Time to fire up another Food Truck Question and Answer session with Gannon about their wood-fired pizza truck, Saucee Sicilian.
What do you serve at Saucee Sicilian?
Wood-Fired Pizzas, Nonna’s Famous Sauce & Balls and Homemade Pasta During the winter months.
What sets your pizza apart?
Just about everything we do is homemade. Dough, sauce, meatballs, and sausage are made three times a week. My mother, Nonna, hand rolls close to 2000 meatballs a week. Her sauce takes 48 hours to cook. Just like her grandmother use to do it. We use the freshest ingredients, plus we are 1 of 2 wood-fired oven pizzerias in OKC that use 100% wood to cook.
What are your popular options?
Besides our Sauce and Balls, our most popular pizza is the Tusa. It has my mother’s homemade sausage, hot soppressata, hot capicola, and mushrooms. Our sauce is infused with a Thai oil to add some extra heat. Our Palermo Pizza is our second biggest seller. Features my mother’s homemade meatballs, caramelized onions, and her homemade pesto. Between the two of these pizzas, we sell close to 800 of them a week.
What got you started on the food truck for Saucee Sicilian?
I have been working in the medical field for the last 15 years and became sick of working for you the man. My mother and I had a crazy idea to start this since we cook for our family of 20 on a weekly basis. It started off with us thinking we would only sell 20 pizzas a day. And now we’re close to serving 1,500 to 1,700 per week.
Let’s talk about the design of the food truck. What made you go with your truck?
We had to find a food truck that would hold the 3,500-pound oven plus all of our equipment. So that was a challenge within itself. Once we were able to find the truck my father-in-law, who is a home builder, donated his time to build out the truck with one big room. We were all so blessed to have other companies on board that donated their time and material to get this project up and running. Essentially there was minimal cost put into this truck since we had a number of people donating their time and materials. Also, the other manufacturer bread stone ovens swapped out advertising on the truck for the oven. So doing a truck was a win-win situation for everybody. Plus the cost of starting up a new restaurant is so expensive it was easier to go the route of a truck just in case it ended up not working out the way it has.
What can people regularly expect from you?
I feel people can expect on a regular basis to have the freshest and best-tasting pizza they have had in the metro. Our customers can see the quality that we put into our product in the love and passion we have for it daily. We tried to make every customer feel like family, and we are very grateful to have them as a customer.
What’s a typical day like?
Our typical day starts at 7 a.m. We live up towards the Stillwater area, so we have an hour commute every day just to get to our commissary to where our truck is parked. Then we take two hours to prep our food for the lunch and dinner crowd period in between our lunch and dinner. I always take our staff out to eat at different restaurants around the Metro so they can see how other restaurants work and serve their food. I feel that this is essential for our staff, so they know what they need to improve on in a customer based industry. Our lunches usually last from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. then dinner is from 5 to 9 p.m. After that, we go back to our commissary to clean up and head home for the evening. We do that Wednesday through Saturday.
What are some of your usual spots and where can people go to learn more about your truck and where you’ll be located?
During this time of the year, you can find us at Bleu Garten every Wednesday night and either a Friday or Saturday. Plus we’re at The Patriarch in Edmond every Thursday night. The rest of our working days vary between downtown Oklahoma City, numerous corporations, retail businesses, schools, and churches. It is best to follow us on either Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram for our weekly schedule.
What activity do you never procrastinate on when it needs doing?
“We take great pride in customer interaction and never procrastinate I’m getting to know each and every one of them.”Listening to our customers’ needs and feedback on how to become better. Without them, we would not have this success we need and we need to listen to them every chance we get. We take great pride in customer interaction and never procrastinate I’m getting to know each and every one of them.
Anything else you want people to know?
If you haven’t eaten with us please take the time to come by and try one of our many pizzas or my mother’s Famous Sauce and Balls. For people that have never eaten out of it for the truck, we can understand that it gets them out of their comfort zone. But we hope once they try our food they will never worry about eating from a truck again.
