Here they cook 1,000 pizzas on New Year’s Day: “Suicide attempt”

At the Piccolo Angelo pizzeria in Stockholm, it’s packed, and the crowding is reminiscent of being on a bus in rush hour traffic.

Outside, yesterday’s New Year’s celebrants are standing in winter jackets waiting for their order.

But the atmosphere inside is warm.

– Now it’s just a warm-up. In a few hours it will be almost too much, then I wouldn’t have had time to talk to you, says owner Tomas Duru.

– Then it will be the third world war, Jack Kounstin chimes in.

Jack is one of the eight bakers lined up in the kitchen – ready for the pizza orders. For almost 15 years, he has worked with his colleagues. And it shows. Everyone has their stations and as the first one, Jack is in charge of baking the pizza dough.

– Tonight I will have pain in my shoulders and back, he says and at the same time rolls out four doughs in one sweep, stacked on top of each other.

300 kilos of cheese

At the same time, some pizzerias in the country are closed – because the pressure is too high. But not at Piccolo Angelo. Instead, they shut down on New Year’s Eve, in order to have time to ferment a thousand doughs, grate 300 kilos of cheese and chop lots of onions for the first day of the year.

– The staff is the most important thing. This could never have been done on my own, says Tomas Duru.

At the pizzeria, it is not “fifteen minutes, a quarter” that applies. Lina Zachrisson Hedén has eaten at the pizzeria all her life, almost 19 years, and for her today it took five minutes before her gyros in bread was served on the big white plate.

– When I got here, they were folding pizza boxes. It’s nice to have fresh air and you need a little excursion today, she says.

“The pure suicide attempt”

In the pink food app Foodora, eight pizzas are ordered per second. But at the pizzeria in Stockholm, the phone still runs hot.

During the short twelve hours they are open on New Year’s Day, over a thousand pizzerias are sold – that’s almost two a minute.

Johan Korkis is at the till. Since eleven o’clock in the morning, he has been charging for several hundred pizzas – with the gyros being the customers’ favorite. They communicate with each other in seven different languages.

– Communication is essential, otherwise we are gone completely, he says.

What advice would you give to someone thinking of starting a pizzeria on New Year’s Day?

– Don’t do it, it’s pure suicide attempt.