I wanted to be the biggest in Preston! Family pizzeria selling 20” pizzas too big to be delivered by JustEat

After starting his own pizzeria, Nonna Lucia’s, in lockdown, Preston chef Tom La Valle has wowed pizza fans across the city ever since, serving up everything from Chicago-style deep-dish pies to gargantuan 20” pizzas so big he had to source special pizza boxes for them.

“I lost my grandma just before Covid - her name was Lucia and ‘nonna’ is Italian for grandma - and throughout lockdown I worked as a support worker,” says Tom. “On my days off, I didn’t know what to do with myself, so we just started making pizzas at home - me, the little’un, and the missus.

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“They went well, so I opened up at the back of the house doing deliveries from an extension,” he adds. “When lockdown lifted, we were quite busy, so I asked on Facebook about somewhere I could rent a kitchen and Ships & Giggles got in touch. We’ve been there for just over three years now.”

The man behind Nonna Lucia’s, which has been serving up some of the best pizzas in Preston ever since, Tom wanted to bring something a bit different to the city’s already pretty impressive pizza scene. When asked about Nonna Lucia’s USP, he points to his homemade dough and carefully-picked ingredients as the key.

“I could just go straight to bookers and get everything from there but I go to Manchester wholesalers for certain pepperoni and salamis, to Blackburn for 20” boxes, to Blackpool and other stuff,” says Tom. “I hunt around, trying to find the best quality for the best price.

“Then we also do deep-dish, which I initially put on as a special because I didn’t know anywhere else that did them, but they took off and everyone was messaging me, so I changed the menu and added them on.”

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Another USP at Nonna Lucia’s is their frankly jaw-busting 20” pizzas, which is bigger than most car tyres. In fact, the pizzas are so massive that Tom has had to stop selling them on the well-known food ordering site JustEat because their bicycle couriers were physically incapable of transporting something so large.

“The idea behind the 20” pizza was basically I wanted to make a massive pizza!” says Tom. “I noticed the biggest one you could get in Preston at the time was 16”, so I thought I may as well go bigger! Everyone enjoyed them, but we had a few issues - obviously JustEat couldn’t fit them on the bikes and in the bags that they’ve got, so I ended up having to stop service, run out, and deliver the food.

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“They said they could send drivers, but it got to the point where just bikes were turning up even though every order was a 20” pizza, which had become the biggest seller,” Tom adds. “I was constantly having to stop service to phone, stay on hold, be told it would definitely be a driver, and then remake the order because the first one had gone cold, only for another bike to turn up.

“The worst we had was seven bikes turned up in a row and I’d remade the order four times. I don’t want it to ruin the Nonna Lucia’s name and I don’t want customers to receive cold or late food, so I’ve just gone down to the 12” pizzas on there. Since I took the 20” off there, my profits are a lot less, but I just don’t want the reputation damage.#

“But I’ve got a driver now so he can come with a card machine or I can send a payment link via Facebook Messenger.”

Looking ahead to the future, Tom says that his plans are to branch out and start doing more kinds of pizza for people to try. 

“The bigger plan is to branch off and start to do all different styles of pizzas - Napoli style, Detroit style, Rome style - so people can come down and try all different kinds in one venue,” he explains. “They’re so different - Detroit style dough is an inch thick but still soft with a crispy cheese base, while Neopolitan is a classic tomato sauce with buffalo mozzarella cooked for 90 seconds.”

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He also wants to go bigger than 20”, too.

“I’m currently trying to find 27” boxes to go even bigger, but that’s as big as my pizza oven will go! So then you’re small will be 12”, your medium will be 20”, and your large will be 27”.