Building a pizza empire in Cork... it’s all about the base!

OAK Fire Pizza is a true Cork success story. Established by Andrew Loane in 2015 in Clonakilty, quality ingredients, great flavour, hard work and family are the base his business thrives upon.

In the seven years since Andrew turned his pizza-making hobby into a business, Oak Fire Pizza has grown from a single trailer at a farmers’ markets to six bricks and mortar pizza outlets in Clonakilty, Bandon, three city centre locations, and Douglas.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Andrew, 36, was working as a self-employed electrician in 2008. As the recession bit, work dried up and, to keep himself busy, he turned to his hobby of pizza making while picking up whatever work he could.

There was “no lightbulb moment” for Andrew, his fascination for making pizza was always a lingering thing.

“I loved the simplicity of old cooking styles: grilling, fire, things that go back thousands of years.”

He set up in farmers’ markets, working parties, communions and events around West Cork.

Over two years, he established a swift trade, and it was suggested to him that he open a premises for his fledgling business in Skibbereen in 2010.

“It came out of nowhere; I was only 23 at the time. The idea sounded great, so I took the plunge without even thinking about it. In a way I thought what’s the worst that can happen?” 

The business did well for nearly three years, but the urge to scale up saw a move to a 20-bedroom hotel with bar, restaurant and events.

“It was a mouthful,” Andrew says, understatedly. He stuck with it for three years, but on New Year’s Eve, 2014, walked away.

“It was just too big, too expensive and impossible to make money out of,” he believes. “I went back to the drawing board.”

Dealing with the reality of being back at ground zero again, a conversation with a friend, Tayfur Turkan, was the spark of inspiration needed.

“Tayfur had been working as a bar manager in the Paragon Bar in Skibbereen for 12 years and wanted to do something for himself, to advance himself,” Andrew recalls. Having always had his eye on Clonakilty, he found a premises at 14, Rossa Street.

“Tayfur and I came together, we fitted the place out for €7,000 – pretty much all the money we could scrape together between us at the time. It was tight, shoestring stuff, but we were able to use a lot of the equipment from the previous business.

“It was just us two; I was making pizza and Tayfur served, we tore on like that for as long as we could. The first year was just to build it up and keep the product as best as it could be.”

That commitment to being the best meant developing a pizza dough that’s proved for five days for a light, gut-friendly, moreish almost sourdough-like flavour, and toppings using the best of Cork’s larder of producers: Gubbeen, Clonakilty Blackpudding, Shannonvale Chicken, Ardsallagh Goat’s Cheese, Spice o’Life, Clóna, Macroom Buffalo Mozzarella, Mihu Alternatives to name a few.

“We’ve tried every product out there at this stage and you just can’t beat the local stuff. We’re a little bit spoilt in West Cork, how good the food is here, to buy in frozen from abroad doesn’t make sense. People appreciate that and are a lot more conscious about what they’re eating.”

Pizza has come a long way in a short time from cardboard frozen pizzas to artisan pizza made with slow fermented dough and great local toppings. It’s the ultimate slow-fast-food, cementing its popularity as one of Ireland’s favourite takeaways.

Oak Fire Pizza opened in Clonakilty in 2015, reimagined and reborn from those Skibbereen days, but not without those hard lessons remembered. It was two years before the second location opened in Bandon in October, 2017.

“I was very cautious, Skibbereen was a weight on the shoulders that we got it so wrong. I didn’t want to do that again. We treaded carefully and gave it a good few years before we opened Bandon.

“At that stage we had a few more people working [in Clonakilty], but we didn’t have the money to pay carpenters, electricians and plumbers so I was pretty much building it myself.”

The third location followed in 2018 on Princes Street, and Oak Fire Pizza’s first city centre location.

“Princes Street has turned out to be a super location, but in 2018 it was deserted with Nash19 holding the street. Since then, Burnt, Clancy’s and a few others have opened, so we were lucky to get in because now it’s a great little foodie street.”

With three locations to service, the next stage was building a production unit in Lisavaird, near Clonakilty. From here, pizza dough for all Oak Fire Pizza restaurants is mixed and proved, meats sliced, and toppings prepared.

“A van leaves the production centre seven days a week delivering to each restaurant so everything is fresh as it can be. When we get chicken in from Shannonvale, it’s cooked that day and goes out the next morning and used that day - that’s how tight we keep it, and that’s important to us.”

The stage was set for rapid expansion despite the pandemic. A second city location opened on Gillabbey Street in December, 2020, catering to its large student population, followed by Douglas in July, 2021.

“Douglas was our biggest fit out ever, a full 40-seater restaurant and was literally a bare shell. It was a screaming big build with a screaming big bill to go with it!”

No sooner had Douglas opened, than Andrew was onto the next project, a 40ft container outlet in Marina Market which was ready to go in just three weeks.

“The pizza oven at Marina Market is my original wood-fired oven from Skibbereen, a bit of sentimentality. It was sitting outside our production centre for a few years, so instead of spending €10,000 on a new oven we used this, and it’s working perfectly.

“2021 was non-stop, I was a builder basically last year!” he recalls. Worth it though, as Oak Fire Pizza gained a Cork Business Association award for Cork’s Best Restaurant 2022.

The bigger the Oak Fire Pizza empire expands, the easier it seems to get.

“There’s a formula there now,” Andrew says, “and I’m not tied to a kitchen every day or doing everything else. I’ve a team of people running each department and we’re big enough now that we need that.”

There always seems to be a project on the boil. “I get bored very easily,” says Andrew, “there always needs to be some project in the works.”

Speaking of which, he is coming full circle to those years trading in the farmers’ markets, building a new mobile pizza unit available for events and parties, making it lucky number seven.

“We’ll do a few pop-ups too,” he says, hinting at a possible homecoming back to Skibbereen over the summer. There are also plans to expand outside of Cork.

“We’re always screaming that we’re a Cork company and born in Cork, but we’d really like to be able to offer the same product to other places.”

Killarney was mooted as a possible second location before the Bandon opening, but now?

“You’d never know, it’s a lot more possible now than it was five years ago. It would be a great location to get into; I’d love to do something down there.”

Considering how it all started, does it seem real, looking at all that has been achieved?

“We’re always moving the goal posts, there’s no destination, we’re just always pushing the finish line away from us. But if someone told me seven years ago there’d be six locations, I wouldn’t have believed it.

“When I think back to those days in 2008, pizza kind of saved me. It made me have one more go at this, and it just found its way - roll a stone down the hill, it’ll gain a bit of moss…”

Andrew may be the Managing Director, but, he says, Oak Fire Pizza is a family. From the early days of just him and Tayfur managing every aspect of the business, now he employs 70 people.

“I have a really great team; I consider them friends rather than employees. I work with them; they’ll often see me on my hands and knees under a sink in the kitchen fixing something. I think it’s good that I don’t see myself above them and don’t treat them as below me. We really do work together; they’ll all jump in where they’re needed, nobody says ‘that’s not my job’.”

Among the team are chefs from all over Italy: Rome, Sicily, Naples – all with very strong opinions on what a pizza should look and taste like. Proving that when from Cork there’s always opportunity to be a rebel, Andrew says Oak Fire Pizza is intentionally not trying to be authentically Italian.

“I try to steer away from the Italian style because I feel like we’re limiting ourselves. I’d consider us a mix of Italian in the cooking style and New York with our toppings. Italian style is very minimal and simple, the meats and cheeses are more American – it’s a mix of the two, the best of both worlds!”

Three times a year, the menu changes at Oak Fire Pizza, and there’s a Pizza of the Month, too. It’s a chance to work in new ideas from his travels, or experiment with toppings from new suppliers.

When it comes to pineapple on pizza, Andrew is unequivocal - “I hate it!”, he says; but as for his favourite, simplicity is best. “Gubbeen Chorizo has to be my favourite. When sliced very thinly and it gets a blast of heat from the wood fire, it crisps up and the edges char slightly. So delicious!”

Visit www.oakfirepizza.ie for locations and menus, and www.oakfirepizza.ie/pizzabox for information and bookings on the new mobile pizza trailer.