4 minute read
Crust Punks
Crust Punks
DISPATCH PIZZA CATERS WOOD-FIRED THEATRICS AND TUSCAN ETHOS
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By Amanda Hadlock
Jeremy Long has been in the restaurant business his whole life, and he has a long-running love for the service industry. He and his partner have dreamed of opening a restaurant for years, but their idea for a catering business was more compatible with their busy family life, which hatched their idea for Dispatch Pizza, a mobile pizza catering business available for private parties and events. They will bring a fully-functioning pizza bus equipped with wood-fired pizza ovens right to you.
“We sure look like a food truck, albeit not a typical food truck, but we operate as a catering company,” says Long. “We don’t do public events or transactional service. We do pre-booked parties, usually at private venues or residences. People are asking us to do food truck-style events, but we don’t see ourselves as a food truck. We offer a level of service that a typical food truck simply isn’t equipped for. Of course, food is our primary offering, but the theatrics of our operation are part of the sell. Guests get to see a pizzeria in action as we make pizzas from scratch. It’s really dinner and a show.”
Long and his partner specialize in Neapolitan-style pizza, which Long learned how to make while living in the basement of a restaurant in Tuscany 10 years ago.
“A buddy put me in touch with his family’s restaurant in Barga, Tuscany,” Long says. “I lived in the basement of the restaurant next to the wine cellar, cooked every day, and learned the beautiful ways of the Italian speed of life.”
Long is proud to bring Italian culture and cooking methods back to his hometown of KC.
“It’s a four-day process to make our dough,” says Long. “If we were a typical restaurant, we just wouldn’t have the space and the time to ferment it as long as we do, and I think it makes all the difference in the world. We get flour from Naples, pure Italian flour, and then our process involves fermenting for three days. Then on the fourth day, we’re ready to cook pizzas fresh on-site.”
Long made sure to develop unique and authentic Italian flavors when working on the menu. These aren’t toppings you could find at a typical pizza place.
“My favorite pizza we make is called the Bella Vita—the good life—and it’s got all the good stuff on it,” says Long. “We make brown butter and whip it together with ricotta, and that’s the base of the pizza. You could really stop there and eat that, but then we have prosciutto on top, and we finish it with burrata, hot honey, and truffle oil.”
The team at Dispatch Pizza hopes to expand in the future, as they’re loving the reception they’ve received from the KC community so far.
“I think there’s a capacity for another pizza truck, for sure,” says Long. “I think we might get into the event space world. I’d love to have a place where we could have our own prep kitchen to do all of our dough making and sauces and everything we need to do at our commissary. We’d love to have room to do that ourselves. And then, if we could parlay that into an event space, that’d be great.”
With Long’s passion for family-owned eateries, he is ecstatic to bring his own catering company on wheels back to his old stomping grounds.
“We’re excited to be home in Kansas City and bring something new,” says Long. “I’ve traveled all over and lived abroad and always envisioned coming back home with something special.”
Photos by Zach Bauman
