YouTube Video XAV_FseEpHY  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: YouTube Video XAV_FseEpHY - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[community]] [[entrepreneurship]] [[wordpress]] - Summary: YouTube Video XAV_FseEpHY - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAV_FseEpHY Now, this is a story how a throwaway comment in bed with my wife turned into a fully functioning pizza business in 3 weeks. It wouldn't have happened without the 20 years of WordPress experience that I got and the power of the community. This is Cassag and this is how it all started. Let me take you back to 2019 when COVID 19 brought the world to a standstill. Businesses were closing down. Social distancing was becoming a norm. And many businesses and industries suffered. Our software business wasn't immune. We lost about 50% of our retainer clients overnight as clients furled their staff and cut budgets. Hospitality was hit even harder. Restaurants, takeaways, delivery services were all shutting down across the country. It was devastating to watch and honestly uncertain times for everybody trying to figure out how to survive. But here's the thing about crisis. It forces creativity and for some creates unexpected opportunities. When lockdown hit, everything went online. WordPress meetups that I'd normally attend locally moved to Zoom. As a WordPress meetup organizer myself, I understood the importance of keeping the community connected and together. So, we also took our meetup online. Now suddenly I was joining meetups in Australia in the US and one meetup particularly that stuck with me was a meetup in London run by Dan maybe and during one of those sessions there was a discussion about how the pandemic was actually creating opportunities for some businesses. Now Andrew Palmer a business owner shared how he pivoted his hospitality clients from basic marketing websites to fully blown e-commerce ordering systems. It created opportunities for Andrew while helping his clients to survive by continuing to sell their products online. And this got me thinking. The WordPress community came together to solve real problems. People were helping each other to adapt. And that's what I've always loved about this community. So one morning over coffee I was chatting to my partner at the time Rachel now my wife and I was talking about what was happening in the WordPress community and how developers were helping businesses to pivot. I mentioned Andrew Palmer's work and said as a throwaway comment there are going to be lots of businesses that are going to need to pivot during this period. For instance like we would sell pizza. Now let me give you some context. I grew up in Malta, which is a small Mediterranean island where I went to kindergarten and early school. Now, I was brought up on the Mediterranean diet, fresh vegetables, salad, pizza, and pasta. Now, there's a traditional artisan sourdough bread in Malta called hobs, and I've always had a nostalgic connection to it. Over the years, I've leared to master my own sourdough recipe, so I've made bread all my life. Now, for years, I've been making pizza for the family with the kids at weekend as a special treat. friends sometimes would come over and they would also comment on how good my pizzas were and jokingly they would say they're good enough to sell. So when I mentioned pizza, it wasn't completely random. Now here's the thing. Rachel being the entrepreneur that she is immediately saw an opportunity and she said, "Okay, we're going to do this." My instant reaction was, "Don't be silly." But you know, the seed was planted. Now, as a developer, you start thinking through problems. I started to ask myself, how could we create an ordering system? How could customers book a time slot? How many pizzas could I make in 30 minutes or a 1-hour slot? How could I apply this technically to an e-commerce system like Woo Commerce? So, I started thinking about behavior-driven development. What would the customer do? How would we manage the orders? How would delivery work while maintaining social distancing? Now, remember, hospitality was shutting down. fish and chip shops, Chinese Indian takeaways, pizza delivery services, everything was closing down. So, I had to ask myself, how could we do delivery that was safe? Now, our kids were in their late teens at the time, and they had bikes. And we thought, well, we could do bike deliveries for short distances and car deliveries for longer distances that Rachel would manage in the car. And we could pop the pizzas in porchways or ring the doorbell and socially distance and manage things that way. So, all that was required was the system. Fast forward 3 weeks and I built the system. It was a minimum viable product, a WordPress site with Woo Commerce, but it had a fully customized pizza ordering system with time slot bookings. Now, we launched it and we started making pizzas on Friday and Saturday nights serving just our local community. Now, this was supposed to be a short-term thing while we were in lockdown. It was never meant or intended to be a business, but it took off. Five or six years later, we now employ five staff and I have an assistant chef, and we're making and delivering pizzas on a Friday and a Saturday night. We cover about 60 to 90 pizzas a night. And Cassages became our little co success story. Speaking of building with WordPress and Woo Commerce, this video is sponsored by Automatic. Woo Commerce will be running their annual Black Friday Cyber Monday marketplace sale from November the 26th to December the 2nd. Up to 40% off all extensions and themes. Discounts are automatically applied and calculated at checkout. These are the same extensions that would help anyone build ASAG's ordering system. And if you need a professional website first, WordPress.com is offering a free 5-page website build from their design services team when you purchase an annual business plan from November the 17th through to December the 1st. Plus, you'll save 10%. All the links you need are in the description below. Don't miss out. Now, back to the story. So, why am I telling you this? Because this wouldn't have happened without 20 years of WordPress experience. And more importantly, without the WordPress community, without meetups, word camps, and conversations with other WordPress users, this idea would never have come about. And when people come together, ideas are exchanged and opportunities are created. That's what I love about the WordPress community. It's not just about building websites. It's about solving problems and supporting each other and sometimes creating something completely unexpected. And this is why I run the local meetup for my hometown in Chelenham. It's about giving back to the community that gave me this opportunity. If you're part of the WordPress community or thinking about getting involved, do it. You never know where the conversation might lead. For me, it led to pizza. A business I never planned to start, but it's a story I'm proud to share. And that is my Kasaji's COVID success story. Now, as always, thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. Now, if you found this video insightful in any way, please do hit the like as it really helps get this content out to others. And if you haven't subscribed yet, then what are you waiting for? Hit that subscribe button. Now, if you're interested in seeing the backend functionality and everything that I built for this thing, then you really do want to check out this video right here. This one. Go on. Go on. Click it. Click it., YouTube Video XAV_FseEpHY, YouTube, 01kabwzfvt999b224ewge4xas0.