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Everyone has a favorite food. When I was a kid, it was Mrs. King’s spaghetti (my Cub Scout den mother). My current food passion is for wood-fired oven pizza.

Not far from my home there is a bar that makes this kind of pizza and it is almost the stuff of urban legend. Babe’s is not a typical bar & restaurant mind you – it is a true Western PA dive bar. Sometime in the last decade Billy, the proprietor, decided to install a wood-fired pizza oven and now he is known all around for his amazing artisan pizza creations. Ever since I was introduced to wood-fired pizza I have wanted one of these ovens for my home. I had been researching how to build one (outdoors), however I located a guy in Ohio that imports the kits direct from Italy. So last weekend, Teri and I took a road trip!

John, the wood-fired pizza oven purveyor is a gentleman in his 70’s who emigrated from Italy with his family when he was a boy. John was generous with his time and his stories! We sat on his back porch and drank wine for hours – his was a fascinating story. As a business person and an entrepreneur, his message was you have to take chances - that is how success is created.

Bill Tuscano took a chance when he decided to start a wholesale insurance agency with little capitol and one employee. That was a risk that paid off. We still take chances today – when an opportunity comes our way, sometimes we just have to go for it. You could even go so far as to say, “We are in the risky business”.

As we head down the year-end stretch, I have asked my team to put a big push on for getting Professional Liability risks in the door to quote. Professional is a class of business which we have excellent markets for and have created some great relationships with our carriers. The Casualty & Professional team can handle everything from Allied Medical risks to Technology, to Miscellaneous (‘everystuff’) Professional and we'd really like the opportunity to work for you. Send us a renewal application on a current account you write and see if we can’t help.

The best way to send in commercial new business is to email the application to submissions@tuscano.com. This will hit our clearance system without a delay. If you want to direct the application to a specific underwriter, then just add the underwriter’s email address to the cc line when you send it or you can address the cover memo to the underwriter and that too will help us to know who you wish to work with. You can also email the application directly to the underwriter, but that may delay the handling of the app as it will have to be manually re-directed to our login and clearance team. If you prefer to FAX your apps to us, please fax them to our dedicated new business fax line, 724-213-9119, and be sure to add the underwriter’s name to your cover memo.

If you send new business to us without directing it to a specific underwriter, we will assign the business to a Tuscano underwriter who specializes in that line of business for you. Again, all of this is still contingent on the fact that our underwriters work on product teams (transportation, casualty, property, etc) and they will only work on business that falls within their team’s area of expertise.

Ultimately, we appreciate your business and look to continuously improve our services – thanks for taking a chance on us!