It was summer 2021 and Travel Counsellor Sara Greene was standing in a flour-covered apron frantically serving up her son’s freshly-cooked dough balls at a charity artisan fayre.
“One of my clients came up to buy some and I said: ‘I can’t believe this time last year I was selling you Dubai and now I’m selling you a box of dough balls’,” Greene remembers.
The Gold Travel Counsellor’s life changed overnight when her business was hit by the effects of the pandemic but while the uncertainty raged on, a window of opportunity opened. Greene’s son Rocco, now 14, began cooking. “He started making our lunches and we realised he was really good,” she enthuses.
One day Rocco turned his hand to dough balls and wanted to deliver them to friends and family locally. They were so popular he decided to start selling them and a side hustle was born.
A slice of the action
The business took on an even bigger lease of life when Greene and her husband bought Rocco a pizza oven in December 2020 and he began cooking Neapolitan pizza for friends and family.
“I’m half Italian and I had no idea how hard it is to make a perfect pizza, “ Greene acknowledges.
Yet Rocco seemed to take it all in his stride. Before he broke up for the summer holidays this year, the ambitious young chef decided he wanted to start selling his pizza.
Greene’s travel business had come back in full force and she was busy with her own bookings but agreed to help him. They procured the necessary paperwork and then the real work began.
Rocco made around £600 selling pizzas over summer and has continued with weekend takeaways. He does all the cooking himself while Greene boxes them up and manages orders for collection.
“We are about to do our third weekend takeaway service,” she adds.
New-found fame
On Instagram Rocco is known as @chefrocco10 and has developed quite a following. So much so that when the family goes on holiday, hotels will invite him to take a look around their kitchens. When they visit Greene’s family in Italy he is welcomed behind the scenes in the local pizzeria.
He has worked with Jamie Oliver, the BBC and, as part of a Blue Peter programme, Rocco was invited to create a tiramisu for the Queen’s Jubilee.
During the pandemic, Rocco ran regular Zoom masterclasses for children and also some online cooking lessons for Travel Counsellors.
Greene’s own travel business has benefited from Rocco’s Instagram fame too. She references one follower in particular that has booked some “lovely holidays”.
Yet she is careful not to encroach on Rocco’s success.
“On Instagram people follow someone for the specific content they produce so I don’t want to talk about my business too much, though pizza and holidays do go well together,” she says.
With such passion for his craft and go-getting nature, the question remaining is whether there is likely to be a restaurant anytime soon?
“I don’t want to push Rocco and he is only 14 but I know he is keen,” Greene asserts. “If it’s not pizza I think he will end up doing something involving food in the long term. He is so happy when he pulls a perfect pizza out of the oven.”
