By Charlie Pogacar
Mother Pizzeria is a rare breed: an upscale, full-service pizzeria that was built to scale. From the beginning, the three partners who run Mother Pizzeria designed all of the restaurant’s branding and protocols with the intent to grow the concept—even in different formats.
Having opened the first Mother Pizzeria location in Newport, Rhode Island, in 2023, the ownership group will now open its second location in a brand new food hall, Track 15, in Providence, Rhode Island, in the coming months. The food hall is a part of a $25 million renovation to the historic Union Station building in downtown Providence.
“When we designed Mother Pizzeria, we kind of had this thought in mind that it should be built in a way that it could be replicated,” said Kevin O’Donnell, who owns Mother Pizzeria alongside Lauren Schaefer—the restaurant’s operating partner—and Executive Chef Kyle Stamps. “We’ve been thinking about this since before we opened: What would a second location look like? We feel like we finally found a groove now and established consistency with the product and thought this was a great opportunity to grow.”
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O’Donnell added that Mother Pizzeria’s growth will be deliberate and well thought out. There are no growth goals or preordained number of locations the concept will ultimately land on. But building a solid foundation will give Mother Pizzeria flexibility for the future.
Building the brand that way, and the consistency that comes along with it, has already achieved results: In June, Mother Pizzeria earned a spot on 50 Top Pizza’s list of Excellent Pizzerias in the U.S. The pizzeria—a decidedly homegrown venture—also won three different Rhode Island Monthly awards: Best New Pizza in Rhode Island, Best New Restaurant in Newport and Best Pizza in Newport.
The Mother Pizzeria Origin Story
To understand how Mother Pizzeria came to be, you have to know a bit more about O’Donnell, Stamps and Schaefer, each of whom has deep ties to Rhode Island. O’Donnell and Stamps met as teenagers working under Chef Walter Slater at the now-defunct Junction Pizzeria in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. O’Donnell and Stamps credit Slater—who was a young, up-and-coming chef himself when he opened Junction Pizzeria—for mentoring them.
“He just taught us so many of the basics,” O’Donnell said. “Like even how to be an adult, how to have a job, to show up and stay committed and be responsible. And he also taught us the beginning skills of how to make pizza dough, how to work the oven. He was super passionate and just really cared, and that rubbed off on us.”
O’Donnell, Stamps and Schaefer share a love of hospitality, and each brings their own varied experiences to Mother Pizzeria. For example, Schaefer—who grew up regularly visiting family in Newport—boasts a long hospitality career, but also worked in the fields of photography, advertising and event planning. When she met Stamps and O’Donnell through work, she was itching to get back into hospitality. She was a perfect front-of-house mastermind to pair with Stamps and O’Donnell, who have excelled in the culinary arts both inside and outside of Rhode Island.
O’Donnell’s education and career took him on multiple trips and stays in Italy, where he reconnected with his heritage and immersed himself in Italian cuisine. O’Donnell had kept in touch with Stamps after their stint together at Junction Pizzeria. When O’Donnell took over as chef of the Salty Pig, an upscale pizza and pasta bar in Boston, Stamps was one of his first calls.
O’Donnell opened Guisto, an Italian concept, in 2020. He did so with Stamps and Schaefer in mind: Stamps would manage the concept’s back of house on opening day, while Schaefer would run the front of house.
One Part Naples, One Part Rome
With Guisto having established itself as one of the best restaurants in Newport, O’Donnell, Schaefer and Stamps began the research and development phase for would become Mother Pizzeria. Using naturally fermented sourdough, they created a neo-Neapolitan style of pie that they all loved, but there was one issue. It didn’t stay crispy enough to be offered as a to-go product. Would soggy to-go pizzas give the restaurant a bad rap? So they made a creative choice: to offer neo-Neapolitan pizza for dine-in customers and Roman-style pizza for takeout.
“We didn’t want to say ‘no’ to people who wanted to take pizza to go,” O’Donnell said. “Obviously, a big part of pizza culture is eating it at home on a couch. And the space we ended up taking over was first built as a Panera Bread, and they had this beautiful triple-deck pizza or bread oven…so we ultimately decided to do this second style of pizza using the same sourdough and great flour but with a modified recipe.”
Though the menu changes seasonally, takeout customers can typically choose from Roman-style pizzas like the It’s All Greek to Me (artichokes, sardinian feta, taggiasca olives, semi-dried tomato, spinach and roasted garlic) and the Q.F.P. (mozzarella, fontina, provolone, Parmesan, parsley and roasted garlic). Dine-in customers have Neapolitan alternatives, including the Margherita and the E.M.T. (fried eggplant, tomato agro dolce, mozzarella, orange zest and mint ricotta salata).
The concept also boasts a cutting-edge beverage program, with craft beer and Italian-centric cocktails and wines. The wine program includes low-intervention wines—or wine made with minimal amounts of intervention from the winemaker—and offers each by the glass, carafe and bottle. The beer list rotates seasonally and is sourced from local brewers where possible.
A Holistic Approach to Growth
As far as how Mother Pizzeria organized itself for growth from the start, O’Donnell breaks it down into two buckets. First, all of the branding and consistency of the product was designed to scale.
“I think branding is a really important thing,” O’Donnell said. “Whether it’s with marketing efforts or logos and color schemes. We wanted everything to be styled but not too styled. We wanted a cohesiveness to our protocols and procedures that set us up for a really consistent product, both from a food and service standpoint.”
The second bucket would be the structure of the company itself. Having three partners with skin in the game made it easier to visualize what it would look like to open a second location. While one person can’t be in two places at once, three people can cover a lot of ground.
But that’s just the top end of the restaurant’s structure. All three partners have prioritized employee development and buy-in, too. That includes things like benefits—full-time Mother Pizzeria employees (and not just managers) have access to a 401(k) plan, paid vacation days and medical insurance—but it also includes a roadmap for career growth.
“You have to plan on attracting talent, taking care of that talent and then giving them space to grow,” O’Donnell said. “My partners here, Lauren and Kyle, were both opening managers at Guisto and they were running that restaurant. And I’m not saying they couldn’t continue to grow and learn in those positions, but they were running that restaurant and doing such a great job and both were vocal about wanting to open up a restaurant of their own. So it felt like it was time to create that opportunity for the people who wanted it.”
With each new Mother Pizzeria location, a whole new set of management positions open up. And as those positions open up, they give team members something to strive for that’s bigger than a weekly check.
Track 15 Food Hall
The location that Mother Pizzeria will launch out of the Track 15 food hall will be a new kind of endeavor for the three partners. Situated in Providence—about 30 minutes north of Newport—Track 15 will be a state-of-the-art facility with dozens of the state’s best-known restaurant concepts. It was something that O’Donnell, Stamps and Schaefer—all of whom have deep roots in Rhode Island—wanted to be a part of. They already knew members of the family behind the Marsella Development Corporation and instantly got a good vibe from them.
But there were pros and cons for entering the food hall format. For example,they would give up a little bit of control over what the actual space would look like. But O’Donnell said that wasn’t as huge a deal to them as it might be to others, especially when you consider the upsides of the food-hall format.
“There are a lot of things that have been taken care of for us,” O’Donnell said. “They are building out a beautiful new kitchen. We just have to show up and cook some great food and provide great service. So we feel like [with] the risk, and the amount of effort needed to open up another brick-and-mortar restaurant versus those [upsides]…there’s just a lot less financial risk heading into this [venture].”
Not to mention another practical benefit of having a location in a food hall, which is slated to open in February 2025. “When I’m working there,” O’Donnell said, “I can eat all my favorite food in the city, all in one spot.”
