PROFILE
A recipe for
success Making pizzas started as a hobby for Sam Corban (main picture) after his move to Cambourne, Cambridgeshire, and has since evolved into 400° Pizzeria - a thriving pop-up business that offers freshly made wood fired pizzas. FOOD FOCUS With a background in food photography, Sam Corban says that he has always had a keen eye for detail and is no stranger to the kitchen, his business having continued to grow since he first fired up its oven in February 2017. He soon became a regular at the Cambourne Cricket Pavilion every Friday night, and due to customer demand he’s gone on to hire his first member of staff to help him fulfil all of the orders. His pizzas have become well known in the local area for their incredible crusts (he took six months to refine the dough recipe, he reports, slowly proving it for 24 hours to create his signature pizza, before placing them in his wood fired pizza oven at 400°C). 400° Pizzeria’s pizzas range from the classic ‘nduja to the Debbie – a signature creation named after one of Sam’s customers. Other customer favourites include prosciutto and rocket, garlic and Parmesan, and goat’s cheese and chorizo – although the business isn’t afraid of trying out new flavour combinations, and regularly takes custom orders. “I love to experiment with toppings, and my most recent creation packs a punch, combining a tabasco crust, sriracha, ‘nduja, pepperoni and chorizo – certainly not one for the faint-hearted! And when it comes to dough, my most recent experiment was beer-based!” he adds. However, like many small businesses in the hospitality sector, Sam Corban has had to adapt his offering in order to keep the pizza oven fired up week on week. 32
Just one of the ways he has managed to keep his business alive was by re-thinking how he took payments, having originally taken cash and card payments. However, with safety fears around the use of cash in recent times, he looked to implement contactless payments as a solution, so as not to deter customers, by moving with the times to help keep his business going strong.
LOCKDOWN LESSONS If there’s one thing the lockdown has taught small businesses in the food and drink sector, it’s that you must be bold in the face of changes to your business. As the pandemic swept through the nation, every business owner has had to re-evaluate their day to day operations, as well as the future of their business - all while keeping trade afloat.
Seemingly overnight, new trading conditions emerged in the hospitality sector, with businesses adapting their offerings to support the local community by including online ordering, contact-free delivery, as well as the rapid adoption of contactless and digital payments technology. The number of cashless businesses in the food and drink sector has skyrocketed from 8% in January, prelockdown, to 33% in July (Square’s UK Cash & Pandemic Report, 2020). As restrictions began to ease, businesses have responded to customers’ demand for more hygienic ways to pay, and contactless has come out on top, with one in three businesses no longer accepting cash. The pandemic has seen a new trend emerging in which customers’ spending preferences have moved significantly towards cashless and omnichannel payments, with the food and drink sector taking the lead. Sam Corban says that one of his main motivations for running his own business is the freedom it gives him to spend more December 2020
