Two people. No staff.
Sold out every shift.

Thirty years in, they finally built the restaurant they wanted

Gary Ebert and his partner Glenn have each spent more than 30 years in the restaurant industry — Gary running a Boise bakery, then two pizzerias and a bistro in New Mexico; Glenn with his own Boise pizzeria since 1994. When they finally went into business together, those decades of hard lessons crystallized into three non-negotiable rules: no employees, no landlord, no build-out.

Those constraints led them to a custom food truck — a shipping container mounted on a large diesel chassis, fitted with a wood-and-gas-fired oven capable of reaching 950 to 1,000 degrees. Solari Pizzeria Napoletana launched in summer 2022, and from day one the plan was to run it with exactly two people and no order-taking staff.

No room — or appetite — for a third pair of hands

With Gary making the pizzas and Glenn firing and plating them, the operation was intentionally lean. A handwritten slip system Gary had used at earlier restaurants was, by his own account, "a disaster" — orders got lost, sequencing went sideways, and a single mistake at the counter rippled all the way to the oven.

Gary also wanted to eliminate cash entirely. Every transaction meant stopping to wash hands, breaking the rhythm of a high-speed line. And without a bookkeeper, he needed clean Square-integrated reporting at year-end without lifting a finger.

Kiosk to oven. Zero handoffs.

Flash Order's Large Screen Kiosk sits at the front of the truck. Customers browse a photo-driven menu, customize toppings through the kiosk's submenu, and pay — all without interacting with Gary or Glenn. Every order flows directly to the Kitchen Display Screen routed to the oven, with no verbal relay and no paper.

The topping submenu has become an unexpected revenue driver. Customers regularly add extra toppings they wouldn't have asked for at a counter — a quiet upsell that requires no effort from the kitchen.

Prices held. Quality kept. Line out the door.

Eliminating a front-of-house employee saves Solari more than $20 per hour when you factor in workers' compensation, FICA, FUTA, and SUTA on top of the $15–$18 local going wage. That headroom goes directly into ingredient quality and price accessibility.

A Margherita pizza that runs $21–$25 at a comparable brick-and-mortar restaurant sells for $14 at the truck — built on San Marzano tomatoes, three-day fermented dough, and the finest mozzarella. The result: a loyal, foodie customer base that sells them out nearly every shift.

The Kitchen Display Screen routes every order from kiosk to oven without a handoff. Order accuracy is effectively 100%. Tips — collected automatically through the kiosk — generate meaningful additional income.

Two days a week. Sold out. Every time.

Now in its fifth season, Solari runs two days a week, moves roughly 100 pizzas per shift in three to four hours, and regularly sells out before the shift ends. Gary and Glenn stay focused entirely on making and firing pizzas — the craft they've honed for 30 years. Flash Order handles everything at the counter.