Great British Entrepreneur Awards & Community’s Post

Thom Elliot is one of the founders of Pizza Pilgrims, a chain pizzerias across the United Kingdom and I'm excited that their latest restaurant is opening just a short stroll from our offices in Cardiff. I first 'met' Thom through the Great British Entrepreneur Awards & Community in 2020. I put met in quotation marks because we only actually met face to face this week although have been in touch for a while. Thom and his brother and co-founder James won an award with us in 2020, the year where we ran the awards ceremony virtually because of Covid 🦠 Like many of us, Thom & James had to pivot quickly when the impacts of COVID-19 closed their restaurants’ doors. They found success with mailable pizza kits out of necessity, Thom said that the team “went from a record sales week to zero in about 10 days”. In a survival effort, the pair produced 50 units and marketed them on Instagram. The first batch of Pizzas in the Post sold out in 20 seconds, at which point they realised they might be on to something. “By the second and third lockdown we were regularly doing over 10,000 kits a week,” says Thom. “It literally got us through the pandemic. We were profitable in February, March and April 2021, despite all our restaurants being closed for eat-in.” It's an incredible story of resilience and although they had to find out they were winners of our "Pivot Entrepreneur of the Year" category via a live stream and not at a glitzy event, we tried to make it as special as we could for them. We even enlisted local artist Nathan Wyburn Art to create their faces on Pizza for the grand reveal of their win, and sent them a lego trophy that they had to build at home themselves the next day 🤣 Thom got back in touch about a year ago expressing a desire to get more involved in our community and support early stage founders. It's the thing I love most about getting to know successful entrepreneurs, so many of them are keen to give back and support and Thom is no exception. We stayed in touch via WhatsApp almost meeting at several Bruce Springsteen gigs around the UK but not quite, so it was a real honour to pop down to the Cardiff restaurant ahead of opening and have a catch up (over a slice of pizza 🍕, naturally). I love what we do, but not for the glamorous events (they're not all that glamorous when you're organising them!) but for the incredible humans I get to meet. I look forward to collaborating with Thom and Pizza Pilgrims in the future and am delighted to see this incredible Great British Brand go from strength to strength!

Want to win an epic haul of products created by Great British Entrepreneurs and laugh at me looking like I am hosting a shopping channel? Loving our Great British Entrepreneur Awards & Community & Basket® collaboration! Details to enter in the comments 👇