My name is James and I’m a third generation Bay Area native. I grew up on the Peninsula, and spent my formative years in Los Angeles. I moved back to SF in 1994 to pursue an Art degree at SF State. After college I spent 16+ years in the photography and graphic design/production industry, working for various darkrooms, magazines, and educational software companies. I ran a successful freelance business for 7 of those years. I then found my true passion in 2009, making pizza. I plan to continue on this path, making high quality pizza everywhere we go.
In late 2009, at the Old Oakland Farmer’s market, I saw Pizza Politana selling pizza out of a wood fired pizza trailer. I was frustrated with my current career, and after seeing that, I knew that this would be my next venture. Two months later I had an opportunity to build a cement pizza oven in a class. I ran home and built another one in my back yard to practice. I sold pizza to friends and neighbors every week. By summer of 2010 I hand built my first pizza oven trailer, and set out to sell pizza across Oakland. There was no handbook for mobile food vending, so my biggest challenge was figuring out how to start a food business. With the help of several friends, I found a way to get legitimate, and we launched Fist of Flour Pizza at the April 2011 Art Murmur. We sold 75+ pizzas and that got the ball rolling. We never looked back.
Our customers are everyone who wants to eat great food. We use the highest quality ingredients, we make almost everything from scratch, and we do not compromise. We’ve served pizzas all over the Bay Area and greater Northern California.
We grew the business by buying a second trailer to keep up with demand in 2012, and expanded rapidly. By the fall of 2013 I was able to purchase our first retail location in the Laurel District of East Oakland, and we were met with open mouths. Now two years later we are growing more popular, and continue to serve our immediate neighborhoods, and continue to run the two trailers for catering and public events.
My goal is to open a proper sit down eatery here in Oakland and serve the community that has grown us to be successful.
I am having a new mobile pizza oven built, and will primarily use these funds to pay for this, an estimated cost of $17,000. With a larger oven we will be able to vend at larger events, and keep up with our growing demand. My goal is to get the business into the black and out of the red through the ability to do more events and sell more pizza.