Pizza Van Hire in Perth and Kinross

The Pizza Box serves wood-fired Pizza cooked in a converted Vintage Horsebox using homegrown and foraged produce in Perthshire and caters for all types of events. Read on for their interesting background and also an unusual pizza topping! Plus some advice for hiring your supplier.

What do you need to know from an organiser in order to provide a comprehensive quote?

If you are organizing an event it is vital that you let us know the estimated number of guests/attendees, where the event is being held and the date. Please also let us know if the venue is happy for a vintage horsebox to be parked up outside and if there is enough space to get parked/turned etc. Timings of the event would also be useful.

What advice would you give to a customer looking to hire a provider in your area of work?

By all means, make an enquiry through the Add to Event site and communicate through the message service. This is a great way to find out information and make initial contact. Once contact has been made, pick up the phone and speak to the provider personally. This way you will be able to gauge their passion and knowledge for what they do at the same time as asking all those little questions that pop into your head as your talking. As a supplier, I much prefer to speak to customers directly than through a messaging service. If you do make a general enquiry and a supplier sends you a message back with what they are able to provide - even if it is not what you are looking for or out with your budget - a message back saying "Thank you but no" is better than no reply at all.

Please tell us a little bit about how and why you started the business.

The Pizza Box was born on the back of a Pizza business I have been running on my smallholding for the last couple of years. I always wanted to have a wood-fired oven - must be that bloke thing - so I built one myself using materials I had lying around the farm - old fire bricks etc. I had friends over one evening for Pizza and they loved them and suggested I started to sell them. With a catering / private chef background and growing / foraging all the products I used in my catering - it didn't take much to convince me.

Initially, I offered a pick-up service where people could put an order in the day before (so as I knew how much dough to make / topping to prep etc. and then collect from the farm. This went well but then people wanted to start having the pizzas looking over the fields and veg growing areas. This lead to me putting up a pop-up marquee that seated 8-10 people. In the first year, it was full every night over the summer - right through to people sitting in woolly hats by candlelight in November.

In the second year, I decided to expand things a little bit - I have a friend who makes Yurts locally and we did a deal. He hired me a beautiful Yurt called Flora that we positioned in the middle of the vegetable patch for people to sit in and have Pizzas and Salads. All the toppings and salads were being grown 1-10 meters away from where people were sitting. The Yurt could seat 22 and was incredibly popular - it got to a point where you had to book 6 weeks ahead to get a table.

We were all set getting ready to go into our 3rd season when the Estate we live on turned round to us and for various reasons said that they didn't want the Yurt on the Farm or the public coming to it. Obviously we had to have a major rethink at the same time as staying true to what we started - i.e. using homegrown and foraged produce in the production of amazing Pizzas that people were willing to book 6 weeks in advance and travel 60-70 miles for. The veg is all grown using the manure from our horses so we decided to convert an old Rice Horsebox into a catering trailer - and well - that's where we are now!

Please tell us about a booking you've had through Add to Event, how did it go? Would you recommend us to others?

One of the most memorable bookings through Add to Event was for a 30th Birthday Party on a farm outside Arbroath. There were 100 hungry farmer guests who just loved the Pizzas and the slightly whacky toppings - The Spicy Stalker - spiced ground venison with redcurrant and chilli jelly was particularly popular! We set up outside the barn which had been beautifully decorated and just kept the Pizzas coming using old cable drums as a buffet bar. Lovely people, stunning venue, great music - great party!