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Melbourne, Australia

Crust Franchisee Drives Record Breaking 300km to Deliver Pizza!

Australian Franchise News – 27-02-18

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Crust Gourmet Pizza Sales & Performance Manager, Sally Illingworth, is so passionate about pizza she drove 300 kilometres on Saturday to deliver three pizzas to her family’s hometown, Bencubbin, a remote farming town in Western Australia; breaking the brand’s record for furthest delivery.

Making the long trip from Crust Midland in Western Australia – stopping twice for petrol along the way – Sally delivered the pizzas to her family to thank them for the role they’ve played in supporting her career with the brand.

“I thought they had been deprived of Crust for about 3 months but it turns out it’s been 12 so you can imagine how excited they were to see me with amazing pizza! This is the furthest delivery on record in Crust history so my family are pretty special as you can probably gather. Thank you to the awesome team at Crust Midland for making this possible. No one deserves to be without Crust in their life,” she said in a recent LinkedIn post.

“I drove three hours and 15 minutes with three pizzas: a Meat Deluxe, a Pesto Chicken Club (their favourite) and a Mexican,” she explained.

“It was amazing – when I got there they drove me around the town to meet the workers and residents and they distributed slices of pizza to their dearest acquaintances. Everyone loved it!”

What started as an after-school job at her local Crust shop in Turramurra New South Wales quickly became a career for Sally as she moved up the ranks into a management role within the brand’s national head office.

In 2014 she purchased Crust Parap in Darwin and became a franchisee herself, and then in 2016 she was promoted to Sales & Performance Manager for the Southern NSW region.

In recognition of her contribution to her local community throughout her tenure with Crust, Sally was recently announced as a finalist in the Northern Territory Young Achiever Awards’ (NTYAA) Government Small Business Award category.

Hosted annually, the awards recognise small business owners who make a significant contribution to the Darwin economy in terms of leadership, employment opportunities, increased GDP and community contributions.

It is the second year in a row that Sally has become a finalist and she said it is an honour to be recognised amongst the region’s up-and-coming leaders.

“The most rewarding part is that I get to be in a room filled with young Territorians who are striving to make Darwin a better place,” she said. “My biggest thanks go to the community groups we work with, my team of employees who work incredibly hard, our loyal customers and the NTYAA organisation for recognising our collective efforts to drive positive social and economic outcomes for greater Darwin.”

In addition to employing at least 25 locals at any given time and attracting at least 700 customers to the Parap Shopping Village each week, Sally’s proudest contributions to the Northern Territory community and economy include regular charity donations.

Since 2015, Sally and her team at Crust Parap have raised more than $12,000 for the Darwin branch of Make A Wish Foundation; donated 101 large pizzas to the evacuees of the Daly River floods; and supplied product to the Parap Festival Under the Stars hosted by Michael Gunner in 2015 and 2016.

Sally has also donated at least 150 large gourmet pizzas to the Casuarina Football Club; and more than $10,000 worth of gift cards as prizes or auction item at fundraisers across Darwin (including Ray White Darwin Branch, Casuarina Football Club, SIDS Kids, Waratah Hockey Club, Darwin High School, O’Loughlin Catholic College, Kormilda College, Henbury School).

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