"Eat pizza, not animals." Petersburg vegan -pizzeria is trying to survive until the summer

Mediazon has been working and developing for more than two years thanks to the support of its readers. Today, the help was needed for small businesses - our heading "Solidarity" is devoted to this. As Vegan Pizza Spot lives in quarantine St. Petersburg, says its founder Daniil Petukhov-a man with a tattoo of cabbage on his stomach.

How to help: order pizza and drinks with delivery or then pick up the order yourself.

I am a convinced vegan: I haven’t eaten meat for ten years, about nine - none of the products of animal origin. I will not go into issues of ethics, ecology and health. I will simply say: when I see an apple, I want to eat it. When I see chicken - I do not want to. And I am pleased that I do not have to kill anyone in order to be full and happy. And I also have the appropriate tattoos - a pig on my chest, in the area of ​​the heart. And head of cabbage on the stomach.

I never sought to earn a lot. I always believed that the main thing is to close the priority needs to have money for food and travel. So in April 2018, when I rented a room on Nevsky, I had to somehow pay for it and eat something. Therefore, I began to cook vegan pizza at home, right in the kitchen. Friends called - I took it out of the entrance to them.

A few months later I moved to the Llamas vegan store, which my friends opened. They divided the rent in half, in the part of the room I equipped the kitchen and prepared pizza and fokachch there for a little less than a year. And then he realized that he would like to open a full-fledged institution and knew exactly what I wanted to cook-a Neapolitan vegan pizza from a wood stove. He launched crowdfunding, took money from a friend, found a room in the “third cluster” on Sovetskaya Street, made repairs there. In December 2019, Daner Pizza Spot opened, we are only four months old.

This is the first Neapolitan vegan pizzeria in Russia. What does it all mean? We make the dough of cold decay from Italian flour of thin grinding, sea salt, water and yeast. In short, this is a thin, but at the same time lush dough, which we bake in a stove on birch wood. In our menu - pizza seven species, lemonade, several varieties of beer and cider. The premises of the entire pizzeria occupies about 100 squares, the hall of them is approximately forty. There are enough places, but now, when the hall is closed, we have a little remade the kitchen so that it would be more convenient to collect orders there. The number of boxes for pizza increased: if 500 had gone a month earlier, now about two thousand.

When universal self -isolation was declared in St. Petersburg, our landlord categorically said that there would be no discounts. Then, nevertheless, he made concessions, making a rental discount of 30 percent, but we had to pay two months in advance. Everything has changed with suppliers too: before we could order products in the morning, and get them in the evening. Now delivery can occupy three days, so it’s easier for me to go to the store myself.

No one had to dismiss anyone: we have nine people in the team plus four couriers. When the bad news sprinkled, I told the guys: “Dude, I don’t want to fire anyone, but you have less work. Therefore, tell me how much I can reduce the salary to you so that there is OK. ” The guys all understand and do not be sad: they listen to music in the kitchen, communicate, hang out.

I am not very strong in mathematics and I do not like to count all kinds of things, but I understand that now is the beginning of something bad, and then it will only be worse. We had a certain minimum that had to be earned a day. So, if in March there were two such bad days, then in April there are already five or six of them. In general, we began to earn 30-40 percent less at least.

I tried to reduce the delivery price, but I quickly realized that there are too distant areas of the city in which it is more expensive to deliver pizza at a discount. There were cases when several orders were made from one district - I united them and made people a discount. Now we have united with the vegan burger Hood Street Food - they are below us with a floor. Their burgers and our pizza can be combined in one order and not overpay.

My most radiant plan is to be able to reach at least until summer. But if the epidemiological situation does not change and people will not be released on the streets, already in July the end of our project may come. At the same time, I still do not plan to close in the heart, because the optimist. Well, debts need to be repaid somehow.

Therefore, I do not sell the pizza certificates yet: we opened on crowdfunding money, including, including a significant amount was collected at the expense of these certificates. Therefore, all four months of work come to us and people go with them. But I still want to start paying a debt to my friend: it is good that he does not rush me and in general, entered the position.

I hope for support from guests and friendly institutions, because all the attempts of the state to improve the fate of small business are futile. Personally, I, like many of my friends, did not touch me at all. Therefore, if you want to see when it all ends (and it ends) - order us delivery, and we will do our best to continue to please you. We will win together! Eat pizza, not animals!