Small Seattle pizza chain delivers pies to Air Force One.
A call from the White House last week sent employees at Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria in Seattle scurrying to make a 40-pizza delivery to a visiting President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One.
Joe Fugere, founder and chief executive of four-unit Tutta Bella, and a small crew of company employees (and also Vice President VPN Americas ndr) Friday manned a borrowed wood-fired pizza oven in the parking lot of Paine Field in Everett, Wash. Air Force One was parked there while the President made nearby appearances.
The decision to make the pizzas at the airport stemmed from Fugere´s concerns that the thin-crust pies would not be optimum for serving after a 30-minute trip by car from the Tutta Bella restaurant closest to the Everett airfield, he said.
Once cooked, the pizzas were loaded into the back of three Mini Cooper automobiles loaned by a local dealer and sent to the President´s flying command center.
"All the components just fell into place," said Fugere, who had only gotten word that the President would be in town and appreciative of a taste of Tutta Bella on Wednesday evening.
Fugere had met with Obama in Seattle in 2009, when the president was seeking input from small business owners about how the government could help "main street" put people to work after Wall Street had nearly melted down and large banks were holding tight to the funding entrepreneurs and smaller firms needed to expand.
Later, Fugere was invited to the White House to watch Obama sign into law the Small Business Jobs Act that, among other things, raised the amount of money startups could seek under federal Small Business Administration loans.
Full Article at: http://nrn.com/article/tutta-bella-pizzeria-makes-special-delivery-president-obama
A call from the White House last week sent employees at Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria in Seattle scurrying to make a 40-pizza delivery to a visiting President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One.
Joe Fugere, founder and chief executive of four-unit Tutta Bella, and a small crew of company employees (and also Vice President VPN Americas ndr) Friday manned a borrowed wood-fired pizza oven in the parking lot of Paine Field in Everett, Wash. Air Force One was parked there while the President made nearby appearances.
The decision to make the pizzas at the airport stemmed from Fugere´s concerns that the thin-crust pies would not be optimum for serving after a 30-minute trip by car from the Tutta Bella restaurant closest to the Everett airfield, he said.
Once cooked, the pizzas were loaded into the back of three Mini Cooper automobiles loaned by a local dealer and sent to the President´s flying command center.
"All the components just fell into place," said Fugere, who had only gotten word that the President would be in town and appreciative of a taste of Tutta Bella on Wednesday evening.
Fugere had met with Obama in Seattle in 2009, when the president was seeking input from small business owners about how the government could help "main street" put people to work after Wall Street had nearly melted down and large banks were holding tight to the funding entrepreneurs and smaller firms needed to expand.
Later, Fugere was invited to the White House to watch Obama sign into law the Small Business Jobs Act that, among other things, raised the amount of money startups could seek under federal Small Business Administration loans.
Full Article at: http://nrn.com/article/tutta-bella-pizzeria-makes-special-delivery-president-obama
Thursday 23 February 2012
