We (that is, my wife, Tracy and I) came to South Africa in 2003 for a holiday, and fell in love with the country, its people, and the landscape. Before that, we spent seven years living in the French countryside running a ‘gite’ (a type of B&B or ‘agriturismo’).  We did the cleaning, gardening, ironing, pool cleaning, etc ourselves, as well as offering French, Italian, or Far Eastern dining on request for up to 26 people.  We installed a pizza oven and then expanded our offering to pizza. Everybody loved our lighter, thinner style of pizza, so it was a natural progression to bring that idea to Cape Town.

“Massimo’s Pizza Club” began here in 2009 with us and 4 staff, preparing all the ingredients in our kitchen at home and bringing them here at 4pm, as we shared the premises! We are now open 7 days a week and have roughly 20 staff.

In January 2013 Massimo was diagnosed with Leukaemia and given only a few months unless he had a bone marrow transplant. I may 2013 we left for Italy for 10 months (see here the video of the final night before we left https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqZ3SJfvO-Q    ) , In Italy Massimo received the bone marrow from his sister Loretta. We returned to our loved South Africa and reopened the restaurant in February 2014, my health is now restored (I even run four half marathons and participated to the SA Transplant Games!). Since reopening we have started seeing the business in a different light, it is not only about return, but also about giving as much as we can, so we started supporting several Charities and promoted our #payitforward scheme.