Story and Photos By Brian Hernandez

In the quiet corners of Littleton, Colorado, The Pizza Bandit is redefining what it means to serve extraordinary pizza, thanks to Melina Felix, a stalwart member of the U.S. Pizza Team (USPT), and her husband, Federico. With their pop-up venture soaring to impressive heights, the Felixes knew it was time to elevate their game. Coming next: pizza trailers. 

PMQ caught up with Melina to dive into her pizza lineage, explore her use of color for eye appeal, and discover how The Pizza Bandit is taking its pizza passion on the road.

Brian Hernandez: How did you get into pizza making?

Melina Felix: My pizza journey started when I was in my early 20s and working for my uncle, Pino Piroso, at his pizzeria, Pizza Rustica, in Miami. They opened in 1996 and have grown to numerous locations across the U.S. and Europe since then. I started there doing counter stuff, and working for him helped me to see that pizza isn’t just fast food. He used top-quality ingredients and made everything from scratch, and people came from all over because they knew it was good. Even the basic cheese pizza was good.

After my 20s, I veered off into creative arts, but every Friday morning, I would still wake up at 5 a.m. before my corporate job to start making pizzas for myself and the family. The love of making pizza and wanting to eat good pizza was planted in me and wouldn’t die. I literally spent about 15 to 20 years making pizzas every week: making dough in the morning, coming home after an eight-hour day, and experimenting and feeding the family and getting opinions. I moved all around the country doing that. I’ve lived in California, Minnesota, Colorado and Florida, and it was helpful trying to make good pizzas in all these different environments. At the same time, my husband is a professional chef by trade, and he can’t turn that off. All of the little critiques and suggestions—that made me better. We both always had it in the back of our minds that we were going to open a pizzeria one day. Then, in 2022, after the lockdowns, we asked ourselves, “What are we waiting for?” And that was it.

Hernandez: What was the first step?

Felix: I would often sit at work listening to podcasts about being an entrepreneur and marketing and so on, and at one point I heard someone say, “Build your audience before you launch your brand or product.” So I started posting pizza videos online and following and commenting on other pizza accounts. I started getting attention online before we even knew The Pizza Bandit was going to be the brand. By the time we launched and did our first pop-up here in Littleton, we had a line waiting outside, because they had been following us. I would love to give credit to whoever gave that advice if I could remember who it was, but it was a game-changer for us.

Hernandez: There’s so much color on your pizzas. Do all the flavors make sense together, or are some ingredients there for color’s sake? 

Felix: I believe color is an ingredient. People eat with their eyes. Color is always something I’m thinking about when I’m putting a recipe together. People see something bright and beautiful, and it catches their eye. It’s just [human] nature. It doesn’t have to be a rainbow of colors on every pizza, but if you can use something that contrasts or just pops, that gets people’s attention. One of our best sellers is The Sweet Heat. It has pickled onions that I drop in hibiscus tea while pickling them, and they are literally bright pink. They glow, and people comment on them all the time. We try not to do anything that’s pointless, so if I’m adding something for color, it also has to bring flavor. Sometimes you don’t even realize—until you’re pumping the pizzas out—that a certain ingredient isn’t really adding anything to the flavor. Then you should simply remove it.

Hernandez: Are the ingredients and flavors that give the pizzas so much color Colorado inspired? 

Felix:  We’ve been testing a special for a couple of weeks and are adding it to our permanent menu. Before launching The Pizza Bandit, I started asking the people in Colorado what flavors they like, since I wasn’t from here, and people kept saying cream cheese.  And jalapeño poppers are strangely popular here too. So, we’ve been testing those flavors together and people love it, so we will officially be adding the Jalapeño Popper and Cream Cheese pizza.  

Hernandez: Tell us about your unique use of Instagram. 

Felix: We actually use it in a couple ways. We of course showcase our events whenever we go out to customers or festivals, but we also just make tons of pizzas only to take pictures of and post. I’m very responsive to what people say if they are going to be a customer of mine. If I post a picture of a new recipe and a local customer says I want to come eat that, I will put it on the menu as a special, within reason of course. Instagram serves as a vehicle for creativity and to expand the brand. My long-term goal for this brand is to become national and possibly one day international. That’s why we’re not limiting ourselves to only showing the same 8 pizzas on our main menu. And at heart, I love doing it and I want to have fun with it. Maybe that’s silly and wasteful, but we do eat all the pizzas.

Hernandez: How did you get involved with the USPT?

Felix: The year we opened, we attended the Expo and saw the team there, competing and working together with matching uniforms and I turned to my husband and said I want to do that. I want to be on that team and be a part of this. Then I made it into the REAL California Pizza Contest, and we met there. We started the process and here we are, and it’s been great!

Hernandez: What’s coming up next for The Pizza Bandit?

Felix: We started as a pop-up mainly for financial reasons. I didn’t have the cash lying around to just open a brick-and-mortar, so we decided to test the market and the brand with the pop-up. The next step for us is a custom-built pizza trailer. We upgraded our ovens and built an opening in the back of the truck for them so that we can, hopefully, bake all through the winter. The truck just got its final licenses a month ago, so we are brand-new. Now we can hit more festivals and events, and everything is organized and where I left it….My long-term vision is pop-up, food truck, restaurant and, hopefully, franchise. It may be ambitious, but that’s the plan.   

Brian Hernandez is PMQ’s associate editor and U.S. Pizza Team coordinator.