When the owners of Tievoli Pizza Bar in Palatine planned to build a new vehicle to take their pizzas on the road, they had a very specific aesthetic in mind.
“We wanted a sexy food truck,” Adrianna Labbate said.
If a food truck can be sexy, this one is.
Giovanni Labbate said their pizza shop on wheels is a shipping container on a flatbed truck that’s about 30 feet long and 13 and half feet tall.
“It’s a beast,” he said.
Aside from its size, what makes it unique is that the service side of the truck is all glass, so you can see the wood-burning oven and the pizzas being made.
The truck has been in action since February and is now booked out just about every weekend for weddings, parties and events.
They’ve had food trucks in the past, but this one is different.
“We just really wanted to stand out as a truck, really make an impression,” Giovanni said. “When we pull up it’s funny, because even other food truck guys want to come see it.”
Labbate said he had seen a similar truck about a dozen years ago, but he had a different idea in mind for theirs. They wanted to take the sleek look of their restaurant and take it on the road.
“That’s why we have the gold oven, the black and white design like the restaurant, and glass and flames,” he said. “Plus, with the glass you’re putting on a show because people can see all the action while you’re making these pizzas, which I thought was a really cool idea.”
The Tievoli Pizza Bar truck has a wood-fired oven that can cook pizzas in about 90 seconds.
Rick West/rwest@dailyherald.com
The oven, which only uses wood as fuel, burns at 1,000 degrees in order to cook their scratch-made pizzas in about 90 seconds. It can hold 10 pizzas at a time, and Giovanni said he’s made as many as 150 pizzas in an hour.
“People will place an order at our window and ask if they should come back in about 15 minutes, but I just tell them to wait right there,” he said. “Usually my guys are listening to the order, so by the time they’re done paying it’s already halfway done.”
The Tievoli Pizza Bar truck has enough space for about five people to work and has put out as many as 150 pizzas an hour.
Rick West/rwest@dailyherald.com
The size of the truck allows them to stock enough ingredients to make about 700 pizzas. There’s space for five people to work, but normally three is all it takes to staff a large event.
The truck actually gets about 20 mpg, and Labbate said it handles better and is far more comfortable than their old box truck.
“The only thing we have to worry about is the height,” he said.
The couple opened Tievoli, which is “I love it” spelled backward, in early 2023 at 44 W. Palatine Road. He said the food truck is a great way of getting their name out in the suburbs beyond Palatine.
“Ultimately, the truck for us is about bringing people back to the restaurant and adding to our brand awareness,” he said. “It’s a marketing tool that also makes money.”
Giovanni said they recently booked four catering jobs just from people who saw the food truck somewhere. It’s also become a very popular catering option for weddings. They have about 60 booked this year, and are gearing up to do more.
“That’s why we do the breweries and the small events, to get ourselves out there and get exposure so when people are booking weddings or parties they think of us,” he said.