Speaker 1: It's a beautiful day here in Lano, Texas. The birdies
Speaker 1: are chirping, the wildflowers are in bloom, and it's day
Speaker 1: three of the Lano Earth Art Festival. But I'm not
Speaker 1: here for the music or the World Championship Rock Stack
Speaker 1: in competition, although I will definitely be checking.
Speaker 2: That out look at that pie.
Speaker 1: I'm here to get some pizza, all right, man. But
Speaker 1: as you're about to hear, this isn't your run of
Speaker 1: the mill pizza.
Speaker 3: My name is Jake Wright.
Speaker 4: I am the owner of Oh My Pizza Pie, a mobile,
Speaker 4: wood fired pizza business. I'm based in San Marcos, Texas,
Speaker 4: but we sling pizzas all across Texas, all right.
Speaker 1: Jake Wright never planned to be a pizza man, but
Speaker 1: as you're about to hear, life had other designs. To
Speaker 1: understand that, though, we need to take a look back
Speaker 1: way back. Jake's childhood was one filled with music. His
Speaker 1: mom was a music teacher, and he and his siblings
Speaker 1: played instruments. His was the type of family that had
Speaker 1: lugged their guitarist to church on Sunday, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: uncommon to have a family sing along in the evenings.
Speaker 1: So when it came that time at the end of
Speaker 1: high school to start making a plan for his future.
Speaker 1: Jake did what many of us do. He tried to
Speaker 1: turn his passion into a career. For Jake, this meant
Speaker 1: enrolling at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, a highly regarded
Speaker 1: school in the music industry, with the hopes of one
Speaker 1: day becoming a producer. Only when Jake got there, he
Speaker 1: found that the music industry wasn't all kumbayas around the fire.
Speaker 3: What about school? Didn't you like most of it? Oh?
Speaker 4: I didn't realize how competitive it is, and I learned
Speaker 4: that I crumble under competition. So it's a very competitive industry,
Speaker 4: the studio work for music.
Speaker 1: Jake then did another thing that many of us do
Speaker 1: when we're not entirely sure if we're on the right path.
Speaker 1: He went abroad, took some time away to learn a
Speaker 1: new language, experience another culture, and maybe find some inspiration,
Speaker 1: which is how Jake wound up on farms in Germany
Speaker 1: doing things he'd never expected to do.
Speaker 2: What were you.
Speaker 3: Doing on these farms cutting grass with a scythe where.
Speaker 4: It was Yeah, cutting grass with a scythe shearing sheep,
Speaker 4: picking apples, harvesting cherries.
Speaker 3: And in Bavaria, I slaughtered a chicken.
Speaker 4: Well I didn't slaughter, I held the chicken while he
Speaker 4: got clubbed over the head and then had his throat slit.
Speaker 4: For a vegetarian, that was an eye opening thing, the.
Speaker 1: Murdering of chickens. Aside, Jake enjoyed his time working on
Speaker 1: these farms, but there was one task that he loved
Speaker 1: more than all others.
Speaker 3: Baking bread in the farm's bayhouse.
Speaker 4: So the setting of the farm, this magical place in
Speaker 4: northern Germany, and it's an old house hundreds of years old,
Speaker 4: amazing flower garden, sheep and kind of right in the middle,
Speaker 4: and the central location is this old bake house from
Speaker 4: I think it dates before eighteen hundred. And you walk
Speaker 4: in and it smells like fire in there, and there's
Speaker 4: this old mill. We milled our own grains and it
Speaker 4: was a special meal made out of a certain type
Speaker 4: of wood so that moths wouldn't get the grain, And
Speaker 4: just an amazing setting. And then the oven's probably six
Speaker 4: feet deep and four feet wide, just just gigantic. And
Speaker 4: the way you heat it is you just basically blaze it.
Speaker 4: You have to get it so hot that the bricks
Speaker 4: soak up all of the heat, so when you're ready
Speaker 4: to bake bread, when the fire is finished, it's way
Speaker 4: too hot to bake bread. And then it cools down
Speaker 4: and then you can bake bread and you can use
Speaker 4: that residual heat for a few days, and most ovens
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 1: If this were a profile of nearly anyone else, this
Speaker 1: would be the point where that person stops everything and
Speaker 1: becomes a professional baker. But that's not exactly how it
Speaker 1: played out, because when Jake saw that oven, he didn't
Speaker 1: say I'm going to be a baker. He saw that
Speaker 1: oven and he thought, I'm gonna build an oven of
Speaker 1: my own. So you're in Germany, you see this oven,
Speaker 1: and you get inspired, and you think, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: back to Texas and I'm gonna make an oven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, after I learned to bake in that oven, I
Speaker 4: decided to build one.
Speaker 3: What made you think you could make an oven? I
Speaker 3: don't know. I'm pretty handy.
Speaker 4: I'd built things before, and I typically like, don't question,
Speaker 4: like someone else can do it when I can't. Die,
Speaker 4: So I just, you know, I just thought I could
Speaker 4: do it when I've had.
Speaker 1: The benefit of knowing Jake for a number of years now,
Speaker 1: and I can say that this is perhaps his most
Speaker 1: admirable quality. Call it an innate confidence, or an obstinate tenacity,
Speaker 1: or just some good old boy grip, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it. Jake's the kind of guy that just
Speaker 1: gets stuff done. He's not going to wade around to
Speaker 1: the stars aligned to get a plan into place. He's
Speaker 1: just going to roll up his sleeves if he's wearing any,
Speaker 1: and figure it out on the fly. But remember, at
Speaker 1: this point in our timeline, jake'sa financially strapped college kid
Speaker 1: scraping by working on farms. He doesn't have the money
Speaker 1: to just build a personal oven for his own backyard.
Speaker 1: In fact, he didn't even have his own backyard. So
Speaker 1: if he's going to build an oven, he needs to
Speaker 1: make his money back on the investment. As Jake saw it,
Speaker 1: he wasn't just building an oven. He was building himself
Speaker 1: a job. Job he came up with was to make pizzas.
Speaker 1: Would find pizzas.
Speaker 2: What are you doing brushing the fireback? Yeah, and brushing
Speaker 2: the ashes.
Speaker 4: Out of the way so we don't get ashy pizzas.
Speaker 2: And then I need to add a log because it's
Speaker 2: looking a little low. I gotta keep it blazing.
Speaker 1: And with his background in music, Jake got the clever
Speaker 1: idea to put his pizza oven on wheels and then
Speaker 1: drive it around to music festivals and other live events
Speaker 1: all over his home state of Texas. So you came
Speaker 1: home from Germany and you told your parents, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: build a pizza oven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, outside your house.
Speaker 4: They're very supportive, but I think they're probably a little
Speaker 4: bit skeptical.
Speaker 3: You know, I had no money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my dad helped me some and probably three or
Speaker 4: four months later, ready for the first festival.
Speaker 1: And after his dad had to put his own sweat
Speaker 1: into the building of the oven, he wanted to see
Speaker 1: the thing in action, so he offered to be Jake's
Speaker 1: first employee, at least for that initial weekend. So you
Speaker 1: and your dead drive your homemade pizza oven out to Alpine,
Speaker 1: Texas for day one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we pack up.
Speaker 4: You know there's it's before like the final version of
Speaker 4: the trailer. So you know, there's trash cans hanging off
Speaker 4: the side, tints hanging off, wood packed as high as
Speaker 4: it can go in the truck, this big metal cylinder
Speaker 4: on a trailer. We kind of looked like the medicine
Speaker 4: man fling into town. But we made it there. All
Speaker 4: the wheels stayed on and we sold a lot of pizza.
Speaker 1: How many pizzas do you think you made that day?
Speaker 1: I still remember one hundred and forty. When we come
Speaker 1: back from the break, Jake becomes a man of the road.
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Speaker 1: We're back speaking with Jake Wright, who, since that first
Speaker 1: weekend of selling pizzas with his dad in West Texas,
Speaker 1: has spent the last twelve years rambling all over the
Speaker 1: lone Star state with his wood fired pizza oven in
Speaker 1: tow Tell me some of the places you've made pizzas before? Uh, everywhere.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of Texas. Oh hang on, let
Speaker 1: me cue Johnny Cash's song I've been everywhere. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: we don't have the rights, all right, this free song
Speaker 1: I'll have to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we go all over Texas. We're in the middle
Speaker 4: of Texas and we'll go five or six hours in
Speaker 4: any direction. Basically, I there's a good festival, we'll go.
Speaker 4: So we might be one weekend and right in the
Speaker 4: middle of Houston doing the Houston Beer Fest. And the
Speaker 4: next weekend we can be in a town where Wuero
Speaker 4: there is no pizza. Atlantos gas station pizza but nothing else.
Speaker 4: Dallas tumbleweed town, a tumbleweed town, yeah exactly, Marfa, Fort Stockton,
Speaker 4: I Alpine Pecos and Burnett and Bluebonnet Festival.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sometimes going to a festival, you never know where you're
Speaker 4: gonna end up, especially if it's the first time and
Speaker 4: no two are really alike. So one festival we can
Speaker 4: be selling pizzas to people dressed up as wizards and
Speaker 4: fairies walking. By the next week we're in some small
Speaker 4: town and it's cowboys with cowboy hats, jeans tucked into
Speaker 4: their boots, literally wearing spurs like they just got off
Speaker 4: their horse.
Speaker 1: But no matter how different they all are, they all
Speaker 1: love pizza exactly.
Speaker 3: They all love pizza. It's a great business to be it.
Speaker 1: So if the oven's running at nine hundred So how
Speaker 1: long does it take to cook a pizza at nine
Speaker 1: hundred degrees?
Speaker 4: About ninety seconds to two minutes if we're ranging from
Speaker 4: eight to nine hundred degrees, So.
Speaker 1: You got to really be paying attention. You can't be
Speaker 1: slacking on the job.
Speaker 4: No, we typically have one guy that's just the oven guy,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of my favorite job because you just
Speaker 4: kind of get lost in the fire.
Speaker 1: And how many pizzas can you fit in that oven
Speaker 1: at the same time?
Speaker 4: Ah, we typically have four, but you could fit five
Speaker 4: or six.
Speaker 3: But we typically were going so fast at four at
Speaker 3: a time.
Speaker 1: What's the record pizzas in a day?
Speaker 3: Forty damn? Yeah that was that was a busy day.
Speaker 1: But before you head out to your backyard to build
Speaker 1: your own pizza trailer, Jake would like you to know
Speaker 1: that it isn't all peace, love and profit out there.
Speaker 1: So you're not making pizza in a nice, climate controlled space.
Speaker 1: You're out there dealing with the elements. Yeah, yeah, completely.
Speaker 4: You know homemade trailer with old corrugated tin on the
Speaker 4: side that you know, if it pours it can leak
Speaker 4: a little bit. Yeah, we're definitely out in the elements.
Speaker 4: We've made pizza in rain storms, ice storms, We've gotten
Speaker 4: stuck because the car couldn't pull out of an icy
Speaker 4: parking lot. So we're we're definitely in the elements rain
Speaker 4: or shine.
Speaker 1: And let's remember they're in Texas, which if you've spent
Speaker 1: any time there, you know just how freaking hot it
Speaker 1: can get. What's the hottest temperature you think you ever
Speaker 1: made pizza in?
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure the Georgetown Rodeo maybe nine years ago
Speaker 4: was one hundred and seven.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, that was no fun. Every part
Speaker 1: of that festival was no fun. Did a lot of
Speaker 1: people get pizzas that day?
Speaker 3: No, it's too hot. They got snow cones.
Speaker 1: And then there are the porta pottis.
Speaker 4: So you know, just imagine these hot festivals where it's
Speaker 4: one hundred outside and you go to porter potty. It's
Speaker 4: essentially a greenhouse in there, so it's one hundred and
Speaker 4: ten in there. And then after a full day of that,
Speaker 4: wondering where you're going to shower, So you're really roughing
Speaker 4: it out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we're roughing it. You know.
Speaker 4: We end at midnight sometimes and then we'll go to
Speaker 4: the campor four of us sleeping in the camper.
Speaker 1: In spite of the heat and the bad weather and
Speaker 1: the occasional vehicle breakdowns and a whole big chunk of
Speaker 1: downtime when all live events were canceled due to the pandemic,
Speaker 1: Jake Wright has managed to persist through the hardships. He's
Speaker 1: even expanded his operation with another oven and a whole
Speaker 1: other team of employees to run it so he can
Speaker 1: hit two festivals in a weekend. All right, so we
Speaker 1: got dough balls here. You're making these on site, making
Speaker 1: these on site, made the dough this morning, got the
Speaker 1: cheese on, not too much, A little bit of this,
Speaker 1: a little bit of that. Do you like living this
Speaker 1: in your eccentric mobile festival life?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I do like it definitely, times where I where
Speaker 4: something steadier sounds nice, or like a paycheck does sound.
Speaker 2: Nice, looking good, that looks great.
Speaker 4: But overall, one hundred percent, I like the freedom of it,
Speaker 4: being able to move about how I want, and I
Speaker 4: could shut down shop and no one misses me as
Speaker 4: long as I show up to the festival the next year.
Speaker 2: One of the prettier ones of the day for you.
Speaker 2: So you made four hundred of these yesterday.
Speaker 6: Yeah, four hundred and change, crazy and we got a
Speaker 6: crew in Tomball, Texas at a German festival.
Speaker 2: You're doubled up this week, doubled up and they beat
Speaker 2: us by a little bit.
Speaker 4: But but we're at a cooler festival, so sorry, Tumble. Generally,
Speaker 4: the people are all happy to be removed from you know,
Speaker 4: work or stress for a few days, to be out
Speaker 4: with friends, partying, having a good time eating pizza.
Speaker 3: And I get to give pizza to these people.
Speaker 1: Doesn't seem like a bad life. No, it's really not.
Speaker 1: It's a good line. I know Jake didn't live out
Speaker 1: his childhood fantasy of getting into the music industry. One
Speaker 1: of the plus sides of being a mobile pizza slinger
Speaker 1: is he gets to listen to live music almost every night.
Speaker 2: What time does the band come on tonight? The band
Speaker 2: comes on at eight tonight. You're looking forward to it? Yes,
Speaker 2: I think you'll be able to step away and go
Speaker 2: check them out for.
Speaker 7: A minute for a few songs. And there's also Friday
Speaker 7: and Saturday night. There's right over there in the alley.
Speaker 7: A few years ago they started Shakedown Street and it's
Speaker 7: sort of Grateful Dead themed and there's got a great
Speaker 7: band that plays in there. It's really small, it's like
Speaker 7: thirty fee thirty feet.
Speaker 1: It's very cool for on the job. I'm Arey Thompson.
Speaker 6: Tracy. Okay, so my voice is cracking. I'm older than fifteen.
Speaker 6: I've just been talking over music all day