Llieno's pizza company Swinton Llieno's Pizza

Many businesses have had to change the way they operate to survive during Covid.

What’s the natural next step for a children’s soft play area? Why, a pizza delivery company, of course.

Greg O’ Neill, Director at Playkidd’s play centre, runs the business with his son, Matthew.

Greg talked about how Matthew came up with the idea:

“We got to a stage where we started looking at the fact that we’ve got eighteen staff that may potentially be out of work, so we looked at their skills and the equipment that we had, and Matthew came up with the idea of creating hand-crafted pizzas.

Very proud to have provided pizza to nurses at Salford Royal to thank them for the hard work they’ve done this year and continue to do week in, week out. We hope you enjoyed them! #nhsheroes

Posted by Llieno’s Pizza Company on Sunday, 30 August 2020

“Again, something that’s different. So that we could at least continue to trade and keep some of our staff in work. So it’s created Llieno’s pizza company”

Llieno’s (which is the family surname, “O’ Neill”, backwards) continues to trade today. It offers delivery on handmade pizzas, with a variety of toppings.

Greg explained how covid has put a strain on their community work: “We do work a lot with the community, we support the community as much as we can.

“We provide stuff like football kits for school teams and things.

“That was recognised last year in 2019 when we won the Salford community business of the year, we were absolutely delighted as you can imagine.

“[Greg’s son] Matthew is 27, and he wants to be in this for the long term, he recognised that to be a business here that’s not ‘here today, gone tomorrow’, you have to invest in the community that you work and live in.

At the time of writing, Salford is still under the Greater Manchester local lockdown.

While Llieno’s Pizza Company is taking up the slack, Greg is keen to get children back in Playkidds as soon as possible:

“It’s so important these days for lots of reasons that children can get back to some kind of normality, but it’s also incumbent on us to make sure that it’s safe and secure as it could be, that’s why we’ve made all these changes.”

Find out more about Llieno’s here.

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