“The Plan” & How We Got Here
How Grandpa Pizzi's Place Came to Be
Karen’s Version
As we rapidly approach opening day, I’d like to share a few things that keep me up at night.
The day that Pizzi’s closed was heartbreaking for all of us. The restaurant survived for 84 years, one of the oldest pizzerias in the country. As most of you know, we live just two blocks away (in a house that grandpa Pizzi built) and seeing it daily was a constant reminder of the heartache.
Fast forward to the building being listed for sheriff sale. At this point, I had been retired from teaching for several years, and the furthest thing from my mind or the mind of Mark, Taylor, or Alec, was to buy the building. All of us have been making pizza for years, with the recipe from my grandparents, but never in a restaurant. So, in a leap of faith, we went to bid and came home as the new owners. *Note: remind me NEVER to put myself through the stress of a sheriff’s sale again!*
The bottom line is that this was not the plan, but we are honored to be doing this for our family name. We are extremely nervous. We are ALL new to this. We will have a new staff, a new Point of Sale system, new to all rules & regulations, etc. We WILL make mistakes as we all learn.
We promise to give 10,000% every day - and we’ll work endlessly to get it right. Please be patient with us as we learn this new world. We hope you love our family’s pizza recipe just as much as we have over the years.
Taylor’s Version
Uffda… where to begin?
Okay. Well, my plan began with attending UW-Madison. I had fallen in love with the campus and atmosphere over the many times we had gone there as a family. I had plenty of reasons not to go that far away from home, including a long-term relationship at the time and the fact that going out-of-state for college is quite a debt sentence. But, I felt that I needed to follow my gut, give myself distance to figure out who I was and what it was that I wanted to do with my life.
Fast forward a few years - My life after college included living with my boyfriend (now, husband), Alec, in Minneapolis, MN (hence the “uffda,” don’t ya know?). I had graduated with a bachelors degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders and had landed the perfect practitioner job as a licensed Hearing Instrument Specialist, testing hearing, cleaning ears, programming, servicing, and selling hearing aids. In the span of about 18 months between 2018 and the beginning of 2020, I was newly married, in our first house, and had my first true career in a bustling area of the country. It really felt as though our feet were firmly planted below us and all was well.
After less than 6 months in my hearing clinic, the Covid-19 pandemic started.
In early Spring of 2020, the world turned upside-down. Overwhelmed by everything going on in the world, concerned for my patients’ safety, the safety of my (then) pregnant sister, the health of my immune-compromised mother back home, furloughed for months, heartbroken by all of the tragedy and aftershocks that occurred in downtown Minneapolis surrounding George Floyd; it all felt traumatic beyond words and never-ending. It was a tremendously difficult time for the whole world, and was a challenging time for our mental health and wellbeing. My husband, Alec, and I began to seriously discuss moving to a smaller town as we weren’t really taking full advantage of living next to a big city, and had discovered just how introverted we really are while in lockdown. One town kept coming back up in our search: my small, lake-side hometown of Conneaut, Ohio.
Fast forward a few more years, and I’m living with my husband and our dogs on a beautiful, old property on the shores of Lake Erie. Not a move I EVER imagined I’d be making when leaving back in 2011, but exactly what I needed in 2021. I began taking small business classes while Al worked remotely from home and started drawing up ideas for a small shop that my mom and I could own together. We heard about a sheriff’s sale that was coming up in the near future that might be interesting to attend - the property at 709 Harbor Street, where Pizzi Cafe once stood.
And just like that, the plan changed yet again.