In 2013, there were two buddies hanging out in the basement kitchen of St.Paul's Memorial Church. One dude, a retired facilities maintenance man, had knowledge of restaurants having worked in them almost exclusively since 1968. By 1977 he had a restaurant sandwich shop which was open for two years. In 1989, he succeeded in graduating from the Conrad N. Hilton College at the University of Houston with a Bachelor's degree in of Science in Hotel and Restaurant Management.
He pulled a pizza sauce recipe from the internet. After doctoring a few ingredients, the sauce produced was savory and sweet. A Bobby Flay recipe for a pizza dough was the beginning of Holy Smokes Pizza crust. The other dude was a contractor/pizza connoisseur and did a lot of traveling in the U.S. Every city he was in, he found the mom and pop pizza places to sample their pies. He knows pizza!
The pizza was topped with lotsa Mozza cheese and wall to wall pepperoni, and the pie was ready to bake.
In 2013 there were no pizza ovens, so into the regular oven it went. 10 minutes later @ 600` the pizza was ready to try. After a couple of bites the pizza, the connoisseur paused between bites and said, "Holy smokes that's good pizza!"
A new brand began...
The idea of starting a pizza business in a church building has many issues. Should we have tables for people to sit and enjoy pizza? Will guests be willing to come the church and walk down the steps to the Social Hall? Do we want to have people in the church? Also, importantly, do we want to have hours of operation? We decided to try contacting a couple of local businesses to see if we could set up delivery to their restaurants. It was a dead end.
There were several charitable events Holy Smokes Pizza entertained. Successful charitable events took place in the social hall. A fundraiser for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation collected almost $1,000 with no funds being kept to alleviate the cost of goods or preparation..
Pizzas were supplied to an Indiana Landmarks event held at St. Paul's Memorial.
Holy Smokes Pizza contributed pizza for 2 Boy Scouts events after they collected items for the churches food pantry.
Also, they donated pizza for the Notre Dame womens basketball awards night and autograph signing.
All these events were received very well and created a great deal of goodwill. The problem was there was no money coming in.
In june 20