By Charlie Pogacar
Piesanos Stone Fired Pizza started in Gainesville, Florida, at an inauspicious moment: In 2009, as the stock market was crashing. That the pizza chain has since opened 14 more locations is a testament to the co-founders’ belief that there was a massive hole in the market for full-service pizzerias.
It was co-founder Joel Mills who first identified the need for something beyond counter service in Gainesville. Mills, who had started making pizza in New York at age 17, moved south and opened Italian Gator Pizza in 2000. The slice shop sat across from the University of Florida’s storied football stadium, colloquially known as The Swamp. Business was good, but Mills yearned for the pizzerias of his childhood.
“One day, I was like, man, I wish this was like New York, where we could actually have a place where we could go and sit down and have pizza,” Mills told PMQ Pizza. “There was nothing like that around.”
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Mills shared the vision with his landlord, Michael Akey, who loved the idea and brought his wife, Michelle, and business partner Laure Young into the fold., The quartet of experienced restaurateurs founded Piesanos during the backdrop of the Great Recession. There may have been bad news all around them, but they were confident Piesanos would not only survive but thrive based on the lack of competition.
“We were already in construction when the market crashed,” Mills recalled. “I figured, worst case, we’d run the kitchen and [family members] would run the front of the house. We just went—and it took off.”
Piesanos was a big swing, even for a group of seasoned restaurateurs. The first restaurant was 5,500 square feet and seated nearly 200 people. The brand made its name on a big menu, too, its elevated take on New York-style pizza the centerpiece. Guests also choose from an array of pasta dishes, calzones, scratch-made soups, salads and sides—but no side is more popular than its famous rolls, which come complimentary with each order. The rolls have established a cult-like following, with multiple Reddit threads attempting to reverse engineer the recipe.
The DELCO Piece
Here’s a remarkable fact: Piesanos has opened 15 locations across Florida, and it’s never closed a single one. The brand survived the Great Recession, and plowed through COVID unscathed. That’s because, as much as Piesanos is laser-focused on its dine-in experience, the brand is pretty darn good at DELCO, too. According to Piesanos marketing director David Hew, over 50% of orders come via delivery and takeout channels.
One might assume Piesanos had to hone its DELCO game during the pandemic—and, in a sense it did—but delivery and carryout were never afterthoughts for the brand. Every Piesanos unit has a separate carryout entrance, counter and staff. Guests picking up to-go orders never cross the stream of dining room traffic.
“It’s almost like two businesses in one,” Mills said. “When the dining room’s full, the phone doesn’t stop ringing.”
Piesanos is willing to spend some money to ensure takeout orders are consistent with what one would be served in the dining room. Those addictive rolls? There was a time when, every now and then, guests would leave their orders behind. Piesanos’ leadership came up with a fix for that: a segmented box that keeps the rolls separate from the rest of the order, but ensures guests never leave without their sacred rolls.
The brand’s new 3,000-square-foot buildout in The Villages is a step in a new direction for Piesanos. It’s something of a scaled-back version of what the brand has done in the past, but for Mills, the Akeys, Young and now-partners Jerry and Sabrina Roberts, their 15th restaurant is a glimpse of what the brand might look like into the future.
“This new prototype reflects where Piesanos is going,” Jerry Roberts said in a grand opening press release. “It’s thoughtfully designed for efficiency, elevated guest experience and off-premise convenience—without compromising the handmade quality we’re known for.”
The Science of Opening Day
If there’s a secret sauce to Piesanos’ growth, it might be the holistic and methodical way it opens restaurants. Hew, who ran and rehabilitated restaurants for Joe’s Crab Shack and other brands prior to arriving at Piesanos, broke down the process for PMQ Pizza.
Three-to-four weeks before each store’s grand opening, general managers arrive on site to hire and train. The final week runs like this:
- Monday – Orientation: Culture, mission and values come first. New hires meet area leaders and learn the “why” behind Piesanos.
- Tuesday–Thursday – Production training: Crews cook $5,000–$10,000 of food per day, giving the best dishes to schools, hospitals and local nonprofits. “It’s training and community marketing at the same time,” Hew said.
- Friday–Saturday – Friends & family: The company pays for practice seatings, timed carryout runs and a few large catering orders to simulate pressure. Corporate chefs and trainers shadow every station.
- Sunday – Closed: A breather before the real thing.
- Monday – Grand opening: Ribbon-cutting, local dignitaries and a charity tie-in. In The Villages, for example, Piesanos donated $5 for every $25 gift card to Villagers for Veterans.
“It’s not just a marketing plan—it’s a systems check,” Hew said. “By the time we open to the public, we’ve already handled near-capacity volume.”
The culture and camaraderie established in that first week is perhaps even more important than the operational know-how. Mills and Hew describe the company’s culture as unicorn-like—it’s a place where “negativity doesn’t stick,” Mills said. During orientation, leadership makes it clear that they’d rather move on from a squeaky wheel than grease it. Many managers started as bussers or cooks, and the company invests heavily in leadership development—personality and communication workshops that help managers coach, not just manage.
“We’re not just training skills,” Hew said. “We’re training real-life communication that you need to be successful at anything in life. Relationships, work—everything.”
“Consistency Is Everything”
Across 15 restaurants, roughly 900 employees work within a layered support network: general managers, area managers and field leaders focused solely on food quality—a team that Mills runs himself. Though he may be the founder, Mills still makes site visits on a regular basis, helping ensure the food is coming out correctly and serving as an exemplary representation of the brand.
As the company scaled, Mills realized he couldn’t be visiting some stores as much as he’d like to. He hired a field team dedicated to quality control, and Piesanos began filming training videos—stored on SharePoint—to serve as the backbone for a business that makes everything from scratch. The videos detail how to sauce a pie, how to stretch dough, how much Romano properly balances out the tomato sauce and more.
“Consistency is everything,” Mills said. “We’ve got iPads in every store with videos on how to make every dish.”
Perhaps this is one of the reasons Mills said the brand isn’t thinking about franchising. There’s too much that goes into the Piesanos’ secret sauce to be entrusted to a third-party, he said.
“Right now, we have a really good thing,” Mills said. “If you start franchising now, you run the risk of somebody else that may not operate a business as well, and that could hurt your name.”
A Model Story
Hew’s own path at Piesanos exemplifies the internal growth the company prides itself on. He didn’t join from the corporate suite—he started at the store level, rolling up his sleeves alongside the team and learning the brand’s rhythm firsthand. Having come from large-scale national chains where culture could feel top-down, Hew found something different at Piesanos: a leadership pipeline built from the ground up. Managers aren’t hired for résumés alone, he said, but for the right temperament.
Hew’s time spent running stores informs the way he markets the brand. He understands the ins-and-outs of the menu, why guests have always treasured the brand and the cultural foundations of what makes it all work. His approach to grassroots marketing—exhibited by the opening week schedule—gives him a chance to tell the brand’s authentic story rather than a version of it drawn up in a board room.
At the end of the day, Hew’s experiences mirror the Piesanos’ way: One focused on hospitality in the restaurant and outside of it. On delivering an exceptional experience, one Mills was searching for so many years ago.
“I’ve had customers say, ‘My wife passed away and she used to make pizza, and this pizza is almost as good as hers,’” Hew said. “Stuff like that—those connections—bring me joy. It’s what brings people back.”
