The owner and founder of Sudbury's Fire Up Pizza, Rob Chaput, was for lack of a better term, pretty fired up on June 3 when his franchise opened their doors to their first full-service stand alone location.
Fired Up's fifth pizza locations can be found on Notre Dame Street in Azilda, in the Azilda Plaza and offers take out and delivery service.
The company started up just shy of two years ago in July of 2014 with their pizza truck on Barrydowne Road, followed by another on Lorne Street.
Chaput and his son Brennen are the founding members and they quickly moved into a more bricks and mortar, year round location inside of Taphouse on Regent Street in 2015.
“The plan is to eventually move to all storefront locations and start phasing out the trucks,” said Chaput.
“There's a market here and a demand for it and we're hindered by weather with the trucks, so by moving to more storefronts we'll be able to serve the community year-round.”
MJ Pappin-Lamoureux is the owner/operator of the Azilda location and the daughter of former NHLer Jim Pappin. Thanks to her hockey connections, MJ was able to wrangle former NHL player and coach, and Azilda native Randy Carlyle to come out for the opening.
“MJ's dad Jim was one of the older guys near the end of his career when Randy was first coming up in the league and Randy's an Azilda boy as well so it's great that he was able to make it out today,” said Chaput.
“Thank goodness for MJ knowing him because I don't think he would've said yes it if was me calling, but he's been great, he's really supportive of this community.”
Fired Up has also opened a new location in Lively which is open year-round and Chaput plans to have seven full locations in the near future, with locations coming to both Garson and Valley East.
The truck on Barrydown would also become a flagship location when the company transitions it to a permanent restaurant. As for the trucks, Chaput is still weighing his options for what to do with them.
“We'll probably keep them for events and stuff like that, but right now we're just so busy getting the restaurants up and running so that's something we'll have to work out down the road,” he said. “We want to cover Northern Ontario and beyond and eventually start opening locations in the south as well.”
