The pizza makers serving up a slice of Italy to vegans

White Rabbit’s Matteo Ferrari and Nick Croft-Simon on taking gluten-free pizza mainstream, coping under lockdown, and the secret ingredient that makes their dough taste authentic. By Martin Friel

Top that: in just five years the pair have built a multi-million pound business (White Rabbit)

There is an assumption, or perhaps a fear, that small businesses are going to bear the brunt of the lockdown. That’s an understandable assumption to make as they don’t necessarily have the cash reserves and resources to weather a storm of this scale and ferocity. That kind of resilience is usually the preserve of the big boys.

But if the experience of White Rabbit Pizza (purveyors of gluten-free, vegan pizza in a supermarket near you) is anything to go by, it may be that this whole situation will be the making of many a small business. If they can get through the next few months that is…

“We haven’t had any problems so far,” says co-founder Matteo (Teo) Ferrari on their lockdown experience.

“The biggest challenge was sourcing fresh product for some of our pizzas. It has been challenging for restaurants and food service clients, but we found different suppliers, smaller, local ones.”

He says that the big suppliers have suffered much more from the lockdown measures and describes the realisation that they could get the ingredients they wanted from a host of small companies as an important one for White Rabbit.

“We will definitely be using smaller suppliers in the future,” he says.

“It has made me realise how fragile the big companies are at the moment. They are globally linked so they suffer ten times more than the smaller ones who have more stability. A tiny business is more controllable, so you can react more quickly.”

And it wasn’t so long ago that White Rabbit, which was projecting revenues of £3.5m for 2020 before the virus struck, was itself a tiny business. In fact, a mere five years ago, it was just an idea.

It began when Teo and his co-founder, Nick Croft-Simon met while working in an Oxford pub called the White Rabbit – Teo making pizza and Nick working the bar. The pub did a good trade in pizza but was faced with increasing demand for vegan and gluten-free options, a demand to which Teo responded.

Often, in creating a free-from version of a traditional recipe, the focus is on the free-from aspect rather than trying to make it as good, if not better, than the original. But Teo’s priority was to get the taste, the bite and the ingredients to match the traditional pizza he grew up with in Italy. And it seems that, to a degree, he has succeeded in that.

From a few customer requests, a company that puts 15-20,000 pizzas in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Holland & Barrett, Co-op and Booth’s every week, was born.

And that initial determination to blend the traditional recipe with new, free-from ingredients without sacrificing the quality remains a priority.

“We don’t just want to be the best compared to other gluten-free or vegan pizzas. We want to be compared to standard pizzas,” says Nick.

The biggest challenge in lockdown was sourcing fresh product for some of our pizzas – but we found different suppliers: smaller, local ones

To do that, they have had to start with traditional pizza-making equipment but adapt it to work with free-from ingredients. Indeed, they have even gone as far as creating purpose-built machinery to create gluten-free dough which they hope will be indistinguishable from the real the thing.

“With gluten free dough, the biggest challenge is the elasticity that gluten creates, and also being able to raise it and form it as you would with a normal dough. That is always the hardest bit,” explains Teo.

So, to crack that challenge, Teo worked with a supplier in his native Italy to create a bespoke piece of machinery that allows the gluten-free dough to retain the air, which is apparently, crucial to the process.

“No-one has that machine at the moment,” he says. “It’s a secret and has allowed us to hand stretch the dough, to get that raised crust.”

Now this kind of thing may not excite the layman or woman but for Teo, this is as exciting as it gets which is understandable when you consider his background.

He grew up working in his uncle’s pizzeria back in Italy and soaked up the traditions that dictate how this most famous of all Italy’s dishes must be made. And that passion continues today albeit in a more modern form with much of the production process still done by hand. But what would his uncle think of what he is doing to his beloved pizza?

“He wouldn’t be happy,” Teo laughs.

“But it is an industry that has to develop with the times, and I am very happy to be able to contribute and innovate the market we are in.”

Teo is very much in charge of the pizza-making while Nick takes care of the commercial side of the business. And while there has been a bit of a learning curve in dealing with the competing demands of commerce and quality, they say that they rarely ever have an argument, a claim that is supported by the obvious camaraderie between the two.

“A big jump up in volume will see a dip in quality so we have learned to strike that balance and understand that it’s not always great to get more and more revenue in,” says Nick.

But growth is very much on the agenda for these two and, but for the coronavirus, they would now be exporting frozen pizzas beyond these shores.

“The coronavirus has delayed it, but we can pivot and we did get two pallets out to Singapore. Now we have the frozen capacity and we are talking to a lot of direct to consumer brands to get our pizzas in with their delivery boxes. We will find a way to use it,” says Nick.

However, the focus on growth is unlikely to drag them away from their first love – pizza.

“The growth will come from deepening and broadening our distribution as we are still not in that many stores,” he says.

“As much as we love launching new products, the best thing we can do is make the core range is as good as it can be. We don’t have a big marketing budget, so the investment is put into making sure the pizza speaks as well for itself as it possibly can.”

And if they keep focusing on the quality of the pizza above all else, the ire of Teo’s uncle may yet be tempered.