Each pizza has a narrative. 

Most individuals assume it’s all in regards to the elements, 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 not like any you’ve ever learn earlier than.

In the event 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 along with her mom. You’d see somebody who opened up a store, named after her, along 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 along with her father and her sobriety.

Lee’s actual story

The actual 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 along 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 wrestle with alcohol and medicines. After working in almost two dozen eating places till she was 20, she went to reside along with her mom, who had gotten a job in Florence, Italy. That’s the place her love of Italian meals took maintain. 

“That form 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 elements that are actually quite common in right now’s meals scene however she felt weren’t as well-known on the time: assume prosciutto, recent mozzarella, figs and squash blossoms. Folks went loopy for it.

Lee agreed to 0% fairness within the enterprise along 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 she or he didn’t have any fairness, she says it brought about rigidity.

 “My alcoholism form of spiraled, and I used to be kicked out of the restaurant after which spiraled additional, misplaced all the things,” she says. “All the pieces I had: household, buddies and ended up, after making an attempt to get sober for six years, going to therapy facilities and hospitals and all the things else, [I] ended up in a midway home in not the most effective a part of St. Louis, and it was form 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 received my job again on the restaurant that I created, solely this time as a waitress, which is a really humbling expertise. After which … form of received again on my toes after which determined that my solely path ahead was to determine a solution to do it by myself.”

Regardless of not having a checking account, a automobile or something essential to get a mortgage, Lee was in a position to elevate $40,000 by means of a Kickstarter marketing campaign, which allowed her to signal a lease and start to lift cash by means of IOUs from buddies. 

“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 right now.”

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, with the intention 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 daily collectively. And over the subsequent 5 years, he form of slowly has this terminal sickness the place his mind [was] shutting his physique down. However I’m caring for him and we reconcile and spend the subsequent 5 years collectively. I’ve a daughter. He spends daily along with her. After which he handed away in 2021.”

Regardless of their ups and downs, Lee’s recollections of her father stay an necessary ingredient to her success. “The profit to having somebody that noticed the world slightly 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 form of see the world that manner,” she says. “And so I by no means thought there was any problem with me not having all the issues that you’d must build a business and be a leader.”

First in frozen

In spring of 2020, when the federal government introduced restaurant shutdowns due to COVID, issues for Lee regarded as if they may implode. Her father was terminally unwell, she had a new child child and now she needed to shut her two eating places.  

“I form of go into like, okay, I’ve received to avoid wasting this complete factor,” she says. “So inside a matter of 24 hours, I received my crew and my household collectively and we prototyped a frozen pizza.”

She took images on her telephone, wrote net copy and had her net developer assist her construct a completely functioning e-commerce website 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 evening her crew would load up their vehicles and take them to an outdated meal package facility and retailer them in a group of walk-in freezers.

Quickly, Lee received a name from the CEO of an area 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 remaining was form 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 form of received all of it” she says.

Picture by Tré Parmalee