to see what was happening behind the counter which, at that stage, I was still shorter than.

My parents bought an old-fashioned fish&chip shop, business and property as happened back in the day, and eventually turned it into a pizza shop.

In the eighties, pizza delivery became a thing and as soon as I got my license, I was screeching around the suburbs delivering pizzas using all the skills I learnt watching Formula 1 on Sunday nights. After finishing school and my Formula 1 dream looking less and less likely, I got a job in a pizzeria. Working for the family didn’t pay that great.

Even though I was only 20, I actually already had years of experience working in pizza. So, basically, from the start, I ran my own section and even got a lot of compliments. Sometimes customers would slip me a twenty on the side as a “Thank You”.

At a young age, I was earning good money and I diligently put all of it into partying and various seventies Italian automobiles, which constantly craved injections of cash as they slowly depreciated in value.

This cunning financial strategy meant I was soon working 2/3 jobs a week and I learnt other skills within the food industry, including a good stint appreciating fine wines, which apparently only go up in value if you don’t drink them. Somehow, I ended up with a degree in the only thing I was good at, that was drinking them. Australia, as they say, is the lucky country.

Before I was 30, with help from my parents, I bought my own business, stumbling into the highest growing trend of this century: coffee. After 20 years of running my own espresso bar, including a restaurant for part of it, I felt something was missing in my life. The old family pizza shop suddenly became vacant and as soon as I walked back in after all those years, I knew immediately what I was missing.

PIZZA

I was straight back into the groove. 

The wife and kids were on board.

The house became a test lab. 

We were mixing, flipping, topping, baking and eating pizzas like there was no tomorrow (…it was during covid!!)

I needed more, so I headed to Italy and did a professional course.

Yes, that’s right. I have a degree in making pizzas as well as drinking wine. You really can’t make this stuff up.

During the course, I realised how different it is to make pizza at home and worked on adapting techniques and products that suit the home pizza maker. Out of this came The Pizza Pantry, the only store in the world that does all things pizza, from the pizza flour to the pizza cutter. 

The Pizza Pantry is the realisation that anybody can make good pizza at home and, with a little help, you can make a great pizza at home.