Anniversary under lockdown

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This article was published 13/12/2020 (1752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If Thomas Schneider, co-owner of Tommy’s Pizzeria at 842 Corydon Ave., had his druthers, nobody would be eating his creations in the comfort of their own home.

Don’t take that the wrong way. Schneider, named Canada’s No. 1 pizza chef at an international competition held in Italy in the spring of 2019, can’t say enough good things about how Winnipeggers have supported his and his brother Michael’s 11-month-old business during its inaugural year. It’s just that when Schneider, also a World Pizza Champions team member, opened his namesake resto in January, he envisioned it becoming a meeting place of sorts, the type of Cheers-like haunt one could gather with friends to catch up over a pint and a pie, versus the pickup and delivery operation it has turned into of late in keeping with the province’s COVID-19 code red restrictions.

“Originally, we had no intention of offering delivery at all. The plan was to be strictly dine-in, as we wanted our customers to taste our pizzas hot out of the oven,” says Schneider, 29, seated in their 86-seat locale, currently open Wednesday to Saturday only. “We had Sinatra playing in the background, our team was committed to amazing customer service… we wanted it to be an experience to come to Tommy’s. Unfortunately, everything changed because of COVID so like a lot of others, we’re doing what we have to do in order to survive.”

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Schneider’s business acumen started early. At age 14 he accompanied his divorced father, a former school principal, to Asia where the elder Schneider had accepted a position at an international academy in Hong Kong. By working with dri-FIT fibre blends “before dri-FIT got really big,” he tinkered with his own line of golf apparel, going so far as to travel to mainland China to check out a few factories. The venture never did get off the ground and when he and his dad returned to Winnipeg two years later, he landed a part-time job at Doughboys Pizzeria on Pembina Highway.

His friend’s father was Doughboys’ owner at the time. Everybody in the family worked there, pretty much, and he loved how they all got along so great, even when things got crazy busy. He remembers thinking if he ever secured a place of his own one day, that was the exact type of atmosphere he’d want.

After graduating from Grant Park High School, he enrolled in the University of Winnipeg’s business administration program. One afternoon during his second year of studies his mind began to wander. Referring to himself as a hands-on learner, he says he began wondering what he was even doing there. Heading out into the “real” world to get some honest-to-goodness, practical experience would probably serve him better than memorizing passages from a textbook, he told himself.

A few months before turning 20 he spent three weeks in Kentucky learning the ins and outs of running a Papa John’s pizza franchise. Then, once he secured an E-2 visa, available to non-Americans making a “substantial” investment in the U.S. (in his case, $350,000, a loan from his maternal grandfather), he opened his own Papa John’s, just outside of Fort Worth, Texas.

A second outlet, this one closer to Dallas, followed — by then his father had moved south to give him a hand — but following four and a half years of 100-hour work weeks, he sold both stores and moved back home in 2015. Around that same time, Matthew Tallman, the founder of Trans-Canada Brewing Co. and a buddy of his since Grade 1, was tossing around the idea of establishing a combination brewery/taproom/restaurant in the Lindenwoods area. Tallman asked Schneider if he’d be interested in running the kitchen side-of-things if and when his venture came to be. You betcha, came his reply. But first he had some work to do.

“I told Matt I wasn’t going to do it based solely on what I’d picked up at Papa John’s, using all their recipes,” Schneider says. “I wanted to expand my knowledge and was aware there were a bunch of so-called pizza schools out there. So I did my homework and chose to attend Tony Gemignani’s International School of Pizza in San Francisco.”

During his first trip to California, Schneider, of German descent, spent a week studying Neapolitan and classic-Italian-style pizza. He returned a couple of months later, this time to get certified in American takes such as Detroit, New York and Chicago-style pies. Timmy Tom’s Pizzeria, with Schneider as head chef, opened inside Trans-Canada Brewing Co.’s Kenaston Avenue location in October 2017. When word of his national pizza crown began to spread in May of last year, Winnipeggers showed up there in droves to dive into his award-winning concoction: a honey-infused crust topped with a blend of Bothwell cheeses, Italian prosciutto, arugula, lemon zest and 36-month-old parmesan. Oh, and a splash or three of Trans-Canada suds.

Working alongside his pal at TCB was a blast, he says, but when the opportunity arose in July 2019 to move into a space of his own, a 100-year-old building nestled on the Corydon strip that had most recently housed Aurora Pizzeria & Café, he left with Tallman’s full blessing. He spent from August until December last year renovating the space, only stopping to undergo surgery for a detached retina in the fall, a procedure that forced him to lie facedown on his stomach for a three-week stretch.

Tommy’s Pizzeria welcomed its first customers in mid-January. A hit right out of the gate, by Valentine’s Day there was a two-week wait for a table on Friday and Saturday nights. Schneider admits he wasn’t paying too much attention to the headlines in early March given how busy things were at work, so when news broke that restaurants in the city would soon be prohibited from serving food inside their premises to help stem the spread of COVID-19, it threw him for a bit of a loop.

“We actually closed earlier than most, on March 16 or something. I was living at my mom’s place at the time — I had just bought a house in Charleswood and it was undergoing major renos — and I didn’t want to risk her getting sick through me,” he says, adding they kept the doors to Tommy’s shut completely until May 7, the day he was finally able to move back to his own abode. “The thing is, it’s not like the bills ever stopped coming in. I still had some savings from my Papa John days but because of an accounting error, we weren’t able to qualify for a $100,000 wage subsidy the government was offering. That forced me to take out a second mortgage on my house. No word of a lie, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since March.”

All right, perhaps Schneider isn’t planning to blow out any candles next month to celebrate what’s been a trying first year on the job but it hasn’t all been doom and gloom, he points out. Sales were strong during the summer patio season, particularly August and early September, and even though the restaurant is currently only open four days a week, they handled close to 400 deliveries between Nov. 12 — the day the current lockdown restrictions went into effect — and Nov. 30, a number he calls “amazing.”

“We employ close to 20 people, they count on us to put food on their own table and we haven’t had to lay too many of them off, which was so important to me and my brother; we were so stressed out about that,” he says. “More importantly, nobody’s gotten sick, we have our own little bubble here and everybody’s being super careful, knock on wood.” (He laughs when he taps his fist on an oak table, remarking you can no longer tell it was brand new just 11 months ago, owing to the finish having been removed thanks to the “gallons” of liquid sanitizer that have been applied to it since then.)

Finally, we couldn’t very well let a certified pizzailolo such as Schneider go without asking him where he stands when it comes to the burning question: pineapple on a pizza, yes or no? As for gourmet pizza selections on the menu dubbed Ray Lorne, (that’s chicken-bacon-ranch) Audrey Meyer (truffle mushroom) and Willy Chapman (basil pesto) those are homages to some of his World Pizza Champions teammates, he says.

“People can put whatever they want on a pizza — no word of a lie, I could eat pizza every day of the week because the topping possibilities are endless — but the reason I don’t like pineapple on a pizza is because it’s very wet and the water drips into the dough,” he explains. “For that reason the dough won’t cook properly, that’s scientifically proven, but if you want to throw some on there after the dough is ready, hey, be my guest.”

(Note: in order to give their staff a break over the holidays, Tommy’s Pizzeria will be closed between Christmas and New Year’s.)

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric businesses and restaurants.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca