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The first business venture at the Community centre
It was July 1977 that the young “apprentices” put on their very
first money raising project at there local community centre, it was
advertised as a Tamla Motown night of Entertainment with local star
DJ Roger Black playing popular Motown tunes, it was a moderate
success making £32 profit but is gave the lads a hunger to put more
of these events on.
It's
World Disco Dancing time
The lads continued hiring venues, under the banner of S & M
Entertainments; they booked many famous acts of the day including
Radio 1 djays Steve Wright and Dave Lee Travis and they played hosts
to the Regional finals of the televised World Disco Dancing
Competition.
Kissograms, the first of many firsts
Having captured the local disco market the young
entrepreneurs then set up an Entertainment Agency and they
lay claim to also running the first Kissogram agency in the UK,
partner Tony Scibelli picks up the story...
“One day we had a request for a Kissogram, we had heard of
them in America but they hadn’t made their mark here, that didn’t
deter me I just said no problem and then we had to find a pretty
young lady who didn’t mind wearing next to nothing, it was hard work
but it had to be done.”
Kissograms
were a far cry from pizzas but the young lads found it a real
grounding for what was to come in the promotional fun side of the
business
It’s
Goodbye to the Entertainment
The Entertainment set up ran for several more years before finally
closing when the pizza business took off leaving great memories for
the partners and quite a few married couples who met at their
events.
Moving
in to the Restaurant trade
It was back in 1983 that Sebastian Scibelli was made redundant from
Perkins engines having worked there several years as an engineer, he
had an opportunity to purchase a restaurant that was being run at
the time by his brother in law, who although was Italian he ran the
restaurant as a Greek Restaurant “The Kebab House” (first Kebabs in
the region).
Papa
Luigi Trains the boys
After a few months of trading, Tony and Stef joined
Seb in the restaurant and it was decided
that it would be better to use their own National dishes in the
cuisine and the new restaurant was named
after Luigi Scibelli. He is famous for his
log fired pizzas in the Southern area of Italy with his special
homemade family tomato recipe, he was a living legend at the
Parrocino in Sorrento and that is where the lads went for there
chefs training. This was backed up by Tony and Seb's
mum, Rosa Scibelli who made some of the most delicious pasta in the
Italian community.
Papa
Luigi Restaurant is born
The Papa Luigi Restaurant was opened, log oven was built and the
trade instantly doubled however the young businessmen realised that
the early part of the week was much quieter than the weekend so the
idea of delivering was brought in with the belief that if customers
weren’t coming out earlier part of the week then they would go to
them.
Papa
Luigi Dial a Pizza follows
It was 1984 and Papa Luigi Dial a Pizza was launched, unbeknown to
the businessmen they had created the first pizza delivery service in
the UK.
A small
phone booth was built in the kitchens and the aim was to get the
pizza delivered in 30 minutes. A second- hand mini was purchased as
the delivery vehicle and it was fitted out with a home made heated
oven to ensure the food was still hot on arrival, all was going
great until the day before the first delivery when the new bespoke
delivery vehicle was stolen from outside the restaurant, bearing in
mind this was parked opposite the police station everyone was most
upset.
The
local paper comes to the rescue
Raring to go but with the heated delivery vehicle being stolen the
business was put on temporary hold, the local paper was contacted to
see if they could help and a story was put out asking for members of
the public to look out for the van. That
same day Papa Luigi received a call to say the van had been found,
by an unemployed youngster called Mark Shinn who was offered a job
as delivery driver, Mark was delighted to get a job as a reward, the
paper did a follow up story and this was noticed by the local TV
news channel and they did a five minute feature on the story and
Dial a pizza was back in business.
Viva La
Rock Wow
It was decided that the restaurant could be combined with the pretty
Kissogram girls serving the customers and the Restaurant was changed
to Viva La rock, although it was a great hit with the fellows
unfortunately the females were not quite so keen.
However, the Bar and disco upstairs proved very popular
with the young students and regularly star DJs
like Andy Bellwood would pop in and entertain the crowds.
The
Delivery business then grows
Over the next few years the business grows into a small franchise
with shops in Peterborough, Lincoln, Huntingdon,
Northampton and Milton Keynes, always sticking to the quality
ingredients that Luigi had recommended
Buy one
get one free, another first
Back in the late Eighties there was a housing crash very similar to
the present day credit crunch, it was realised that if the high
quality could be matched with some great offers than the business
would continue to flourish and the customers would be even happier,
financial guru Stef Malajny did some calculations and worked out
that if they gave the additional pizza away they would be busier and
make up for the cost of the extra ingredients.
It was a calculated risk but was put on
trial with the Thomas Cook workforce one evening, with the trade
nearly tripling and the crew blowing fusses it was agreed that this
would be a great promotion. Buy one get One Free has since been
copied by all the Supermarkets, so every time you get a bargain then
we have Stef to thank.
World
Pizza eating Champs
The guys thought what would be a great way to raise money for
charity and have some fun at the same time, the World Pizza Eating
Competitions were born.
World
record holder for the 12” cheese and tomato at the moment is, big
Andy Munden from the Peterborough Scooter Club with a very sharp
time of 3 minutes 42 seconds, Andy then went on to eat 2 more pizzas
in the endurance test, that’s what we call a healthy appetite.
Winning
awards
Papa Luigi have won several awards at The National Pizza and Pasta
award days, Tony Scibelli picked up Pizza Personality of the year
award in 1988. Big Stu Morley is the Worlds highest pizza throwing
Champ, at six foot seven inches tall he did have a slight advantage
over the shorter Italian chefs. Stu was assisted by Franco and Anna
Baylis making the 24inch Award winning Quatro Stagioni, and Stef
Malajny has always carried on the tradition he started of Pizza
Demos for young and old alike, once again recognized by Pizza and
Pasta and not forgetting receptionist Niki Griffiths who won the
Receptionist of the year in the Anglian area, a true award winning
team.
Franco
and Abby
A few of the Papa Luigi crew are celebrating the full 25 years with
Papa Luigi. Franco Baylis who joined as a
young driver and Abby Bahnam who was a
student and part time kitchen assistant are not only still with the
team they have recently joined forces and have franchised the two
Peterborough shops. Franco also married
his sweetheart Anna Cipriano, Tony and Seb's
sister who he met whilst working at the Lincoln road shop.
He said she was always beautiful and with
her Italian cooking she’s irresistible, Anna’s son Pep, who is a
local columnist and all round Man about Town, also helps with the
promotions of Papa Luigi.
Hitting
the headlines
Papa Luigi are regularly in the headlines with there charity fund
raising and fun events and in 2002 there was real controversy when
to Celebrate the Queens Golden Jubilee Stef decided to make a pizza
depicting the queens head. The story was
front page news in the papers and then the TV crews once again
picked up the controversial story. Although Stef being a true
Royalist thought it would be a great idea, apparently some members
of the public thought it was a step too far, in particular an ex
local councilor was most distraught at the sight of the very large
poster with the Queen munching on her pizza and the Corgis looking
for tit bits. Stef commented, “It was all done as a bit of fun
depicting a modern twist to the Royal family and the Liz’s Great Big
Golden pizza has always proved to be very popular.”
Ground
force TV stars fall in love with the
Pizzas
The very popular garden make over show featuring Alan Titmarsh and
the much talked about Charlie Dimmock came to Bretton Peterborough
in 2001 to wave their magic wand over a local hardworking nurse’s
garden. It wasn’t all magic in fact it was a lot of hard graft and
the guys including Tommy Walsh worked up a big appetite, they
fancied pizza and saw and was recommended Papa Luigis.
They enjoyed the pizzas so much they then ordered the pizzas
two more times and invited the press down to photograph them
munching on the pizzas as a thank you gesture, the pizza deliveries
were also featured on TV with Tommy getting stuck into a Papa Luigi
Special.
25
years Flew by thank you
That’s the first 25 years for Papa Luigi, partner Stef Malajny
commented, “Well those years just flew by we hope that 2009 is the
start of our next 25 years and would just
like to say a really big thank you to all our customers for
supporting us and also all the charity events that we put on it is
most appreciated.”
June 2009 -
Peterborough UK Community Website
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