Pick Up and Go – Chavious Pizza

After more than 20 years as an esteemed chef in Sacramento fine dining restaurants, Jodie Chavious walked away from the kitchen to start serving pizza from a vintage pickup truck. The decision to prioritize her mental health and personal well-being emerged after the death of her father and, just a few years later, the pandemic.

“I never struggled with depression in the same way [as my father], but I saw it around me a lot,” Chavious shares. “It was hard after my dad passed. I knew I couldn’t save the world or invade other people’s space, but I decided to check in with them and myself.”

Checking in with herself, Chavious says, she chose to leave “the grind” of the restaurant business in search of a “healthier way” to pursue her passion. The pandemic was a reckoning. “COVID allowed me to stop and slow down, to think about my personal life more and to nurture my personal relationships,” she says.

One such relationship was with her brother, Sam, whom she began harvesting produce with at Azolla Farm. Picking tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, and more alongside Sam, she felt their bond strengthen. “He’s my favorite person,” she shares.

Another connection was with fellow chef, Andrew Tescher, whom she bumped into at a farmers’ market. He suggested she start doing pop-ups, an idea she at first blew off but then warmed up too. “I didn’t have the equipment or the concept, but pizzas are pretty affordable to make, so I didn’t have a lot to lose by trying it. Plus, I needed a way to pay my bills,” says Chavious. “I can sell them for less than $20 a pizza, so it’s affordable for everyone.”

Chavious sells the pies out of a turquoise 1960s Ford pickup she named Herman. The truck bed holds two pizza ovens, and Chavious builds out a kitchen around the vehicle. “The truck really became my calling card,” says Chavious. “Three months into operating, I realized this could be something viable.” That was in 2020, and the proof of concept became so much more.

Using fermented sourdough style crust, Chavious combines ingredients like cherry tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, and shishitos for the June Bug, and peaches, applewood smoked bacon, goat cheese, and wildflower honey on her Peach and the Pig.

The product of Spanish and German ancestry — her mother and father, respectively — Chavious marries complex flavors. “I didn’t want to make a Naples or Detroit style pizza. I wanted a big crust with a crispy bottom,” she explains.

When she’s not kneading dough, Chavious is baking donation cookies for mental health awareness month or raising money for other charitable causes. She recently raised $3,000 for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and walked 17 miles at the Out of the Darkness Walk in Washington, D.C. Throughout the year, her truck can be found at Touchstone Brewing Co., The Pip, Porchlight Brewing Co. and SacYard Community Taphouse. Part of her continued success, she believes, is her commitment to the relationships that helped get her here.

“I have a lot of close culinary connections,” she says. “[The dining industry] is a really strong community, and we stick together.”