A FAMILY-owned pizza firm has tasted success at a prestigious awards ceremony.

The team from Woody’s Pizza was thrilled to scoop the Best Pizza in Scotland title at the 2018 Dine In Takeaway Awards.

Having only opened for business four years ago, it is an impressive achievement for the company, which has outlets in Johnstone, Paisley and Barrhead.

Woody’s boss Sean McCreadie said: “We were one of 10 finalists and just glad to be there, so we were all gobsmacked and humbled to win, especially as our customers put us forward for the award.

“This success is down to our talented and innovative chefs, who the judges will have seen when they visited our restaurants.

“The whole team deserve credit and we can’t say how much we value all of our staff. They are a huge part of this award.”

The first Woody’s branch opened in Paisley in 2014, with the Barrhead outlet opening two years later and the Johnstone takeaway joining the portoflio just a few months ago.

Such is their reputation, they even gained parliamentary recognition after winning the award last week.

With popularity of the brand continuing to grow, Scotland’s best pizza could be coming to more towns across the area soon.

Sean added: “We just started with the one store and it has evolved from there. We have always been passionate about food and were just sick of poor pizza. We knew we could do it better ourselves.

“The brand is established now and it’s just a case of duplicating our success, as we know that our process and products work.

“We’d be looking to make the Paisley store bigger before we did anything else, but we would certainly like to open more stores at some point.

“People value us and we have been welcomed into all of our areas, even Johnstone where we have only been for a few months.”

“We even got a lovely letter from Mhairi Black to congratulate us on the award last week which was great.”

The Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP said: “This is a well deserved award for Woody’s. The Paisley store’s pizzas got my campaign team and I through the last two general elections and many other difficult days and nights.

“It is incredible to see a small business thriving in Paisley and watching the Johnstone store have great success since opening has been fantastic. Well done to all the staff at Woody’s.”

Another winner at the Dine In Awards was Cafe Malatso, in Paisley, which was presented with the Industry Innovator prize.

Also achieving success was Paisley-based Desserts Rush, which scooped the People’s Choice Dessert Award.

The awards were presented during a ceremony at Glasgow’s Marriot Hotel.