Each pizza has a narrative.
Most individuals assume it’s all concerning the substances, however the success of a restaurant depends on a lot greater than sauce and crust.
These making the pizza have tales, too. Some, like Katie Lee, have a novel in contrast to any you’ve ever learn earlier than.
Should you visited any of her three Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Osteria places in St. Louis or learn any of the media protection about her, you’d get a narrative a couple of younger lady who lived in Italy together with her mom. You’d see somebody who opened up a store, named after her, together with her dad. You’d see Instagram-worthy pizza, salads and cocktails. You’d see all of the hallmarks of the American dream.
Till Lee misplaced all of it: her fame, her enterprise, her relationship together with her father and her sobriety.
Lee’s actual story
The true story isn’t on Lee’s web site, because it’s one she was by no means prepared to inform—till now: 17 years after she first opened Katie’s together with her dad. This time, she has 100% possession of her namesake restaurant.
Lee dropped out of highschool at 15 – a results of by no means feeling like she slot in, coupled with a battle with alcohol and medicines. After working in almost two dozen eating places till she was 20, she went to stay together with her mom, who had gotten a job in Florence, Italy. That’s the place her love of Italian meals took maintain.
“That type of lit the hearth with me,” she says. “And clearly, I had a ton of expertise in eating places, and now I had this ardour round meals. So I got here again to St. Louis, struggled extra with my alcoholism, however was in a position to put collectively a marketing strategy, write a menu after which open the primary Katie’s Pizzeria in 2008. I used to be 26, and I opened it with my father.”
She was utilizing substances that at the moment are quite common in at present’s meals scene however she felt weren’t as well-known on the time: assume prosciutto, recent mozzarella, figs and squash blossoms. Individuals went loopy for it.
Lee agreed to 0% fairness within the enterprise together with her dad retaining possession as a result of he put up $50,000 to open the restaurant.
When her idea began to see success and he or she didn’t have any fairness, she says it prompted stress.
“My alcoholism type of spiraled, and I used to be kicked out of the restaurant after which spiraled additional, misplaced all the pieces,” she says. “Every little thing I had: household, pals and ended up, after attempting to get sober for six years, going to remedy facilities and hospitals and all the pieces else, [I] ended up in a midway home in not the perfect a part of St. Louis, and it was type of the final place I may go as a result of I had nothing left. And I lived there for six months and have been sober ever since … I obtained my job again on the restaurant that I created, solely this time as a waitress, which is a really humbling expertise. After which … type of obtained again on my toes after which determined that my solely path ahead was to determine a method to do it by myself.”
Regardless of not having a checking account, a automotive or something essential to get a mortgage, Lee was in a position to increase $40,000 by a Kickstarter marketing campaign, which allowed her to signal a lease and start to boost cash by IOUs from pals.
“I raised about $300,000,” she says, “Opened the restaurant, elevated the idea, added handmade pastas, an even bigger house … paid everybody again inside two years and started constructing what everybody sees at present.”
Her father’s influence
Whereas Lee was rebuilding her total life, behind the scenes her father, who had epilepsy, was getting worse. Due to his mind trauma, he needed to have his hippocampus eliminated, which created reminiscence points.
“I had this very unhappy and uncomfortable state of affairs the place, to be able to save him, I used to be going to have to depart him….” she says. “He was destroying the enterprise together with his mind injury and dementia … so I’m going and construct my enterprise and he shutters his. However the excellent news is that the model survives, the restaurant survives. I start to construct an empire, I start to construct a life … we had a couple of six [to 12 month period] the place it was simply traumatic… after which we reconnect after which spend each day collectively. And over the subsequent 5 years, he type of slowly has this terminal sickness the place his mind [was] shutting his physique down. However I’m taking good care of him and we reconcile and spend the subsequent 5 years collectively. I’ve a daughter. He spends each day together with her. After which he handed away in 2021.”
Regardless of their ups and downs, Lee’s reminiscences of her father stay an essential ingredient to her success. “The profit to having somebody that noticed the world a bit bit in a different way or had these outlandish concepts about what he may try this gave [us] the chance, my brothers and I, to type of see the world that manner,” she says. “And so I by no means thought there was any subject with me not having all the issues that you’d must construct a enterprise and be a pacesetter.”
First in frozen
In spring of 2020, when the federal government introduced restaurant shutdowns due to COVID, issues for Lee seemed as if they may implode. Her father was terminally in poor health, she had a new child child and now she needed to shut her two eating places.
“I type of go into like, okay, I’ve obtained to avoid wasting this entire factor,” she says. “So inside a matter of 24 hours, I obtained my crew and my household collectively and we prototyped a frozen pizza.”
She took pictures on her cellphone, wrote internet copy and had her internet developer assist her construct a totally functioning e-commerce web site in 72 hours.
She bought 50,000 pizzas within the first six weeks.
Lee turned her eating places’ eating rooms into meeting strains and her cooks hand-stretched the dough and wooden fired every pizza, then sealed them with a cryovac machine and froze them on-site. She purchased used standup freezers for the meeting, then at night time her crew would load up their vehicles and take them to an previous meal equipment facility and retailer them in a set of walk-in freezers.
Quickly, Lee obtained a name from the CEO of a neighborhood grocery chain, Dierbergs, who helped her put a crew collectively to scale manufacturing.
“We get beneath…inspection, we get into all the Dierbergs and the remainder was type of historical past….” Lee says. “We slowly, over the subsequent 4 years, begin rising after which within the final two years, [have been] rising 100% yearly. We’re now in 800 doorways throughout the nation. We’re increasing our line of meals to shelf-stable sauces and pastas…[as well as] olive oil and balsamic that we’re importing from Italy.”
Lee is constructing her fourth restaurant and speaking to companions about increasing to different cities. She additionally has her personal frozen pizza manufacturing plant. “Usually, a startup doesn’t have the infrastructure and the expertise that we do, and we’ve type of obtained all of it” she says.
Photograph by Tré Parmalee
Stefanie Ellis is a meals and journey author, in addition to PR strategist and content material creator for her personal firm. She has bylines in The Washington Publish, BBC Journey, Consuming Nicely, Saveur and extra, and her purchasers are thought leaders in finance, branding, healthcare and the meals and beverage house, with a former NBA participant and duct work firm thrown in for good measure. You will get in contact at stefanieellis.com or on Instagram @40somethingunicorn.
Discussion about this post