Pizza Today - October 2022 - 12

MIKE'S MONTHLY TIP
MIKE BAUSCH
Staff who had the day off came in to
help. Employees from other stores asked
what they could do rather than waiting
to be told. Former employees, customers
and even former vendors who moved onto
other jobs got in the mix to get us reopen
in hours instead of weeks. Tulsa is not a
small rural town, but you wouldn't know it
on days like this because people came out
of the woodwork to help.
Next was handling the press. When the
average customer hears the word fi re
associated with your business, they'll
assume you're closed forever unless you
get in front of the story. We had to get
to the news immediately to inform them
that a small fi re had occurred, and we
looked to be open by the next day. We
weren't sure we would be open by the next
day, but we had to control the narrative
that we would re-open asap.
Why did the press play ball? Because of
Fire!
Lessons learned from a disaster
S
o, we had a fi re at our main Tulsa
location. Something like that is
scary, and it freaks you out and
makes you wonder how close you came
to losing it all. Of course, we have insurance,
but not the level of insurance where
you can burn down our main store and it
doesn't become a massive fi nancial hit.
Th ere were many lessons to learn from
a less-than-ideal experience like this. Th e
fi rst lesson is good people consistently
pay for themselves in droves. If we didn't
have a rock-solid manager and kitchen
manager on site, being the adults in the
room to have a fi re extinguisher ready
and the wherewithal to use it properly,
the whole place would've burned down.
So, we're very thankful for that.
Th e next lesson is having a fi re extinguisher
in multiple stations on site. No
matter how small of a shop you own, you
should have at least three extinguishers
ready and well maintained by a professional
service.
Th e most important lesson I've learned
from the many perfect storm days I've
had in this business, days where seemingly
everything falls apart simultaneously,
is that no matter how crappy the
hand you get dealt is, all that matters is
how you play it.
We have become very good at
handling perfect storm days. Th is fi re
occurred right before opening on a Saturday,
which meant we weren't open at all
on Saturday ... our most profi table day.
But instead of being closed indefi nitely,
we were open 25 hours later.
Such a quick turnaround occurred by
working through the night to clean, repair,
and install all new HVAC after the fi re
department ripped out most of ours.
MIKE BAUSCH is the owner of Andolini's Pizzeria in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Instagram: @mikeybausch
12 / PIZZATODAY.COM / OCTOBER 2022
a history of bringing them pizzas on election
nights and always a free pizza when
they do a story on site. Relationships
matter, especially in a crisis. If you invest
in others, someone might be around to
help you when the chips are down. Th at's
not why you should invest in others, but it
sure doesn't hurt.
Th e issue of why we had a fi re arose
from an anomaly inside our oven. By
garnering a solid relationship with the
oven company over the years and ensuring
that we have a great partnership, we could
get a new oven fast-tracked to us super
quick. Th at way we could replace the old
one a few weeks later. Th at's another one
of the wins of nurturing those relationships
at Pizza Expo, by the way.
Th e last lesson of any snafu is to use it.
You're damn right that we marketed our
store surviving a fi re and being thankful
to be re-open. Th at story ran at the top of
the hour on the news, got a nice Facebook
push, and had money back in the pockets
of our servers, our bar and all of us back to
making pizza as it should be.

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Pizza Today - October 2022

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