In brighter news: Here's a pizzeria owner who brings pizza to Kharkiv, a city the Russian invaders shell daily. "People just call from abroad and order 20 pizzas for your firefighters. I bring them; they say we didn't order it! Well, it's a surprise!"
English translation from longer footage:
Quote:
Initially, this was conceived not as a business idea, but rather a sign, a symbol that the city is alive, that the city is not broken, to show there is an opportunity to remember old, prewar life, to get a piece of simple, delicious pleasure. Truly, people usually react in such a way: "Pizza? Seriously? During war? Wow, we thought this was a joke!"
Vitaliy, Hello! Good day! We're from Ukraine! We are too!
What emotions can we have? Very positive. It's difficult to describe the whole spectrum. But this pizza will also go to my daughter, so it will be a transit, not just here ... See you later!
We deliver generally to all districts. To be honest, we did not deliver to the most dangerous districts because no one ordered from there. Perhaps, the people in North Sautovka have more important issues than eating pizza. In addition, not many people are left there.
Unfortunately, generally it's not clear which districts of Kharkiv are dangerous since there were cases where the boys were delivering under shelling, one courier even had his car slightly damaged by an explosion. But generally, we are trying to deliver to all districts, especially if security forces are ordering, then we are always trying to deliver.
At the moment, understandably the majority of suppliers are not operating, those who are have a limited range, therefore every day we have to think of something, get all hat the suppliers have, and what they don't have we buy from supermarkets.
On the first day of the work, the ingredients were given to me by friends from Poltava, as it was impossible to buy here all that we needed. We use good, expensive ingredients, so it's difficult to find exactly what's necessary.
The ingredients that are impossible to find anywhere, some "elite" stuff, some sausages, we replace with substitutes so it doesn't affect the taste and people would get what they are used to. A lot of orders go to certain groups, such as Security Forces, National Guard, to Military, Police. People just call, saying "I want to buy 10 pizzas for firefighters, find firefighters who needs this and deliver to them." We make pizza, find them and deliver.
Often, people order as a surprise, and do not warn those who are supposed to receive pizza. Sometimes there are problems with that, as you deliver pizza, they'll say they didn't order, you start figuring out whether they ordered or not, who has paid. This all happens in Kharkiv where something explodes occasionally, sometimes in quite dangerous areas. Things like that happen. We once delivered to a bomb shelter, to metro.
Everyone who receives it, for them it's not so much about pizza, or an opportunity to eat tasty food, but rather about attention being paid to them, that their efforts are appreciated, that people remember them, even those outside of Kharkiv. It's great to have an opportunity to be involved with this.