Pivot to Performance with The Social Dough Company’s Claud Baker #53

After all, all art is experience.

Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor. This episode is called How to Turn Adversity into Accomplishment. And here to talk us through how he and his fiancée did exactly that is Claude Baker, who during the pandemic pivoted from the world of commercial property to create the portable pizza business, The Social Dough Company, which very recently evolved into an incredibly popular permanent restaurant. Gary, Claude, take it away.

Welcome Claude, thank you for joining this episode of the podcast. Welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm very, very excited to be on.

We're looking forward to having you on. And uncharacteristically, I'm going to ask you a different question at the beginning than I normally ask. I thought it'd be good if you could just quickly introduce yourself, but just tell us who you are, but what you used to do rather than what you do now.

Okay, sure. So yeah, working in central London, I was actually in commercial real estate training to be a chartered surveyor. So sort of sourcing commercial real estate for various investors. I was doing that, yeah, up to December 2019, and then a few things changed.

Yes, they did. So, and one of the main things that changed was the pandemic. So tell, you know, for people that are listening, tell people a brief story of what happened as a result of the pandemic. What did you do?

Okay, so it was really like December 2019, I was made redundant. I was with a very small investment agency for reasons outside of my, my control that the firm closed. And then I was sort of scrambling around thinking about either going into prop tech. I was always quite entrepreneurial, fancied working and having my own business at some point. Not too sure what that would be in. So from sort of December 2019 to March 2020, I was trying to put together a software business plan and looking at ways of raising finance for that. And just at the point when I started getting a few investment pitches together, the pandemic came, and then obviously everyone just sort of froze and the world stopped. And then I was left outside of, on the outside really, with no like solid job, solid career going forward in real estate. And likewise, no real traction on the software business. So I ended up just sort of twiddling my thumbs.

God, so what did you do? Tell us what you did.

We had a pizza oven in my fiancée's parents' garden and We just were on a sunny day, I don't know if you remember back to the summer of the lockdown, it was very, very hot and sunny. We were just outside in the garden and taught ourselves how to make pizza as a bit of a, you know, what should we do today instead of watching endless Netflix series. So we just started making pizza. From that point, yeah, ideas and the business sort of evolved from let's head round and make pizza for people in the area to what it is now. And I can run you through all of that. Do you want to go through that now?

Yeah, before you do, I mean, I think it'd be— it's great to tell people the story because we've talked about you on the podcast before. We're a bit obsessed with you, to be honest, because you live in my area and you ended up— you were coming around to a road to people's houses and people would order pizza and you make it in front of them there, which was fantastic. The question I've got before you tell us what you're doing now is how did you get— there was a problem, you came up with an idea. How did you get into action? You know, how did you decide on your business model? You know, what was the trigger point and how did you get to this point? Just interested in the thought process, really.

Yeah, I think it sort of came from the idea of everybody, as you know, everyone was locked in. So it was like everyone was at home and this is sort of where the name stems from as well. It was We were just trying to do something a little bit social in the most unsociable times. And we basically put together WhatsApp groups of people that lived in the area. So, for example, it might be that you lived on a housing estate and we would form a WhatsApp group for that housing estate. And then we would— we converted a horse trailer. Long story. Converted this horse trailer into a pizza truck. And then we would drive around for booking, so you could book us to come to your driveway and cook pizza. So our first model was what we called our driveway dough service, and that basically allowed people to book us to come to your house and we would cook pizza and then we would take it to your door and then we would like go back to the truck. So you could— we would open the hatch on the, on the food truck and you could watch us make pizza from your living room. So everything was obviously socially distanced and like we would, we would be on your driveway cooking or parked just on the road and we would take the pizzas to your house and then we would move on to your, what would probably be like your neighbor or a couple of doors up and we would just drive around that block and then we would visit back the following week.

Yeah, it was a bit like, we had it a few times and really enjoyed it. Fantastic pizza. And it was a bit like the ice cream van in 21st Century, but with pizza. So I thought it was a fantastic idea. Just out of interest, did you have any— it's a leading question really— any problems along the way? And what were the biggest things you kind of needed to overcome just to get started? Because, you know, you had to convert stuff as well. What did you have to go through?

Firstly, I guess, like, make— like, making the pizza, you know, we hadn't— both myself and my fiancée had never worked in hospitality at all. I know also we're further into hospitality now, but at the time it was just about making pizza as quickly as we could and then moving on and getting the next booking in. So we would have— we'd be fully booked out for these driveway sessions, and we would, you know, naturally try and take as many bookings as we could. So we just ended up trying to learn and stretch pizza as quickly as we could and cook it as fast as we could and move on to get more bookings in. I think the biggest challenge was probably understanding a little bit about the like the regulation side about like the food, obviously food hygiene and those sorts of things, as well as trading licenses. And that's when we came up with, well, if we're— we can't serve like an ice cream truck, for example, we can't drive to a road and just let anybody come and get pizza from us. So we decided on the model where we would be booked, but we would only be booked for— it could be like one pizza for an elderly lady living in the house, and we would just arrive and cook one pizza. And then because we were only there for 7 minutes, 6 minutes, we'd be able to cook it, deliver it, and then move on. So it was, I think, a challenge of speed and learning how to cook quickly. And that ultimately, like, obviously helped us improve.

Yeah, maybe we should've got a Ferrari and you could put the pizza in the back of the Ferrari and go faster. So tell us, Claude, you know, things have really evolved now. Tell us what you're doing now and you know what you're up to now. How's it evolved?

Well, going from the driveway service where we were oversubscribed and we ultimately created a product which we didn't at the time expect to sort of take off as well as it did. We went through hundreds of dough recipes and alterations on the dough with the end goal trying to make the dough as usable possible. I think a lot of pizzerias get very locked down on like the whole in-the-dough process, and the more complicated that becomes, the more time you spend on it. And then obviously you have a product which is quite difficult to stretch, or you have holes in the pizza which slows you down, that sort of thing. So we created a pizza base that we could stretch quite easily and quite quickly that still tasted really good. After learning that, we got another food truck and we hired— we then brought in a couple of people full-time to run that. So we could then have 2 food trucks on the go and we started collection sites. So instead of driving to people's houses, as lockdowns eased, we were able to park up at, for example, like a local church or something, and then people would come and pick up from us and we'd be back at that same location each week. And then from that, we, we saved the money with that. And, um, and then I must admit, you know, we had terrific support from our families, mainly on the business side in terms of like understanding, you know, your accounting, your finances, all that sort of stuff. We had terrific support from our family to get us into our first restaurant site.

So now, yeah, so now you're in the restaurant business.

Yes.

How amazing is that? And I've been there and it's packed all the time.

It is. It's going very well. I think what kickstarted the restaurant side was we were cooking at Selfridges Christmas markets And off the back of that, we were approached by two guys from the Middle East to start a restaurant brand because they, they liked our story, they liked our product, and they liked the brand that we put together. And they were interested in creating a restaurant chain here in the UK. And that sort of just like made us realize, you know, this is— we need to go somewhere with this. We were being moved out of our prep kitchen because that site was being developed. So we, we didn't have a prep kitchen to go to and it was either go with these investors and try and create a restaurant brand with them or go it alone and just learn and figure out how to, how to do it on our own in the first instance, which is what we did.

So you've gone off and you've done it on your own rather than with the investors?

Yeah, correct. For this one.

Fantastic. And then there was a little bit of Hollywood. Tell us about that.

Yeah, we've been quite lucky on this front. We've ended up cooking for people like Giovanna Fletcher, Emma Bunton. You know, we've ended up somehow getting into that circle.

Didn't you do something on the film sets or Netflix or something?

All that side as well. Yeah, that came through again. Another, just another connection. We've done Netflix, BBC. I think pizza lends itself to a great food to cook for the masses because obviously you're able to cater for vegan, vegetarian, you can have like meat as well. And it's— you can do all of that with the same base. They cook in 90 seconds. So we're able to serve, you know, 200 people on a film set over their lunch break quite quickly and cater for like multiple people.

Such a good story. And, you know, when I saw that, I thought, that's amazing, because you guys have been— you've taken a brave step. You've got out there and, and you're reaping the benefits which you deserve. I know that looking, you know, I don't know you that well, but what I know about you, the environment is quite important to you. What's your plan and how can you contribute as a restaurateur to the environment? I know that's kind of an interesting area for you.

Yeah. So we want— because we're creating a business from scratch, we wanted to do it right, I felt. And we took the approach that we want to be socially ethical, basically in our values as we grow. So we're looking constantly at different ways of like mainly reducing plastic in the products that we buy in, as well as the different things that we can do to help, like on the delivery front, for example, with pizza boxes. We're not there yet, but we're looking at the idea of reusable pizza boxes and things like that because so few of them get recycled. And I think there's different angles that we can take with it. At the time when we started with a lot of offsetting and carbon offsetting programs, But now I think, you know, we've reflected on that and I don't know if that's the right way forward to go. I think there's things that we can do internally rather than just paying for offset.

That makes sense. It's good. I read about that and I thought it was good that that's something that's important to you. And then, you know, kind of a random question. If you had the chance to go back with a really good salary to what you were doing before, would you go back to what you were doing if you had that chance?

No, I basically left and changed because I came out of university. I was at the University of Reading. I went into a big corporate and I left there because I felt it was too corporate. You know, I never really got on in the work environment in the big corporate. And then that's why I went to a smaller company. And then obviously the company folded. But to go back, to a big company on a bigger salary, I think there's ways of getting there under our own steam.

Yeah, I guess you've done all the hard graft. I mean, you know, a lot of people listening, you know, we're in a business-to-business kind of world. There's lots of people that fancy being in their own business, but taking the step is always difficult for them. And I know that you had a situation, a bit of a perfect storm where you had to make a decision. You made it, but it's not easy to make, right? But here's another question related to that. If the pandemic hadn't happened, would you have ever got into this business, you think?

No, no, very, uh, yeah, very straightforward answer. We wouldn't, because we wouldn't have had the time to develop the skills and the interest outside of the world of real estate, if that makes sense. So before the pandemic, I was committed to building my career in real estate and Eventually, I always wanted my own business, but I presumed that would be in some form to do with real estate, not at all to do with hospitality or pizzas. But having that pause on life just gave us time to reflect and try something completely new.

Yeah, no, it makes sense. So, you know, if someone's listening, do you think people should wait for a problem first before they pivot and do something, or should they pursue their dreams? What's the— and what's the trigger?

I think you should just change. I personally think you should just switch out to something you enjoy doing, because ultimately, whatever that is, you can make a success of it. I think looking back over the time since we started, I think the next chapter is going to be quite different to what we've done to date. The start is all about graft and very practical hands-on work. It's less to do with the with the business side, if that makes sense. It's very, very practical day-to-day, making dough, chopping veg, cleaning, you know, late, late nights, Saturdays, all of the sort of stuff that comes with hospitality and, and the hard graft that comes with that. I feel like we have— we've had to put in to get to this point, and I think that the next chapter could be quite different, but for sure, if you're prepared to do that, then I think you can get to this point.

Yeah, and what— and I'd like to come back to the future side in a second, but what— for someone who didn't have a pandemic to trigger them, what is the trigger? Like, you said you want to be in your own business. If the pandemic hadn't come, what would have been the trigger for you to go to take the risk, if you like, to go into your own business? Would you have ever done it?

Yeah, as I said a little bit earlier on, I was in the, in the motion of going into a prop tech world, which is like a sort of startup angle on, on some more commercial real estate stuff. So looking at a software business, and I always wanted to go into that. So I'd sort of started the first few steps in, in the prop tech world. I think the trigger to go and do it is, is just realizing that when you go to work and you're sat there looking blankly at your screen and questioning yourself. Once you— I did that for like a week and I quite quickly just thought, I'm going to go do something else.

Yeah, but I'm going to do something.

Yeah.

But, you know, easy to say, but obviously not easy to do. So well done for doing it. And, you know, if you, if you're thinking about the future, maybe you haven't had the time to think about it because you've been so busy getting things moving. But if you had no constraints, what is the future on your piece of business? Where do you want it to be? If you know, if you didn't have any constraints and you had time?

Thinking, you know, just speaking aloud and from a, from what we both wish and dream for the business is for that. We're aiming for like a neighbourhood pizzeria. So again, a little bit to do with the pandemic, with a lot of people moving to the suburbs, we've realised there's a lot more people obviously working from home and that sort of cool Shoreditch, Soho, restaurant vibes that you get in town, we don't feel are in places where people actually live. So our intention now is to, is to obviously scale the business and open new sites, but very much within the heart of neighbourhoods where those people actually live, whereas prior to the pandemic they perhaps got those fixes in central.

Yeah, you know what, that's— I'm a big foodie and I think you've definitely created that in Pinna where you are today. I think you're onto something there.

That sounds really good. Thank you. I think being quite, quite young and coming from out of university, going into real estate, into a corporate world, not having a lot of exposure in business. And I think the next chapter, although now we've got through most of the graft in terms of setting up the business, the next professional development side for me is Finding and speaking to and networking with other people, trying to speak to someone who's been through this, like a mentor or someone who has been through what we're about to go through, and having conversations with them and learning from them, I think is the next big thing for us.

That's great. And Claude, if you could, you know, for people listening again, provide 3 takeaways, not pizza takeaways, 3 takeaways for someone who wanted to pivot or follow their dreams, what would they be? If you can only give 3 things, what would you say?

Advice? First one would be to do it, to just stop, pause, and, and take the plunge. The, the second thing I think would be to utilize and speak to those closest to you, because often they, they want what's best for you. And what we have felt is our family and, and our friends, but ultimately our family, has been totally behind our vision and our passion, which is a business of our own for both myself and my fiancée. And I think it's, it's talking to them and letting them know that you've got an idea and you want to run at it, and to, to try and draw on their experience, uh, because ultimately, you know, there's, there's people connected to us that have got more experience, uh, than we have, and it's using that. Yeah. And finally, I think it's The third one would just be get ready for the graft. I think, you know, it's not when you're starting a business, it's not just sitting on Excel, drawing out cash flows, planning and vision, you know, looking at a vision of, well, we'll look where these numbers could take the business, look where this could take us. It's actually doing the legwork. And there's no way that we could look to start a restaurant chain without actually running a restaurant, making pizzas, cleaning a restaurant down, cleaning out food trucks, dealing with all the like nitty-gritty bits and pieces that you have in hospitality. I think you've got to do that first.

And is it very different than you expected it to be?

The restaurant is, but in a good sense. I think we were at the time when we started, we, we thought food trucks were the, were the answer. And we had this big plan in the back of our heads as to where the food truck business would take us. Quite quickly realized that the restaurant is far more consistent in sales. It gives us a base and more consistency with, with the team. So yeah, I think the restaurant, the restaurant is different to what we thought, um, just out of the fact it's, it's far more consistent and we're able to like grow a better team from that as opposed to from food trucks that might be out all at sort of sporadic times.

Yeah, sure. Are you still doing food trucks or is it just a restaurant?

Yeah, still do the food truck, but that's really just between myself and my partner who like, we head out and we will go and do an event, but the core focus is now going to be restaurants.

Brilliant. So a couple of questions before we move to your musical taste as well as your food taste. If you had the chance to do this again, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently with this knowledge?

What would I do differently now going at it again? I think I would bring in people that have got skill sets earlier on, I think, to help and assist. So for example, we a little bit late bringing in another pizza chef, for example, And we have now got a manager on board. But, but I think really, you know, we should have addressed that earlier on, that we need someone with hospitality experience in opening a restaurant to also be by our side going into the first one as opposed to doing everything yourself. Yeah. When we flew into the restaurant, we were honestly 2 weeks away and I was deciding, am I going to be head chef? In there, or am I going to be the manager? And that's quite stressful, 2 weeks out, uh, not really defining what your job role is in there.

And, and you— and that's a fair point. And you also mentioned earlier you had a lot of help from family on the business side. Is that a prerequisite for setting up your own business? You need that knowledge, whether you get it from your family or elsewhere. Is it something you really need to have in order to get started?

I— no, I don't think so. Um, To be honest, it's just Google, isn't it? You know, Google, YouTube, podcasts. I was obsessed with that prior to starting the business anyway, and I've always taken a great interest in that. And I think a lot of people get scared by Companies House, for example, and, you know, letters that come through and all the rest of it about opening a limited company and what, what's a director and shareholder agreements and all these sorts of phrases and terminology that you're perhaps not used to before diving into it. But, you know, the amount of resources out there on Google and YouTube, podcasts that assist, that's something I think people need to unearth more of.

The modern way.

I like it.

Yeah, good to know. And you mentioned earlier you had lots of trial and error on getting the pizza dough. How did you get to the final conclusion on that?

Eating. Yeah, we ate a lot and still do eat a lot of pizza. Um, we did— we just did a lot of batch trials. You know, pizza dough gets— you can get very technical with it. And we would have— we'd have a spreadsheet of hydration, hours proving, temperature that the dough got proved at prior to going into the cold room. There was like— there was so many different variables, and I think it's important to just keep track of all of that and analyze next to each one what was good, what was bad, and constantly trying to refine it.

So what is the secret recipe?

Flour, water, salt, yeast.

Is there a, is there a particular flour that people should worry about on it?

Um, yeah, I think it's— we use a double zero flour from Caputo, which we find very consistent, and I think it's just controlling the controlling the variables, mainly in temperature when you make the dough, and also giving it enough time. You know, we, we don't use our dough for approximately 48 hours before we use it for service. And at the start, when you're out making pizza, but you're trying to make pizza for dinner, you're trying to make dough in 4 hours. It's, it's, uh, it's never going to be the same.

Yeah, good to know. You keep it in the fridge to prove, or do you keep it outside?

Yeah, well, Our process is we make it, mix it, and then knead it for about 8 minutes, and then we ball ours up straight away, leave it for approximately 8 hours, and then it will go in the fridge until use around 2 days later.

There you go. There's some secret tips on making pizza for people listening. And what my last question, I'm going to pass you on to George for your musical taste. What's your best pizza topping and why? What's your favorite?

My favorite, in Duya, It's like a spicy sausage meat. Yeah, that's very nice. Very good. I love that.

That's a good choice. Claude, thank you so much. I'm going to pass you on to George, but it's such an inspiring story. I really wanted to get you on because I've kind of followed your journey. I've even tasted your pizzas along the way and, you know, you've been very matter of fact, but actually it takes a lot of guts and determination to do what you did. So thank you. And I'm going to hand you on to George to talk about your musical taste.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks to you, Claude. It's been— it has been a really inspiring story.

Fascinating stuff.

I haven't been to your restaurant, but I need to change that ASAP. You might know that we occasionally stumble across, accidentally stumble across slogans for t-shirts when Gary and I do shows, and I think "Get ready for the graft" is definitely gonna be on there. But it's my job to ask you about your music taste because we have the company Doctor Playlist that we contribute to and we ask our guests to contribute to. I think I'm gonna throw in a couple of just pizza-themed ones anyway, just in honor of your appearance on the show. But if you've got anything you wanna throw in, now's your chance.

Okay, it would be To Be Loved By You by Parker McCollum. It's a favorite of myself and my fiancée. We're obsessed with country music, and it was the song we had on repeat as we drove back to my parents' place where I proposed with the ring stowed away in the back of the car, ready for that moment.

Excellent. Yeah, we— I don't think we have any country on the playlist, so this is our first country tune. So good choice. I'm a big country fan as well, so from a personal perspective, I fully condone it. Claude, thank you so much. It's been a really, really great episode. And Gary, as ever, obviously well done for asking some excellent questions. And thanks to you all for listening. We will see you next time. A massive thanks to Claude for taking the time to come and share his inspiring story with us. If you like delicious pizza, and let's be honest, who doesn't, head to The Social Dough Company in Pinner and discover for yourself why this restaurant is fast becoming a local favorite. And while you're on the way, head to thecompanydoctor.com, of course, to peruse show notes, videos, and more than 50 past episodes packed with Company Doctor wisdom. Thanks to you all for listening, and we'll see you next time.