We take a look at some of America’s Up-and-Coming Pizzerias
What makes a “rising star?” To us, eager independent pizzeria owners who display a true dedication to their craft, are trending upward with sales and rapidly growing their business — while dutifully serving their community — fit the mold. There are many rising stars in this great industry from coast to coast. Here, we highlight a few that have really impressed us.
Jillana Miller and Ahmad Butler, Owners & Chefs
at Miller Butler in San Pedro, CA
Jillana Miller and Ahmad Butler
Ages: 37 and 47
Titles: Owners & Chefs
Pizza Concept name: Miller Butler
Location: San Pedro, CA
Instagram handle(s):
@millerbutler_sp
@chefjillananadine
@mrbutler_aka_doughboi
PT: What has been key to building up steam as a caterer and pop-up pizzeria, especially in the LA market?
JM: There are several key elements. The driving forces that come to mind are consistency, authenticity and a reverence for quality. Building a business from scratch on a shoestring budget definitely requires unwavering commitment. You have to keep going, no matter what, and that’s not always easy. As a mobile business, circumstances affecting our operations can change in the blink of an eye; it’s an unfixed variable. Therefore, our consistency becomes the stabilizing fixed variable. Weather is a significant factor—on many occasions, we have worked through windstorms that blew away even weighted tents, not to mention pizza boxes, signs, and literally whole pizzas. Rain presents another challenge. It’s tough, exhausting, but it cannot be defeating. Honoring the grit as part of the process is a helpful mindset.
Consistency is imperative, not just in showing up, but also in how you show up. We aim to create a welcoming space at every event, where both our customers and our team feel comfortable. This authenticity is important to us, and we believe people can feel that.
Being a mobile business also demands a certain level of DIY marketing and self-promotion. We’re not in a static location where people can just drive by. If we don’t actively share our location and activities, people won’t find us. Social media, especially Instagram, has been invaluable in communicating with our followers and sharing our journey.
Besides just showing up, the quality of our pizza is paramount. We strive to deliver our best work, which should continually evolve. We enjoy creating unique pizzas with unexpected flavor profiles, but our dough, especially with high-quality flour like Le 5 Stagioni, is probably the star of the show.
PT: You’ve gained notoriety for your culinary creativity. What are you aiming for with your pizza?
JM: First and foremost, quality and attention to detail are crucial, whether it’s a simple classic pepperoni or one of our latest inventive creations—it must be top shelf and memorable. Expressing culture through our food is important to us. The tradition of Italian pizza serves as a great vehicle for celebrating various cultures. We’ve created Jamaican jerk pizza, a variety of Mexican pizzas, Japanese-inspired pizzas, Vietnamese-inspired pizzas, and classic French concepts. Our goal is to create pizzas that are intriguing and exciting for the palate without compromising the integrity of classic techniques.
PT: Tell us about how the power of community has helped you grow your vision?
JM: Community is vital for all small businesses. We have both an opportunity and a responsibility to contribute positively to our surroundings. For us, the community has been not only important but also a fundamental part of our growth. We started by selling pizzas in front of our house in our neighborhood, which allowed us to really connect with the fabric of our community. In those early days, when few people knew about us, it was our customers who spread the word to friends and family. It was like a domino effect; the more traffic we got, the more reasons we had to show up powerfully, and the more new customers we met. The power of community really became undeniable last year when we did an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for a catering van. Not only did our community help us raise $25,000, but they also became very active in the fundraising process. Many other small businesses donated their time and resources, which is a testament to the collective strength of a strong small business network.
The positive response that we’ve had from our community continues to inspire us to give back. We make it a point to pour back into our surrounding neighborhoods and organizations. Last year we raised over $4,000 for the Boys and Girls Club with a pasta-making class that we donated to their fundraising raffle. At this time we are not able to donate in a monetary way, however donating our time and services to these types of raffles and auctions has been a great way to support important entities around us. We’ve been able to do such for our local skatepark, a local nature preserve, a local arts organization, etc
PT: What’s next for Miller Butler?
JM: Our next big goal is to establish an official production kitchen and a small storefront of our own. We’ve worked with a combination of temporary ghost kitchens and a cottage license. As the business grows, these arrangements are becoming more challenging. We’re doing a lot with limited resources and space. Succeeding despite these limitations requires intense sacrifices. It has gotten us this far; however, our growth isn’t sustainable without a home base. Establishing this space will allow us to expand our services, continue our pop-ups and catering, and create a consistent gathering place for our community to enjoy. We look forward to the opportunity to teach more workshops, run fun new menus, produce unique dining events, and, of course, make pizza.
Marisol Doyle, Co-owner/Pizzaiola at Leña – Pizza + Bagels in Cleveland, Mississippi
Marisol Doyle
Age: 40
Title: Co-owner/Pizzaiola
Pizzeria name: Leña – Pizza + Bagels
Location: Cleveland, Mississippi
Instagram handle:
@lenapizzabagels @marisoldo
PT: What sparked your passion for pizza and bagels?
MD: I started with bagels back in 2016 when a friend of mine and I decided to make them for fun at the farmers market here in Cleveland, MS. It was a big success from the beginning, and we sold bagels every summer for five years. We even opened our own shop that lasted for a year, called Big River Bagels. It was a great introduction for me in terms of working with dough. I moved on to pizza in the summer of 2022. My husband and I went to Naples, Italy to take classes at Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana and Scuola di Pizzaiolo. I fell in love with the process, and I really appreciated my instructors’ passion for teaching Neapolitan-style pizza with simple ingredients. This education was the deciding factor in opening up a small pizzeria and bagel shop in the Mississippi Delta.
PT: With 20 years in the restaurant industry, why now and why the Mississippi Delta to open your first restaurant?
MD: I’ve been in Cleveland since 2009, and through working in the restaurant business, I’ve met a lot of people and made great friends. We bought our first home here. Both my husband and I have a special connection with Cleveland and the Mississippi Delta because we have grown here personally and professionally. I never thought I would own a restaurant, but I believe Cleveland is the perfect place to try.
PT: Your menu changes weekly? What goes into your creativity?
MD: We introduce a unique pizza special every week, a veggie option that changes from time to time, and five pizzas that always stay on the menu. Additionally, we offer a couple of salads, appetizers and desserts. Our customers really appreciate that we offer something different every week and that we try to make everything in-house. We draw inspiration from our travels, ingredients we enjoy and creative ideas on social media. My Mexican heritage also plays a big role in the specials. I often like to incorporate traditional Mexican ingredients to our pizzas. It usually takes us a day or two to come up with the perfect combination of ingredients. We test out the flavor combos to ensure our customers will like variety — and of course, we always want the end product to taste and look delicious.
PT: What’s something that you’ve learned in your first year of operation that has been indispensable to the business?
MD: The main thing is to be flexible. I started with a list of plans and learned that it’s okay to be open to different ideas and solutions. For example, I had a menu planned, but it just didn’t work out with how the flow of the dinner service panned out. We were able to make changes throughout the year to better fit our customers and improve our efficiency. I had to learn to be okay with changing plans on the fly to better the restaurant.
Carlos Estarita, Chef/Owner at Vice City Pizza in West Kendall (Miami, FL)
Carlos Estarita
Age: 31
Title: Chef/Owner
Pizzeria Name: Vice City Pizza
Location: West Kendall (Miami, FL)
Instagram Handle: Vice.city.pizza
PT: What makes a great pizza?
CE: What makes a great a pizza, to me at least, are the obvious things: the quality of the tomato, cheese and other ingredients. But when you really get into it, it’s all about the dough flavor and texture.
PT: What is the pizza scene like in Miami?
CE: Miami has grown an immense amount! It’s almost unreal to see the changes in the past decade. I’m not necessarily worried about making a name for myself, per se, since I’m more of a reserved family man. But more for the pizzeria, I think we’re doing that by just trying to make the best possible pizza that we’re capable of and becoming a neighborhood staple.
PT: What took you from fine dining to pizza?
CE: When the pandemic started, I was living in DC opening two restaurants with Zuma Group. Everything came to a stop, and I randomly wanted to start learning about dough, like most of the country, oddly enough. Eventually I came back home to Miami and didn’t really want to work in fine dining any longer — or work for anyone else — so I started my pop up and eventually partnered up with an old friend/local restaurateur, Jorgie Ramos.
PT: What else would you like to add?
CE: The pizza scene in Miami is insane right now! You have some amazing pizzerias here, places like Miami Slice, Square Pie City and Stanzione. I was fortunate enough to join this local “pizza movement” at the right time. My pizza experience is still fairly green, but I feel a lot of my overall fine dining experience and discipline has made the transition a bit easier. But Vice City Pizza has honestly been a dream come true. Getting to open my first restaurant in my old neighborhood where I grew up is amazing. Something we do a little different from most, or I guess other local pizzerias, is we have your classic pizzas, but we definitely push the edge with toppings. Sometimes it can definitely get “gimmicky,” but I don’t mind it as long as the guests enjoy them, and it also allows us to truly represent the Latin American flavors present in Miami. We do things like a Cuban Mojo Pork Pizza, the Colombiana, Birria, Al Pastor and thankfully Detroit style lends itself extremely well to pretty much anything you throw at it.
Thomas Gian Ardito, CEO at Brooklyn DOP in Brooklyn, NY
Thomas Gian Ardito
Age: 35
Title: CEO
Pizzeria name: Brooklyn DOP
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Instagram handle: @brooklyndop
PT: We hear you began as a pop-up. Tell us about that experience?
TA: As a gym owner during the pandemic, I essentially had three choices after we were forced to go into remote training (which cut revenue into one-fourth of what it had previously been): pay myself, pay my landlord, or pay my employees. I chose to pay my employees. After all, they were with me from the beginning and stuck with me through the pandemic. But I then had to figure out how I would pay my own bills. I always had been baking bread at home and was very much into the science of dough and used to even make pizza from 2004-2008 when I was 18-22. I had been experimenting since 2017 on applying bread techniques to pizza and discovered that basically this is what all the bleeding-edge places were doing, more or less, as well. In April 2020, I started putting pies for sale on my personal Instagram after constantly sharing pics of my experiments for months. It went from 12 pizzas on Friday from 5-9 p.m., to over 35 from 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Brooklyn DOP was born on 19th Street in Brooklyn and I had to upgrade my home oven with a custom made, ½-inch thick, 85-pound steel plate to adequately retain the heat to go pie after pie.
My cumpa, and now partner, Jason D’Amelio — who is also a passionate home cook and Financial Advisor by trade — decided he could use a pandemic distraction and joined me. We sat people on the porch and served wine, blasted Italian Hip Hop or Freestyle and expressed ourselves as people. I discovered something that really allowed me to be myself, connect with my roots and become an artistic expression while satisfying the scientific aspect that I always crave.
PT: What made you want to enter the pizza realm in Brooklyn, where there is no shortage of iconic pizzerias?
TA: I think a unique selling proposition is something every business needs. And, in Brooklyn, one would think pizza is not so unique. The proposition here becomes quality, reason, dedication and connecting people to what they love or remember about pizza. I always strove to make pizza as good as the pizza people remembered as kids. We remember things in an ideal way, and the strongest characteristics stick out in our minds.
The challenge becomes bringing those things into the present, and topping what we remember them as. The melty cheese and crispy, pleasantly chewy crust that crackles under your teeth … a bright tomato sauce with enough tang and sweetness to make you crave the next bite… I am confident I can compete based on that. Making pizza the old-fashioned way, with your heart.
PT: You’ve made a name for yourself and are standing out in the most competitive pizza crowd possible. How?
TA: When Brooklyn DOP began, I knew that even based on our name, we were declaring ourselves the NWO of the pizza game. Making a statement and consistently backing it up with a great product has allowed us to always be in the conversation. The hype was actually real. That being said, it is standing on the shoulders of giants that has given me the confidence to see that I can innovate and deliver. Mentors like Andrew Scudera, John Arena and many others who authored books I have read, have made this vision seem very possible to me from the beginning. The trick is in the “sprezzatura”, the art of making something very complicated look effortless. Behind the scenes, it is a very small staff of passionate and hard-working counter people, pizza makers and prep cooks who make Brooklyn DOP a competitor in this tough market.
Our customer base has followed us from an apartment doing sidewalk pickups week after week, telling their friends and family. These people now do the same for our pizzeria, and have stood with us through every experiment, mistake and success. This is a pandemic story of two native New Yorkers investing in this city and putting it on the line when other people had abandoned it. An outright refusal to succumb to circumstance and always keeping your eye open for an opportunity is something that our relatives instilled in us by emigrating to this country from Italy. They gave us an unfair advantage in that they showed us that all we need to do is remain prepared to act on our dreams. When preparation meets opportunity, success is inevitable. That is why their pictures adorn our walls. That is the essence of Brooklyn DOP and why we will continue to be in the Brooklyn Pizza Playoffs year after year, with the best of the best, proudly and gratefully.
Joseph Charles, Owner at Rock City Pizza in Boston, MA
Joseph Charles
Age: 35
Title: Owner
Pizzeria Name: Rock City Pizza
Location: Boston, Ma | Randolph, Ma
Instagram Handle: @Rockcitypizzza
PT: How did you survive the pandemic as you were a young pizzeria at the time?
JC: The pandemic was very hard for my business because we are located in a neighborhood that is surrounded by universities, and college students make up the majority of our population. That was only the beginning, though. A lot of catering went out the window and hasn’t come back with a lot of corporate employees not coming into the office anymore. We had to raise awareness that we were still open and that it was safe to come in. So, we began bringing pizzas to local hospitals and anywhere we could get access to people. We had a takeout window, so we gave customers the option to physically come in or just get takeout from the window. As far as inflation goes, just like everyone else we had to raise our prices. We did, however, switch up the menu slightly and offer smaller portions so it could reflect a less expensive price point.
PT: Tell us about your affiliation with the Boston Celtics? We found that very interesting.
JC: I received the Power Forward Grant from the Boston Celtics in 2022 and we have been working together on small things here and there. Through their partnership with VistaPrint a lot of opportunities have presented themselves, and it has done wonders for my business. I recently have been in a commercial with VistaPrint that ran throughout the NBA Playoffs, and it absolutely blew my business up!
PT: What other factors have led to your success in the pizza business?
JC: Advertising and marketing your authentic self are key. People know who I am and what to expect when they come into my places. (We serve) good quality, top-of-the-line products and dishes. Putting yourself out there so that people know you have something different to offer is important. Once your customers know, they will spread the word. You also have to be present. Whether that’s in the community, or in your store, people have to see that you’re involved.
PT: What can you tell us about your experience running a black-owned business?
JC: My experience leading a black-owned business has been one of many ups and downs. I don’t really like the classification of black owned. I own and run a pizza restaurant like everyone else. Yes, I happen to be black. 10 years ago, when I started Rock City Pizza no one knew it was black owned and no one called it a black-owned pizza shop. They just came to Rock City Pizza. There have been times when vendors or people would come looking for the owner and I would come out from my office and they would say: ‘We are looking for the owner, not the manager” and that’s the part I dislike. People don’t expect a black person like myself to own a pizza restaurant, and I ask why? I know the business is dominated by Europeans, but anyone can do anything they put their mind to. Rock City Pizza is on the rise, so ready or not here we come!
