12/08/2026
🎉 8,000 OF YOU?! 🎉
We just hit 8,000 followers, and to use Maria's favourite word... that IS WILD, and we are SO grateful.
So for everyone who's new here, we'd thought we'd do a quick intro, if you've been around for a while, skip down a couple of paragraphs to see what we're bringing to you over the coming year.
💚🤍❤
We're Maria & Jarrad, the couple behind Apulia Woodfired — Mackay's only Neapolitan Pizza outfit, the drivers behind and amateur renovators and soon to be restaurateurs of the beautiful Church restaurant in North Mackay.
👨🍳Meet Chef Jarrad — the man behind the menu, the truck, and everything else haha! Quality, premium ingredients and combinations that just work is his whole philosophy. He's also our chippy, plumber, trailer fixer-upper, aircon cleaner, and the only human on the team who can reverse our trailer without breaking something. A one-man band, basically.
🙋♀️ Maria — the face you'll meet when you roll up to the trailer. She gets Jarrad where he needs to be (with the trailer, on time, in one piece — no small feat), can talk your ear off about pizza with genuine authority, but cannot cook a single one of them. Not her department. What she can do is remember your order, ask about your day, and genuinely care about the humans behind every wedding we cater, and every interaction at the trailer.
So what's next for us?
🔥 Apulia Woodfired — more exciting chef specials, and a first-class experience we reckon Mackay deserves.
🥪 Paget is getting The Italian Kitchen" — breakfast and lunch, fresh focaccia sandwiches, standout coffee (yes, a tiramisu coffee might be happening), and service to actually start your day right.
🏛️ The Church restaurant renovation — last but definitely not least, we're bringing a whole new venue to life. Watch this space.
📹 Launching "Tradie Chef" on YouTube — follow the real journey: running two businesses, renovating a restaurant, riding out a cost-of-living crisis, and somehow still remembering to eat, sleep, and hang out with our dog Solar.
Thanks for being here for it. Every pizza you buy, tiramisu you devour, comment on socials, text messages of encouragement, weddings you book — it all means we can keep doing what we love, and we'll be forever grateful for that.
Maria & Jarrad
