Ettore Bertonati has spent his career perfecting pizza. Naples-born, chemistry-trained, and widely regarded as one of the finest pizzaiolos in Australia, he opened Back to Nap in Stonyfell after years building his reputation at Pizzateca and Madre. The menu is short, the craft is uncompromising, and on a busy Thursday or Friday night, every pizza coming out of that oven has his full attention.

Or it did, until the phone rang.

The problem

Back to Nap runs three to four staff during service. When a customer called to ask how long their order would take, one of the team had to take the phone to the back of the restaurant (the dining room is too loud to hold a conversation), then walk back to Ettore at the oven and interrupt him mid-pizza to relay the question. He’d give an answer. They’d walk back, pass it on, and Ettore would return to the dough that had been sitting unattended for the past thirty seconds.

During a busy service, that sequence plays out multiple times a night. On the nights when no one could leave their station, calls went unanswered.

That created a second problem. Customers who couldn’t get through would drive to the shop anyway. A small restaurant already running at capacity suddenly had walk-ins at the counter, watching Ettore make other people’s pizzas, waiting for an order that hadn’t been placed. The pressure compounded quickly and the space gave nowhere for it to go.

The hesitation

Ettore’s main concern before going live was practical. Back to Nap runs Square as its PoS, and any new system needed to sit alongside it without disrupting a service flow he’d spent years refining. He wasn’t interested in adding friction to fix friction.

What changed

Back to Nap has been live with Orders In for two months. Even though the roster hasn’t changed, the difference in service for the team is like night and day. The increase in the level of customer service and the actual amount of pizza they’re able to produce has resulted in Back to Nap being able to handle many more orders per night.

Sophia answers every call. Orders come through directly to the kitchen via the printer, sitting alongside Square the same way phone orders always have. No order is handwritten under the pressure of service, and table reservations come through the same way, printing as a message so nothing gets missed and nothing needs to be relayed.

No detail is misheard or missed in a noisy room. Ettore stays at the oven doing what he does best. The staff member who used to ferry questions between the phone and the pass stays where she’s needed, greeting customers, running food, and giving the dining room the kind of attention that makes a small restaurant worth coming back to.

The calls that went unanswered during a slammed service now get captured — especially ones that tie up a staff member during the busiest times of service (like taking a booking for a table next week). The cycle of missed calls turning into walk-ins, and walk-ins piling pressure onto an already tight space, has stopped. Revenue is up, not because anything about the operation changed, but because the orders that were always there waiting are now getting through.

“When it gets busy I need to be making pizza, not running to answer the phone. Orders In handles that for us now. The kitchen stays calm, the orders come through accurately, and my customers get looked after properly. It’s taken a lot of pressure off me and the team. Our customers love chatting with Sophia, they’re impressed by how naturally she speaks and how friendly she is.”
— Ettore Bertonati, Back to Nap

What this means for your shop

Back to Nap trades four short evening windows a week. If the return is there for a venue with Ettore’s trading hours, it works for most independent pizza shops.

The question he asked before going live, whether it would fit his setup without breaking what already works, is the same question every owner asks. Two months in, the answer is straightforward. The kitchen runs better, revenue is up, and the phone is no longer Ettore’s problem.