VIDEO: Flatbread Keeps It Local With Pizza, Beer and Charity

Flatbread Company aims to serve Bedford and area towns in more ways than one, starting with focusing on making pizza with local, organic ingredients and ending with working with local charities and fundraisers to give back to the communty. 

The company also holds many fundraisers for Burlington organizations.

Manager Joe Sylva said it starts with the sauce, which Flatbread prepares in a way unlike any other pizza joint in the area. 

"We actually cook the sauce down with an organic vegetable maraquoi with red wine, fresh herbs and organic diced tomatoes, and you cook for about four hours over a wood fire in a seasoned cast iron cauldron," Sylva said. "It's just like you can't get that anywhere else."

In addition to taking the time to make their sauce with local, organic ingredients, Flatbread tries to give their customers options in terms of toppings that they wouldn't be able to enjoy elsewhere, according to Sylva. 

"We'll use Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery Goat Cheese, which is the best goat cheese around, and it's local," Sylva said. "A lot of people say they don't like goat cheese and then they try that goat cheese and they say it's delicious because it's creamy because it doesn't have that processed goat cheese flavor."

Flatbread's efforts to keep things local goes past their pizza, as Sylva prides himself on the variety of local, craft beer the restaurant has on tap.

"We do have a lot of great beers, but we try to keep it local," Sylva said. "We've got twelve different taps, they're all changing, they're all local and they're all craft brewed in small batches."

Sylva said his own taste in beer, which tends to favor more hoppy brews, shapes what kinds of beers Flatbread has on tap. 

"I love hoppy beers personally so I think we tend to steer in that direction. I feel like the hoppy beers go so well with pizza, the crisp refreshing floral flavor of it," Sylva said. "We do have some great malty options, we don't really have any Belgian on because I'm not really a huge fan of Belgians."

Beyond serving the community with tasty pizza and beer, Flatbread focuses on giving back to the Bedford community and other local organizations by hosting local charities and fundraisers at the restaurant every week, Sylva said. 

Flatbread's Seven A.O.K program is another staple of the restaurant's effort to give back to the Bedford community not only on a weekly basis, but a daily one as well, according to Sylva.

"Another program we do is called the Seven A.O.K.s, and as the manager of the restaurant it's my job to try to do a different random act of kindness everyday," Sylva said.

"Whether it be donating a gift card to a local charity of fundraiser, just dropping pizzas off somewhere or sending someone down to help unload a truck at a local food pantry."

Sylva himself grew up in Bedford, and said he feels that the sentiment of giving back is something that is present throughout the Bedford community. 

"It's a great community, I grew up in Bedford, I went to high school and elementary school in Bedford, and I think it's always been a great town, there's always been a lot of involvement."