Today we’d like to introduce you to Jamie Kinney.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
Bola Pizza started as a catering company doing private events and working the downtown farmers market in Republic Square Park. One of our faithful farmers market customers had a job change and asked for us to make a frozen pizza. I was intrigued by the idea. I love pizza and frozen was a way to spread that love further. We took one of our farmers market pizzas, froze it, and cooked it again, testing it alongside higher-end pizzas we found at Central Market. After this one test, I was hooked on figuring out how to make our pizza work as a frozen product. We went through a few iterations and found a cook time where the pizza was about 85% done and could be finished at home in your oven. The original Royal Blue on Nueces was our first retail customer. From there, we launched into other Royal Blue locations, Fresh Plus, Thoms Market, Wheatsville Coop, Farmhouse Delivery, and small corner stores in Austin. We were so fortunate to have started our business at that time. It was 2011; the Austin food scene was gaining momentum, and we had customers willing to try a handmade frozen pizza. We gathered customer feedback and continued to work on stretching the dough for a consistent crust, topping quantities, and flavor profiles.
At the end of August 2012, we launched into Central Market, where we built another community of customers willing to try us. We continued to listen to customer feedback to improve our pizzas and kitchen processes. Listening to our customers and building a community is the cornerstone of our business. It’s an ethos we’ve built Bola on. I’m always looking for little improvements, whether increasing the quality of one of our ingredients or finding a kitchen process that saves labor for our team. In February 2015, I met with HEB to discuss our brand and whether we would be a good fit for some of their stores. We started with a test store in San Antonio, did well, and launched into 27 stores via self-distribution. I was in HEB or Central Market every weekend, sampling our pizzas and growing our customer base. We expanded to 54 stores at the beginning of 2016. I ran the kitchen, doing deliveries and sampling pizzas on the weekends. Our launch went so well that HEB wanted to put us in approximately 70 more stores. We were at a crossroads. I would need to increase our wholesale price to cover the cost of building a distribution arm for the business, or we would need to get into the HEB warehouse. My buyer and I discussed the pros and cons at length. I proposed a moderate price reduction to cover some costs to HEB to move us into their warehouse, which was the accepted plan. I then focused on running the kitchen and doing demos every weekend. From there, we continued to expand until recently, when we returned to a self-distribution model for Central Market and our specialty flavors available at nine HEB stores. Currently, we are launching Bolina Pizza, which uses our signature 72-hour fermented dough and natural, whole ingredients for a delicious plant-based pizza. Bolina, just like Bola, will not use any processed ingredients, so you can say goodbye to fake meat and cheese while having a flavorful, satisfying pizza.
It wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There have been so many ups and downs on this journey that it’s hard to single out a few. Bola Pizza was bootstrapped, so watching our bank account go down to zero several times was good practice for future trials. Our first distribution van was a Ford E150. It broke down on I-35 on the way up to Dallas one morning. We needed a substitute vehicle as soon as possible to get the pizzas back on their way. We were lucky and had a rental truck within 20 minutes. We were unlucky because the Ford had thrown a rod through the engine. It was time to decide whether we would splurge on the vehicle we needed, a Mercedes Sprinter. We chose the Sprinter and made the much higher payment work out. Another scenario was switching from one box manufacturer to another that promised better service and pricing. We decided to change the box print while switching manufacturers, and the new supplier sent a file for sign-off to my former partner. The box print was approved, but the print needed to be corrected. When I noticed it on our first delivery, it was too late. The new manufacturer would not give us any credit for the incorrectly printed boxes, and we were stuck making do with 10,000 of them before we could have them corrected. The most difficult challenge was when my partner left the business in 2015. He requested that I could not discuss the business at home, and I could choose to sell Bola, find another partner to run it with, or run it myself. Bola Pizza is my passion and my purpose; of course, I chose to run it myself. When I started the divorce process in April 2019, I had no clue this same person would drag it out for three and half years, trying to take what I had built away from me. It was a very dark time that I am still recovering from.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m the owner and CEO, Chief Everything Officer, at Bola Pizza. I now have a team of 15 in the kitchen, so I only work on the line a little if I’m training a new hire. In addition to higher level decision making, financial forecasting, controlling cash flow, reviewing accounting, and all the various admin stuff, I am the main person to troubleshoot and fix equipment, delivery driver, customer service rep, social media contact, and probably five other things I’m forgetting right now.
I have a diverse background. In high school, I was positive I would go into fine arts or fashion in some form. I love color and design aesthetics. I had also failed algebra four times, so when I wanted to get into UT, I had to start in remedial algebra at ACC. My semester went well enough; my second semester changed my life. I had a professor named Nancy Miller who taught a fast-track algebra class covering two or three algebra semesters in one. I originally signed up for the class to get through algebra as fast as possible. I had no idea Nancy Miller would change my life. For the first time, I understood what I was being taught and fell in love with algebra. I know it’s super geeky, but it’s true. After her class, I couldn’t wait to take trigonometry. Luckily, I qualified for UT after a couple of years at ACC, and I started in the math department to get my BS with a concentration in theoretical math. While at UT, I also fell for classics and ancient Greek.
Later on, through an internship program, I worked at the Texas Department of Insurance, which led to a position in Property & Casualty on the loss reserving side. At TDI, I learned how to use mathematical modeling software to predict losses and look for patterns for claims. TDI performs audits of insurance companies to ensure they have enough funds to cover the number of claims that could be filed. During audits, we would meet with higher-level executives to learn about their processes and how the company mitigated risks. This experience interviewing CEOs and actuaries was invaluable. I learned so much. I left TDI in June 2012 to pursue Bola Pizza full-time. My background in art, theoretical math, applied math, and learning how to interact with high-level thinkers led to a well-rounded education that greatly benefitted me in business.
We’d love to hear about what you think about risk-taking.
Risk is simply part of life. There are times I feel like it’s glamorized. As animals, we are programmed to assess the risk around us daily. In business practice, it’s much the same. Having a higher tolerance for risk or being willing to take greater risks is simply about knowing what you are willing to tolerate.
I have a high-risk tolerance. When I left TDI, Bola was not wholly a full-time job, and it certainly needed to pay me a salary. I emptied my 401K and put it into Bola. However, I did have two other businesses I was running at the time to help offset my lost salary. I owned and ran Executive Plant Leasing, an interior plant care and rental company that kept me busy on Wednesdays. I also designed, made, and sold jewelry online, at shows, and a gallery in Austin. These two brought in a modest income of $1400/month, but catering and sales at Bola would have to make up the rest. For the first two to three years, our bank account went down to $0 at least once a month. But, I knew what I wanted and remained focused on growing Bola.
Sometimes, a risk is as simple as purchasing a backup piece of equipment that you may not necessarily need but would be good. You must weigh the cost of lost production if you need a backup with the capital expenditure you’ll need. We used Itaforni conveyor ovens for several years. Our first oven needed a complete teardown and rebuild. This is common with belt-driven ovens; the bearings need to be replaced, and when you have an oven that runs at such high temperatures, you tend to lose electrical components to heat. It hurt spending the $25K on the second oven so we could rebuild the original oven. It was worth it. Before the second oven was purchased and installed, the original oven lost about $8K in labor and lost ingredients. I will continue to keep a backup oven for this reason. If you have a big PO to fill and must make 1300 pizzas daily, you can only afford to be up. That’s about $6500 in ingredients alone for the day.
I am actively taking on the risk of launching a new pizza line. Bolina Pizza is not guaranteed to take off, but I have already had to invest in recipe development and testing, packaging, barcodes, labels, and training. It’s especially risky because I’m not following the traditional plant-based food business of simply recreating “normal” pizzas into vegan pizzas. Bolina Pizza has unique flavors and no fake meat or cheese. I’m taking a risk that the plant-based market is ready for original flavors and ready to explore a pizza that doesn’t tread a traditional path.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bolapizza.com
- Instagram: BolaPizza
- Facebook: Bola Pizza
- Linkedin: Jamie Lee Kinney
