Story by Alexandra Mortati | Photos courtesy of Amanda Sfent
This article is part of PMQ Pizza’s “12 Women to Watch“ series, in partnership with Women in Pizza and in celebration of Women’s Pizza Month. It’s an expanded version of the profile on Amanda Senft featured in PMQ’s March 2026 issue.
A marketing graduate from Florida State who worked in live event production for seven years, Amanda Senft, co-owner of Leonardi’s Pizza in North Palm Beach, Florida, never considered pizza as a career. “I would never use the word ‘foodie’ to describe myself, but I always loved checking out local restaurants and grabbing hard-to-get reservations,” she says. “Falling into the food industry wasn’t totally out of left field, but I didn’t think I’d end up working in it. But when COVID happened, I thought, ‘Let me pivot.’”
Born and raised in Florida, Senft was also ready for a geographical change. After moving to New York, where she worked for an agency, she met Kris Leonardi, her now-partner and co-owner, on a visit back home. “I started going back and forth between Williamsburg and Florida,” Senft recalls. “He was a firefighter and mentioned that when he got his pension, he wanted to open a pizzeria. Meanwhile, I was living two blocks away from some of the greatest pizzerias you can find—in Brooklyn. Being in Williamsburg, next to some of the best pizza on Earth, alters your brain chemistry. Kris’s dream went from post-retirement to ‘Why don’t we try it now?’ That’s when I moved back to Florida.”
The Learning and Experimenting Phase
While Senft relocated to North Palm Beach, Leonardi was starting to experiment with pizza. “It can be a painful experience,” she says. “It took so many months to get to a place where we were like, ‘This tastes and looks good.’ We ended up removing our oven completely and putting in a Baker’s Pride deck oven in our apartment.”
Deep in the learning and experimenting phase, Leonardi and Senft dedicated generous time to their craft. And it wasn’t long before others discovered what the couple was doing and started asking for pizza. “We had a full-blown pizza business operating out of our apartment,” Senft says. “That is when I started taking the reins on running the business. I created a Calendly link and began coordinating with customers. We turned it into a drive-thru concept. It became the foundation for Leonardi’s Pizza today.”
Senft started an Instagram page to document their pizza journey, while Leonardi lent his last name to the business and served as pizza maker. “We started working on the branding and created the logo and artistic concepts,” Senft says. “Everything is a team effort and has to be approved by both of us. They say, ‘Don’t mix business with pleasure,’ but for us, it’s been easy.”
It wasn’t long before their Instagram account started to gain a strong following. “In March 2024, a couple of our Reels took off on Instagram,” Senft says. “We went from two to three thousand very local followers trying to get pizza out of the apartment to this being on the internet. It took us by surprise. Trying to continue doing that, while both having full-time jobs and this newfound internet attention, made it difficult, and we had to shut down after five months. We took a hiatus to think about next steps, and a brick and mortar seemed like the next big move.”
Still not fully committed to the idea, the couple casually looked for a place. “We started looking at leases in a non-urgent manner with the mindset, ‘If the right place presents itself…,’” Senft says. “Our dream setup would have been a gas station—something chill, but not a full-blown restaurant. But someone tried to get our lease out from under us, which forced us to act fast. We looked at the space and had one minute to decide. We’re in the area we wanted to be in, it had a decent layout we felt like we could work with, the kitchen didn’t need much work, and the time was right. We’re living below our means and don’t have kids, so it felt like, now or never. Everything was set up. If we didn’t do it now, then when? Sometimes, you don’t want to overthink, and you have to close your eyes and take the leap. We have each other, we have the product, we have the following on IG….”
‘Let’s Be Locals Together’
An Instagram following didn’t mean guaranteed customers, but taking risks—then being vulnerable in revealing to followers their entire story from the beginning—resonated with their audience, as did the pizzeria’s concept. “We didn’t want it to feel like a traditional pizzeria, but more like an expression of who we are,” Senft explains. “I think that was our same concept for our recipes, too. We weren’t reinventing the wheel, but we wanted to create the pizzas that we wanted to eat that we can’t find in this area. We wanted to bring back the old-school New York bakery.”
To realize their vision, the couple gutted the building and started from scratch. “It was a mix: Operationally, what do we need, and creatively, what do we want?” Senft says. “We met in the middle of both things to bring our vision to life. We decided to commission an artist for our walls—every single corner of our shop is curated and handpicked. Not a single detail was left uncustomized.”
Leonardi’s opened its doors in January 2025, and since then, the couple has been hard at work, learning and growing past their humble beginnings in the pizza industry.
The product also took a while to craft from scratch—two years, in fact, to perfect the pizza recipe, made with a 48- to 72-hour cold ferment, housemade sauce and an artisanal twist. The couple’s goal for Leonardi’s: Become the local neighborhood joint.
“We hope one day, when kids grow up, they want their first summer job to be in the shop, and then someday, they bring their own kids to the shop,” Senft says. “I’m in the front, and Kris is in the back every day. People come in and see us, and we chat. We had regulars within months. It’s become the thing we wanted it to be this quickly because people related to our story. Even on hard days, we feel like we are on track.”
The couple is also intentional with every aspect of the shop, including the menu, ingredients and design. “We want it to feel cozy and real and bright,” Senft explains. “We want to talk to you. We live here, too. Let’s be locals together. It’s all-encompassing, and we wanted to do this in a way that feels right and that we are proud of. We spend more time at the shop than we do at home, so we want it to feel like home to us, too. We couldn’t be more grateful for our community’s support and open arms. We are lucky to have created this thing that is so young but still has been so gratifying and people are so supportive of and inspired by.”
And, for Senft, being a woman in a male-dominated field is nothing new. “I come from a background of being one of the only women in the room, so none of this is really new to me,” she says. “Sometimes it catches me off-guard when someone assumes Kris is the sole owner, and it’s like, ‘Well, we are the owners.’ I don’t think people mean any harm. It’s the nature of the world we live in. I think that women are so amazing. We can do so much with our eyes closed and seem so nonchalant. I’m doing 30 million tasks at once and make it look easy. It’s not easy what we are doing, but we make it look easy.”
For others starting out in the pizza business, Amanda’s advice echoes her own journey. “Do it now,” she says. “Don’t wait. Don’t question yourself. I think we, as people, and we as women specifically, are constantly, whether conscious of it or not, are questioning if we belong in a certain space, and what our role in that space should be. Don’t question it—you are exactly where you need to be. Don’t question your role and who you are. You know who you are. Keep pushing yourself and growing into that person.”
Alexandra Mortati is the marketing director for Orlando Foods and founder of Women In Pizza, a not-for-profit organization that empowers women in the pizza industry to share their stories, display their talents, inspire innovations, and connect with one another and the world. The article has been edited from the original version that appeared on the Instagram account for Women In Pizza. Click here to learn more about the organization.
