By Madelyn Jones

The Northern Light sat down with Kelly Queen, 59, who opened the Queens of Fire Pizza trailer with his daughter, Sydney, 30, in March of 2025. The father-daughter duo from Birch Bay serves wood-fired, Neapolitan-style pizza at varying locations in Whatcom County and prides themselves on quick service and quality ingredients. The menu features six classic pizzas, each with their own twist, and a rotating special. 

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

What does a typical day look like for you?

Well, in the food and beverage business as an owner, it’s seven days a week, whether you’re open or closed, so there’s always a lot of prep going on during days off. Prepping the dough, prepping all the ingredients, cleaning, loading firewood, because it’s a wood-fired oven. We schedule everything out; we cater a lot of events, weddings, functions, and we’re also open at certain locations throughout the county wherever we’re requested. 

What do you think sets your business apart from others?

We’re the only wood-fired pizza trailer in Whatcom County. The majority of our ingredients are imported from Italy, and we serve a Neapolitan-style pizza, so we stick to the tradition. Our flour is from Italy, our cheese is from Italy, our pepperoni and salamis are from Italy; nice, clean, fresh ingredients. 

What’s hard about running a business in this day and age? 

Right now, Washington state’s very hard. Getting started was probably the most challenging; the bureaucratic red tapes, like getting inspected by Labor & Industries. We had to wait four months for that process, and that was with no issues, that’s just how long it took to wait for an inspector to come out. I had a $100,000 trailer sitting in my driveway for four months not producing any revenue, so that was a challenge. 

Most immediately will be labor rates, with increasing minimum wage. It’s killing restaurants, it’s killing small businesses. Customers don’t want to have to pay more. They’re used to paying a certain amount for a pizza or a burger, but the employer is having to pay their employees quite a bit more money, and that just doesn’t work unless you start increasing prices. One of the reasons I decided to go mobile with my own business is that I don’t have rent, I don’t have a lease, I don’t have water, sewer or garbage, I don’t have power, I don’t have any of those high expenses which are also increasing dramatically. It can be really challenging. 

We’ve definitely increased our sales over the last year, and we want to keep doing that, and keep growing, but quality has a price, and I’m more focused on quality over quantity.

What’s one thing you always keep on hand because you use it every day? 

The pizza cutter. And it’s a unique one; it’s a single, rocking blade, so we can cut pizzas fast. It’s not the typical pizza wheel cutter — those things are worthless. 

What’s your favorite community event, local tradition or hidden gem you think more people should know about?

There are a lot of good events we’ve attended locally here in Blaine. The pirate festival’s always been fun. We just came from the Lynden Whiskey Event, that was a lot of fun. It brings people from all over the county, and out of the area, too. 

We also travel as far as Skagit County. We’ve been down there for music festivals, and they have a Heritage Flight Museum that has Fly Days, where they’ll get out all the World War II aircraft and they’ll fly them around, and it’s open to the public. Sedro Woolley does a big downhill mountain bike race called Woolley Fest, and we’ve been to that.

What is your favorite thing about what you do? 

Freedom of decision making. We decide what we’re going to do, when we want to do it, how we’re going to do it. That’s the best part of being an owner, and working with my daughter. That’s something that I never thought would be a possibility. She’s 30 years old now, and she’s turned into quite the little entrepreneur, and we’re very close. We spend a minimum of five days a week together, which is fun for a dad who loves their daughter, which I do, very much. 

I’m doing my best to educate her and get her prepared to do this on her own after I’m done, because this isn’t a long-term plan for me. Retirement age is knocking on the door, so I plan to still be involved, but it’ll be turned over to her to run and expand if she wants to grow it and add another trailer or two. The demand is here. I believe we have the best product for wood-fired pizza. Not only do I feel that way, but we have a lot of our customers that feel that way as well. 

Looking to get a pie for yourself? The Queens of Fire Pizza trailer will be at Bellingham SeaFeast Sept. 26 and 27, and customers can find the trailer each week on its website, queensoffirepizza.com, or on Facebook or Instagram, @queensoffirepizza. 

This article is part of a Q&A series featuring businesses in Blaine and Birch Bay.