Jagjit Sanghera’s slice of success with Pizza Factory
Credit to Author: Margaret Jetelina| Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2019 17:57:24 +0000
Running a pizza restaurant chain wasn’t Jagjit Sanghera’s plan when he immigrated from India, but it’s made his Canadian journey a delicious one
Like all good success stories, Jagjit (Sam) Sanghera has a tale worth listening to. Since he’s the owner of the Pizza Factory — one of the largest locally owned pizza chains in the Lower Mainland — I sat down to hear his amazing story over a couple of slices of his favourite pizza (the “House Special”).
Sanghera came to Canada with his father in 1982, from Talwan in India, when he was just 18 years old. He had only $50 in his pocket. Although he didn’t have much money and he didn’t speak a lot of English, he says he wasn’t scared: “Because I knew I had the love and support of my family, so I knew everything would be OK.”
Like many immigrants, they came in search of a better life, but life wasn’t always easy. They arrived in B.C. in February and went straight to Williams Lake in the province’s Cariboo region, where Sanghera’s sister lived, only to be greeted by -30⁰ Celsius temperatures, “So much snow — at least five feet, everything was white, I’d never seen anything like it before!”
Once spring came, Sanghera and his father travelled back to the Lower Mainland, where for the next couple of years he worked as a tractor driver. His father also worked on the farms, picking berries — a huge departure for a man who had spent a lifetime in India working in a good government job.
“But he was happy to do it as it was for his family,” says Sanghera.
A career in cooking
It was while Sanghera was working as a tractor driver that a chance conversation changed everything. “My uncle suggested that cooking was a good profession, but I didn’t know anything about it. So, I got a job at a family friend’s restaurant in Surrey and I worked there for a couple of years as a manager and I learned everything about cooking: seafood, Italian food, burgers and pizzas — I learned how to cook it all.”
In 1985, Sanghera opened his first Pizza Factory restaurant in Coquitlam. But the early days of forging his pizza empire were not easy. “The first couple of years of running my own business were very hard,” he says. ‘We were surviving hand-to-mouth. There were not many customers, so it wasn’t that busy, we didn’t have enough money for advertising and it was our first time running a business, so we didn’t have a lot of experience.”
But Sanghera was hard-working and determined to succeed, and over the next 20 years, he learned not only how to make a success of his flagship store, but would go on to open, own and operate 25 Pizza Factory locations all over the Lower Mainland, as well as in Kelowna, Vancouver Island and as far away as Seattle.
Hard work is key to success in hospitality industry
Sanghera says if you want to achieve your dreams, you mustn’t be afraid of hard, honest work. “There’s a lot of hard work to running any business, but especially in the food and hospitality industry. You have to be hands-on and make sure the quality of the food and customer service is excellent.”
He adds that running a profitable business involves making sacrifices. “Sometimes when my kids were younger, I was working such long hours that I didn’t always have enough time for my family, but I was trying to build a better future for them,” he says.
He remains super focused. “I try to avoid distractions — I never really watch TV — and I still work very hard. We’re open seven days a week; I don’t need a day off — what am I going to do with a day off? This is not my second home, this is my first home.”
Taking time for family and community
When he’s not cooking pizzas (plus other menu selections such as pastas and salads) and enjoying a joke or two with his customers — “we have lots of very loyal customers, some of them have been coming to us since we first opened” — Sanghera can be found spending time with his family: his wife, Kulwinder (who is also instrumental in running the business), and his adult daughter, Navjot, and son, Karan.
Although Sanghera is still very much involved in the day-to-day running of his pizza dynasty, he now makes more time for some personal passions: travelling and being an active member of his community.
Giving back is important to Sanghera, and every year he donates pizzas to community and charitable events all over the Lower Mainland, including organizing the donation of thousands of pizzas handed out at the annual Vaisakhi parades in Surrey and Vancouver.
As we finish up our delicious meal (I can see why the “House Special” is, in fact, the house special), I ask Sanghera to reflect on his life as an immigrant. He tells me that he made a good choice in choosing Canada as a place to build his life.
“I don’t think I would have been this successful in my life if I hadn’t immigrated here, so I’m very thankful to Canada,” he says. “It’s a country that has opportunities for everybody. And in Canada there are all different nationalities, different communities of people that all live together and work together — and it works well. I’m very happy to be here.”