Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.51 | Feat. Nick Sanford from Toss N' Fire Pizza!

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Exploring Toss & Fire Pizza with Nick Sanford In this episode of Good News, New York, hosted by Matt Masur, the team engages in a lively conversation about a variety of topics, ranging from local community weather woes to personal app experiences. The highlight of the episode is an insightful interview with Nick Sanford, the owner of Toss & Fire Pizza in Syracuse. Nick shares the origins of his passion for the restaurant industry, his journey from being a busboy to a restaurant owner, and the unique aspects of Toss & Fire Pizza, such as the distinctive flavor combinations and cooking methods that set his pizzas apart. The discussion also touches on the evolving landscape of food trucks and their increasing popularity at events like concerts. The episode concludes with information on where listeners can find Toss & Fire's food trucks and brick-and-mortar locations, as well as how to book them for private events. 00:00 Introduction and Hosts' Banter 01:08 Weather Talk and Seasonal Depression 01:58 Light Therapy and Mental Health Apps 03:52 Funny App Ideas and Tech Talk 09:48 Guest Introduction and Sponsor Shoutout 14:05 Interview with Nick Sanford from Toss and Fire Pizza 17:44 The Unique Appeal of Toss and Fire 18:31 Perfecting the Sauce 19:37 Nick's Journey in the Restaurant Industry 24:09 From Food Truck to Brick and Mortar 28:04 The Art of Pizza Making 35:08 Where to Find Toss and Fire

You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this. Even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your own.

your sign. Start free at RSS.com. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com.

Hey folks, welcome to Good News, York. I'm your host Matt Meager from Growth Mode Content. Joined, as always, as my slightly younger friend. Slightly. From the big city of Herkimer, as my seventh grade science teacher used to say. Originally, yes. Yep. Originally, I'm a hercumite, Herka.

What the fuck was? What was your town? We were the cake eaters. Yeah, you were the cake eaters. We were the pizza pushers. Frankfurt was the spaghetti twisters. Yeah. And then, what were you missing?

Spaghetti benders. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And then Mohawk was nothing. Mohawk was... Well, you know, the saying in Mohawk is, well, there's always the goat. Well, there's always the goat? Anyway, great, great weekend with a little better weather than we've experienced.

We had a little bit of sunshine. We had a little bit of sunshine. I got to Mo, which always makes me happy. This weather thing, it's, you know, it's one of those things where, like, everybody's pissed off about it and there's nobody to get mad at. Oh, the story of society. We all want to point the finger at something or something. And it's understandable because it's ruining everybody's everything. No, I mean, it's been basically Seattle the last month.

And, you know, we, unfortunately, a lot of people suffer with seasonal, seasonal depression through the cold and gray months in New York. And it seems like that's just been dragged out, and that sucks. Yeah, that's why you just got to suffer from regular depression. It's way easy. Yeah. Then the year round is more efficient. Way more efficient. You don't have to worry about the weather, check it, and go, am I going to be depressed today?

What do you feel about some of the, like, the heat lamps or the salt lamps, things of that nature that are supposed to help, you know, reduce that? Do you have any faith in those sorts of things? I have no, I don't even know what you mean by the heat lamps or salt lamps. So they have like a bright, you know, sort of a simulated indoor sun that's supposed to help you feel better. I think, you know, indoor lighting's great for when you're growing certain plants. You know, I think there's some validity in those lamps. You know, I'm a big advocate of mental health and whatever works works. I mean, it makes sense.

There's this app I downloaded the other night. You get a lot of apps. I do. I do. It's actually asinine. Weird. It's called L-U-M-A-N-A-T-E. And it offers you this light therapy.

So that, like, before you go to bed. Yeah, you were talking about this. Yeah, you fill out, like, what you want to get out of this light therapy. And then it gives you, before you pay for the app, it gives you, like, a free run. Yeah. And it's about 10 minutes long. The first one is free, kid. Yeah, exactly.

And you use the flashlight on your phone, and you lay there with headphones on in the dark. And I swear to God, it was one of the most insane. experiences. It's almost like you dream, but you're awake. It's like you're in a, you know, subconscious, hypnosis. All right. But you also are like seeing things with your eyes closed. And then like the next day I felt great, which could be the placebo effect. But man, I'm telling you, based on that, I think we're to initiate a placebo effect. I feel like that's a positive. Absolutely. Right? Yeah, because it worked. The end of the day, you feel better. But it was, it was intense. I I recommend everyone try that.

So that brings me to answer your question, which, yeah, I think salt lamps, if that works, if the flashlight on my damn iPhone works, why wouldn't those work? You got me there. There's another app I found. You know what that reminds me of? There's an old episode of Star Trek. Danny might remember this. He's almost as much of a nerd as I am. I believe it was episode two or three.

It was one of the first ones. It was called The Game, and everybody got hooked on this thing. And in the end, data being the robot, the only thing. one that couldn't have been hypnotized basically by this thing. Programmed a flashlight, to flash in a code to decode everybody. It just reminds me of exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah, or like men in black when they would erase their similar concept. Similar concept. Yeah, yeah. It's actually men and black. I always wanted one of those. Yeah, it'd be sick. Everything cool came from Star Trek.

Dude, there's another app, and I know it's the morning, but it's called the hold app. I read it through the comments on social media. Hold. It's male, Hegel exercises so that you can last longer in the bedroom. And the reason I found it, I was reading a complaint. A woman was complaining to like some newspaper or social media outlet

about how her, basically her lover ended up cheating on her because he could finally, you know, last a little longer, if you know what I'm saying? So my point of bringing that up is forget light therapy. No, there's something for everything out there. If you really go into that app store, man, it gets, you get scared. Remember the old slogan there's an app for that? Yeah, it's true. I feel like that, I don't know why that ever sort of faded away,

because it still is the most accurate slogan, statement, whatever. I feel like you would have some really good app ideas. Do you have any of them? Ideas? Yeah, you have any like... Yeah, no, I'm not one of those app guys. I fucking hate apps, to be completely honest with you. And maybe it's because I have built a few.

A number of specifically, like, radio station media apps or e-commerce types of apps. There's just a pain in the nuts. They're hard to maintain. You've got to go through all these different steps with both platforms, and they have radically different steps. Yeah. So if you want your app to work for Android or iPhone, that's why you see a lot of these big, complicated ones,

will start out for a long time on just one of the platforms. It's a huge pain in the ass. And also the majority of the things at this point, or to date that I've wanted to do, you can do with a website. So if you have a properly formatted mobile website, you don't need an app. That's true.

Mess with Apple. or any of that, you just say, here's the link. And you're done. I agree with you. I had two app ideas. One, somebody took, and it's a brilliant account to follow. I wish I could remember it. Having IBS, finding a bathroom is important, especially one that's clean.

And there's this woman who's doing God's work in New York City where she posts videos, post content of showing you, like, West Village, you've got to check this bathroom out. And she shows the sink and how private it is. A Facebook group called Where's Syracuse Poops. That's great! I love that. You got to send me the link. It's really more of a parody thing.

The other idea I had was an app where... Doesn't Google Maps show you a lot of public restrooms? Yeah, but listen, you don't know what you're walking into. Exactly, and that's why I very much appreciate with this person is doing. Remember those old gas station bathrooms where you'd have like a baseball bat attached to the key? Here's the key. And it was like the filthiest bathroom. To a sheet of plywood or something.

Yeah. So you didn't steal it. Yeah, right. Like you're going to steal it. And you would have to wash your hands before you pee Because your weaner was the cleanest thing you'd touch in there I mean it was Here's a thing you pull up one of those gas stations late at night You don't ask for the key to use the shady bathroom

Around the back you just piss behind the dumpster Oh 100% Like yeah That is the safest I mean cleanest spot in the entire shady ass Yeah my other app idea was You know about you I feel like you're along these lines

A lot of times I'll just ask my wife like What's the temperature outside? And she's like, I'm like, 74. And I'm like, is that long sleeve jacket? So I was like, what about an app where you kind of input what your style is, right? Like they do for when they send you a box of stuff, right? Usually you put in your style and they send you a box of stuff you try it on. This one you put in your style.

And they don't say like the exact t-shirt you would wear, but you would wake up, you click on the app and it would say, Mike, today's a jeans t-shirt long-sleeve day. Or today's a jacket day or a sweater day. Because I'm a guy, I'm lazy. I think Alexa could do that. I don't know. She's kind of dumb. It's getting better.

I hate to do this. I really do, but I too actually have an app idea. And let me know what you guys think about. Oh, yeah, I love this. This is great. So, you know, we specialize in content creation. And a lot of the time, copyright infringement is a big thing. Sure.

With songs and music and stuff. So what if there was an app, and the name of the app is called Muse, And what it does is you upload a little portion of the song that you want to use. Like, for example, hit me baby one more time. See if it's been written? Not that, but then it uses AI to make kitten. Create something in that style. In that style as kitten meows.

So, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. In that tone and everything. And then you can take that audio and upload it to your, what do you think about that? I will invest in this exclusively if we can make you the voice of it. Oh, yeah. First of all, you have to be doing the meow. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're in a podcast, chances are you have something to say too.

With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too.

With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners. see where they're from and start earning from ads like this, even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com.

That was a rollercoaster of emotions for me. I was so invested because Danny's got great ideas. You had no idea where that was going. And now it turned to more of a parody thing, and I actually love it more. I think I love it more. Because I actually had the idea, too, as a songwriter, joke writer,

where you upload maybe a melody into something. thing and then it says ah nice try foo fighters already wrote that or sorry carly simon's got that one yeah i mean they're probably i mean a lot like the youtube uh tools when you upload our videos they'll actually do a copyright scan before you post it youtube is the strictest right right in fact i i dare say too strict in some cases many folks would say that yeah yeah we have a guest coming we do we do and uh his name is nick is he here sanford no uh it should be any second Nick Sanford. You'd wait to say that until he was ready to come in.

Nick Sanford. You got a text that I didn't get or something. Well, he did text me a few minutes ago. I said 1035, a GPS said. So he should be rolling in right now. We are going to take a break. And we have Nick Sanford from Toss and Fire, which we've talked a lot about on here,

and we've ate a lot of their stuff. Before we do that, I got to talk about our man, Zach, on ads on the go. Do they do that next. Go ahead. Dude, I'm so excited about this. This is big. You know, as we talked about ads on the go, is now an official sponsor of Good News York.

And we are also working with them and promoting Good News York, as well as all of our growth mode content clients on the sides of that incredible mobile billboard truck. It's amazing. It is. I mean, this is. We posted the picture of the truck, too. Right, right. And there'll be more and more. We're making the slides, the ads, whatever you want to call them that'll go on the truck for, again, not only our show, but all of our clients' podcasts.

So we're making those now, and those are going to go up on the truck, and as soon as they do, we'll have some really awesome photos of those in action. But we're going to be doing a lot of things through this sponsorship that Zach and his company has provided to us because we get more than just the driving around advertising. We'll save some details. We do. We got these guys on the hook to do a lot of cool things with us. And it's amazing, especially for a kid his age to dive into that

and just pioneer this new. age of digital billboarding. Such impressive, impressive young man, great business idea, great business model the way they've designed it to make it super affordable. Yeah, totally. You know, billboards are an expensive thing. Very. They make it very much not so.

He starts at, what, 350 a month or something? I was going to say, it was like three or 350, you could get a whole month of advertising. And you've got to see this truck. I mean, there is video on all sides. It's huge, which, by the way, if you do see us, I want to get some. feedback. Hit us up producer at growth mode tech.com. You can email that anytime if you have any questions, comments,

concerns, insults, anything you want us to talk about. But let us know if you see us on the highway. Around, snap some photos, send him in. Or snap some photos and send it. There you go. We'll give you something. Yeah, exactly. We'll give you... We'll give you Danny's T-shirt. All right. We will be...

The one he's wearing. And we'll make sure he's sweats in it first. And we'll let him record a meow ringtone on your phone. Miao. It's a whole thing. Can we put Danny on, what's it, app? The one where you sell. Grindr?

Oh. New app. The ones where, what is it? Camio. Oh my God. Could have Danny Tripodi Cat Voice video. Here's the question. What?

$49? That's not bad. I'm thinking, I don't know. I was going to say $25. I don't know how that platform works. How much does the platform get versus $4B? Well, I've used it. I've used it.

I gave my wife the head doctor on Gray's Anatomy did one for her and Susan Waldman of the Yankees for my mom. So it's all different prices. Like your big celebrities, you're looking anywhere from 250 to 500, maybe a thousand. For what kind of, like how long of a video? It depends. Usually they'll do like a minute to two minutes. Okay.

Maybe even three minutes, some of them, if they love the chat like me. Imagine make it 250 a minute? But the thing is like there's some people that really commit to it and they go, look, somebody paid for this. I'm going to do this right. Then there's some that are just like, really? dude, you didn't put any effort. Right, right.

Do you have any idea what the platform gets out of that, what their cut might be? Does it tell you? Forget. I think it does tell you. I mean, obviously, I think it's a percentage. Interesting. I always want to know the business model behind this shit. It's such a great idea.

It is. So good. We should have done that. All right. Anyway, we're going to take a break. We'll be back. Good News York, sponsored by ads on the go, get ads on the go.com. We'll be back with Nick Sanford, toss and fire.

All right, welcome back to Good News York, sponsored. by ads on the go, get ads on the go.com. I am here with a very special guest, a celebrity to us, because we love your food. Nick Sanford from Toss and Fire Pizza right here in Syracuse. Nick, I know that was weak. It was one person clapping. Thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me. Good morning. So Toss and Fire is the first thing that stands out, first of all, great name. How'd you come up with that name? I honestly, by luck. So like when I decided I wanted to start mobile, we wanted to start a mobile trailer, food truck trailer.

Mm-hmm. And I had like a little like notebook and we started just writing random. Yeah. We had like flames and embers and embers. Like it was just like, it was like what things said pizza? Sure. Fired, right?

Yeah. So we were trying to like put these things together. And it was, we kind of narrowed it down that it was gonna be like something and something. And. like some terrible, I had like scorched embers was one of the names. Sounds like a metal band from Iceland. I had some really bad names.

And I was like, no, I think this is the one and that, and that we just picked Tawson Fire. Do it. It's a great name. Well, thank you. That was the first, so the first time I was introduced to your food was we had a little mini lunch celebration here. And I first I saw the, the, everything, the branding, like the name, toss and fire. I go, oh, that's a great name. And the way everything was packaged.

and then the big part, I had a taste of it. And here's the thing. People, maybe people that aren't from New York or other places that are known for pizza might think it's pizza. How different can it be? But yours really is unique. And I'd love for you to talk. I mean, I don't want you to give away any secret recipes. But you guys are unique in the way that you cook it and in the way that the toppings you have.

And we got to talk about the garlic chips. Holy hell. Anyway, so tell me what makes you guys unique? What is your style? So I have always looked at pizza as like a blank canvas. It's kind of always been my philosophy about it. And, you know, I think of it a lot like how sandwiches are. You can put anything on a sandwich, right?

You put anything on a pizza. Correct. You know, obviously you have traditionalists. They want pepperoni. They want sausage and mushroom. They want cheese. You know, whatever. That's me.

And then you have people who want to try different unique things. So one of my big things when we started was that we were going to have some like signature pizzas. And I had on my original menu, I had mashed potato pizza. We're going to do a mashed potato pizza. What? And my buddy Matt was like, dude, you should do salt potatoes. It's like a huge Syracuse thing. That is.

So we took salt potatoes and like literally did the exact pie we were going to do, but used salt potatoes for it. And it's become our best seller. People know us for it. They love it. It's, you know, and we kind of built off of that. We were like, okay, well, that worked. Let's do this one. And like, so when we started, we had three specialty pizzas that were, like, our main ones.

It was the salt potato, the cheeky monkey pizza, which is made with cheeky monkey tomato oil, which I literally found in a store here and was like, this is really good. And then we put it on a pizza. And then our fig and pig pig pizza was the other one that was like one of our main ones when we started, which was just like it's sweet, it's salty. It like, it all kind of combines and works well together. And we built off of that over the years. Like, it's always.

been about being different and unique and, you know, not the everyday thing you can get at any of the hundreds of pizza places. Right. But here's what I love about you and about toss and fire. I've heard that same rap before of like, we just want to do something that no one's ever done. And here's the problem with that. They do. But then they miss the mark on the traditional things. What I love about you and your business is that toss and fire does have the unique salt potato pizza, by the way, the pickle pizza, holy hell. But then if I get, like

you said, I'm a traditional mushroom or pepperoni, you nail it. And like my rule of thumb is like when you break the crust, you know, does the grease come down? Is it triangular? And you nail all that. Also, I always wondered,

because I feel like the sauce is kind of like, that's the thing, right? The sauce is the main player. Do you spend a lot of time trying to perfect the sauce ahead of time or did you already have this and you knew like this is the ingredients I use this is what I'm going with? I remember when I was first, the first year I was in business

and like the leading up to that I literally drove my wife insane because like I tried like 20 something different. Really? Types of tomatoes and like all of these things and like actually when we started we were using like imported Italian tomatoes and we switched like two years in to these

really really great California's tomatoes that I think are honestly just as good, if not better than the Italian tomatoes. Yeah. And so that's kind of where we landed and how we got to where it is now. But I'm just a big, I'm a big fan of a lot of different products in the pizza space. And I've gotten to know some of these companies and some of these, like I've met owners of companies and higher up to these companies. And like, there's just some really great products out there and we're fortunate to use them.

See, I knew. I knew you didn't just throw it together. You can taste that you dialed it in. So let's talk about that. How did this all come about? What were you doing before you decided to open toss and fire? So I've been in the restaurant industry my whole life. I was the first thing I ever did.

I was 14 years old. I'm from Connecticut originally. I worked in a pizza shopping in Connecticut. It was called Bellinapley. I used to ride my bike or walk down the street because they were right down the street for me. After school, get a slice of pizza or a garlic bread with cheese. was like my favorite thing there. And there was a cashier server named Barbara.

And I'm sitting there eating my garlic bread. And she goes, she goes, Nick, do you want a job? And I was like, I was like, yeah. And she said, you want to, we need someone to bust tables on Friday and Saturday nights. And I was like, okay, it's like, it's five bucks an hour. I was like, sounds great. Sure. And I started wiping down tables.

And I literally got into this thing. And I don't know if I did something else. I would have loved it as much as I do the restaurant business. But I started wiping tables. at this restaurant watching the way things moved and the interactions with customers and how the cooks in the back were making the pizzas and just the hustle and bustle of the restaurant industry,

I literally fell in love. I was like, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life as a 14-year-old. Absolutely. And from there, they let me into the kitchen. They let me, I learned how to answer the phones. I learned how to wait tables. I wash dishes.

I cut pizzas. Then I got to learn how to make them. And I got to do the dinners. and so everything kind of built off of that foundation when I was wiping down tables. Yeah. I was like, this is cool and I wanted to learn more. And because I was eager, they were like, yeah, come on in.

Sure. You know, because a lot of people didn't want to do that. No, especially that age. I was really into it. So I did all that. And then after school, when I finished high school, I ended up going to culinary school to kind of get some of the foundations because all I knew was this piece of course.

I never did anything else. So I was like I needed to like learn how to work in like other kinds of kitchens and stuff. So I did fine dining for a while. My father-in-law was an executive chef at a at a fine dining seafood place. So he brought me in as a line cook. I got to learn how to like break down fish and cook lobster and make mashed potatoes from scratch and rice pilaf and cutting vegetables, like doing all these things that like I didn't really, you know, pizza is like specific to pizza. But you knew it was necessary. Yeah.

Yeah. So I did that for a while, and then I got into, you know, when you're a line cook or you're a cook, you find out that there's obviously more money in management, right? So I ended up going to school, like community college for hospitality management. From there I went and got a job at Panera Bread. I was a manager at Panera. Heck yeah. Yep. So that's how I ended up in Syracuse. I transferred with Panera to the Cicero Cafe.

Me and my wife moved up here. We bought our house. It was cheaper to live here than Connecticut. Yeah. And then I was doing the Panera thing, and I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. And started researching pizza trailers. It was one of the first things I noticed when I was in central New York was there was no, there wasn't a lot of food trucks in general, but there were no pizza trucks.

And in Connecticut, we had tons of pizza trucks. It was very common. We used to go to this great one called the Big Green Pizza Truck, and they used to set up at a farmer's market that we could walk to from our apartment and I like saw them doing their thing and I was like that's really cool it was kind of the back of my head I went on with my life and moved and a couple years later I was like I just do something like the big green pizza show yeah and so I started researching and talking to people whoever would talk to me like I just started like reaching out to people who were doing it in other parts of the

country and trying to pick their brain and get information and and kind of put a plan together and that's kind of how it like went from one thing to to another that's amazing Nick, that's amazing. I mean, I already had respect for you, but I have more respect now because I, some of the best, because I worked in the service industry as a server, bartender for a long time before this,

and you didn't always come across owners that were involved. Sometimes you come across owners who got some money and wanted to open a restaurant, but they weren't in love with it. More importantly, they didn't, I think it's so important, especially if you're going to own a restaurant,

to know what you have to go through to wash dishes and be on the line. And, you know, It just makes you a better owner and have an appreciation. I always said everybody in the world should have to work in the service industry for at least a month. So you learn so much about yourself and just about society in general. So you started with the food truck. And then in, I think, what was it, 2015 you started?

And then 2020 and 2024, you opened up those three years, you opened up three different locations. So we had a trailer in 2015. That's what it was. Our first trip was a pull behind trailer. We actually got a second trailer in 2016. which is also kind of a funny story. I had worked, the pizza shop I worked at in Connecticut,

a girl that worked there named Crystal, she had started a mobile food truck business in Connecticut. Her and her husband at the time had started this business, and they were getting out of it. And they had a trailer, and she messaged me and was like, hey, any chance you want to take this trailer off our hands? And I was like, I don't have the money for it.

I can't do it. She's like, we'll finance it for you. You just pay us monthly over five years and it's yours. Holy hell. And I was like, okay. Yeah. So I went, and my father and my father,

though I was still living in Connecticut, he went and looked at it for me, and then I went and bought it and took it home and it was the most terrifying drive I probably ever had my life. And then we actually, we started our 2016 season with two trailers. And we were doing, it was our first year doing the amphitheater. It was the reason we wanted the second trailer was so we could do the amphitheater because I knew that, you know, it was going to be a really cool place to set up at and I wanted to be a part of it. And I couldn't do it if I only had the one unit. So I got that trailer. We had these two units. We were doing stuff.

And later that year in 2016, we opened in North Syracuse. We were actually looking for a commissary kitchen. We weren't even looking to open a restaurant. We wanted a place to prep our food. Yep. And to store our stuff. Is that a ghost kitchen? Yeah.

We ended up opening a restaurant there. Sure. Because, like, it didn't make sense to pay the rent and not sell to customers. Right. So it was, you know, it was already a pizza shop. So we went in there. We like, we had to put a wood fire oven and do our thing. And we opened up a restaurant.

But it also was like kind of the hub for the food trucks at the time. Absolutely. Yeah. So like now during the day, like where do you sometimes you're out in the trucks or are you in the one of the restaurants? What's your days like? So I'm kind of all over the place. I'm mostly, the food trucks are what I love to do. Yeah.

I love going from place to place. I love music, so I love being at concerts. I love to, you know, I get to go to a wedding one day, and then I get to go to a rodeo. I get to go to a concert. I get to do, you know, it's never the same day. It's never the same. It's always different.

You know, we're doing the same thing, but we're doing it with different scenery. Right, and like 15, 20 years ago, if you owned a pizza shop, that's what you did every day. Now it's like you still own a pizza shop, but it's different. Now that's actually how I invited you. on the show was I was at the Dave Matthews band concert at Lakeview Amphitheater here in Syracuse. And by the way, you were a savior because I was starving. I got front row for the first time of my life. Yeah, which was insane.

But because of that, I didn't want to leave for a drink, food, nothing. So I didn't eat. I was starving. And I'm walking up the hill and I'm going, I guess I'll have to stop some. And there, like a beacon of hope is the tossing fire truck up there. And you're in there at 11 o'clock at night. after the show's over and you're slinging, and I'm bothering you about coming on the show.

How do you get that gig? I mean, I feel like that would be a cutthroat gig to get. Yeah, I mean, we were fortunate when, so it was 2016, and there were like less than 10 food trucks operating in the circus. So we were fortunate to get into that venue, and, you know, we've tried to do everything we can to be good partners with them

and put out a good product and offer a good service and just do our thing. And it's definitely cutthroat, but it's, It's, you know, it's been fun, and I hope to continue as we can. I hope so, too. And now, is that a, are you there every show? We're there every show.

Yep. That's great. Pretty much. I mean, maybe here and there, we can't do something, but we're pretty much in every show. I got to ask you, I've heard, so obviously, you know, there's New York style pizza, right? There's Detroit. I've just found out there's a Detroit style, which I didn't know about. Chicago.

I did hear some rumblings. Is there a Connecticut style pizza? There is. There's New Haven style pizza. Okay. We actually started doing pop-ups with New Haven-Styo pizza. We do them once a month on a Monday night when we're normally closed from 4 to 8. Our next one is June 16th and North Syracuse.

So we open up for four hours. We only sell New Haven-style pizzas. It's been something I've been working on for a couple of years to try to kind of figure out and how to do it in the shop. I don't think it's ever going to be something we can sell in the shops full time because it's so different. from everything else we're doing. What is it?

So it's made with like a completely different, it's a completely different dough. It's made with a different kind of flour. It's cooked, like we cook it partially in like a deck oven that you would cook a New York style pizza in and then we finish it in the wood fire oven. Okay. Thin, crispy, it's got a char and it's got a chew,

which is like the biggest difference between New Haven style and other types of pizza. It has a chew because it's kind of like you took a loaf of like really good bread, crusty, delicious bread, and a pizza and then you created this thing. Okay. And that's the best way I can describe. I'm down.

It's very. That's awesome. I really like it. That's amazing. So then I have to ask, this is the age old question, is it okay to put pineapple on pizza? I think you put anything on pizza. I agree. I think you put anything on pizza.

I think that it's very controversial. Of course. But I think that anything goes. That's what I say. Yeah, we put pickles on pizza. I mean, right. How can we put pickles on pizza? Right.

How can we sit here and go, oh, pickle pizza's great, but that pineapple. You know, I say different strokes, different folks, whatever you want, you know, as long as the basis is there. I absolutely love your pizza, obviously. And you guys actually, I think part of the reason why it's such a signature taste is, is it a special kind of oven or is it the process of it? Yeah. So, I mean, everything we do is kind of unique, right? So we cook, we make dough with imported flour from Italy. But it's not like your super traditional Neapolitan pizza.

It's kind of like a cross between a Neapolitan and a New York style pizza. It's a little bit more crispy than a traditional Neapolitan pizza if you do the wood fire. They're cooked in these imported ovens. Those come from Italy. They cook at a thousand degrees. It's ancient technology, right? There's no like, there's no turn in the dial. together.

Right, right, right. It's, that's cold or that's hot or we need to adjust it. You have to have the right amount of wood. It's, there's, there's like this, there's like this chemistry that needs to happen. It's amazing. When you cook with these, with these wood burning ovens. And some days work better than others. Sure.

Sure. But I think that there's a lot of fun in that. And it's cool. Like, I think with the food trucks, it's really cool to, like, walk by the food truck and see the fire roaring. Yeah. Seeing pies coming out of this oven. And, like, 100%. there's something that's like, it's like kind of like this primal thing.

Yes. It's cool. I could not agree more. Toss and fire pizza. We have any, well, actually, I'll show you. Danny, can you throw up the picture? I want to talk about this real quick before we go. So I've had your pizza. The pizza's phenomenal.

Speaks for itself. There's a nice shot of one of the pizzas there. But it's these things, Matt ordered. these, is it garlic parmesan chips? Dude, they were, I can't even describe. They're just so original and they're so flavorful. I could not stop eating them. How'd you come up with this idea?

So we wanted to, we were looking at some different kind of appetizery things, and we have this really, really great garlic butter that we use. That's the key. And so that's kind of how it was born. The garlic butter thing is kind of funny because it was one of the only, things I kind of took from that first job in Connecticut was this garlic butter. Idea they do these things called garlic bites. Yeah.

And it's literally, I think it's like the best kept secret at tossing fire. It's pizza dough with garlic butter spread on it. It gets cooked in the oven. It gets cut up into little triangle pieces. And then it gets pecorino Romano on it. And then you dip it in marinera. They're so good. I'm drooling.

I'm literally drooling all over. Really delicious, yeah. That is absolutely amazing. and I mean all your appetizers are great the pizza is great but it's just your passion and the originality stands out man so where oh actually you know I'll tell you real quick have you ever heard of Oneonta New York style pizza It's like the cold cheese on

Yeah yeah I've heard of it I've known yeah my buddy went there I went to visit him in college and you know end of the night you're drunk and you The big thing was like I get this big slice of pizza and then they throw on top of the Just cold mozzarella. And it sounds ridiculous, but it's fantastic. There's these little pockets of places that have their own little style pizzas. But toss and fire, bar none, one of my absolute favorites. Other than your own, do you have a favorite pizza place or?

Yeah, I've lots of all time. I love, I'm a pizza nerd. Me too. Me too. I like it all. I like it all. I think there's tons of good pizza. All.

In central New York, I think Mario Ensalvo's does a favorite. Fantastic job. I think Powadino's does a really great job. I think Provones does a really great job. A pizza regional does a really nice job. I mean, there's really so much, so much good pizza. Yeah. I travel to places all the time, and I always try to find the best pizza.

Me too. To Vegas for the Pizza Expo, tons of times. There's tons of great pizza out there. Florida and Orlando, I found great pizza. I found it all over the place. The only place I've ever found bad pizza, and again, I'm a pizza aficionado. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was in the middle of Iowa.

Yeah, that'd be hard. And I can't, you know, it's, you know, maybe not their fault. That was the only place. Other than that, I think some of the best pizza I can, I remember off the top of my head is, there's one in Utica, New York, called Slice. Yep. And then on Genesis, that's phenomenal. And then there's a famous one.

My wife took me to Mac in something on the Jersey Shore, something in Max, they're very famous. Probably the best I've ever had. Oh, nice. So I like sharing that. Got to go to New Haven, Connecticut. Yeah, that's already, I've written that. Frank Peppies, Sally's, modern, Zuparties.

Okay. The sausage pie from Zuparties, literally will change your life. Zuparys. Jimmy Zabit in Milford. There's just, there's been. I got my summer plan. There's so many. That's phenomenal, man.

So before we go, let's talk about where we can find the trucks and the brick and mortar stores and just tossing fire. Let's do it. Yeah. So, you know, our trucks are all throughout central New York. You can find where we're going to be, like our public events at streetfoodfinder.com. Our schedule is on there all the time. You can visit our brick and mortars. Those are open all year. We have a location, our original location in North Syracuse. It's on North Main Street. Our second location is in Camillas. It's in Township 5, right by the movie tavern. And then our third location, we have like a satellite location inside of Harvey's Garden in the city of Syracuse. That's amazing, man. And you can actually book your truck

too for events. Yeah, we do weddings, graduations, birthdays, corporate events, you know, pretty much any reason you want to celebrate something. It's a great, it's a great thing. My truck catered my son's fifth birthday party yesterday. That's awesome, man. That is the cool. Yeah, that's the coolest.

Nick Sanford, toss and fire. Nick, thank you for coming on Good News York. Brought to you by Gets, ads on the go. I would not just have some random pizza owner on if I wasn't serious about saying it's some of the best pizza I've ever had. I really appreciate. And we really love you here, and we're going to continue to eat your food.

Awesome. And we love you, man. Thanks for coming. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Appreciate it. All right, that's it for Good News York.

We'll be back tomorrow for Tuesday, Newsday, and all that other fun stuff. See you tomorrow.