By Charlie Pogacar
In mid-September, Lou Perrotta and his family drove from Canton, Georgia—a rapidly growing suburb of Atlanta—to Nashville, Tennessee. They were going to watch their favorite football team, the New York Jets, take on the Tennessee Titans. There was one rule for the trip: there would be no talking about their pizzeria, Perrotta’s Pizza, the 100-seat restaurant they run together as a family.
“We told ourselves that we weren’t going to talk about pizza,” Perrotta said. “But at some point, it always seems to sneak into the conversation. And my wife says, ‘see, there you go again! You’re talking about pizza.’”
And so it goes for the Perrottas, who have run Perrotta’s Pizza since 2018, when the family picked up and moved from Florida to the Atlanta metro area. They saw an opportunity to bring good, quality pizza to a growing town that, at the time, was limited to large pizza chains. Perrotta, his wife, Gina, and their three young-adult children—Anthony, Vinny, and Giana—have a term they use to describe how they’ve run the shop since day one: “The Pizza Life.”
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“Pizza is not a hobby for us,” Perrotta said. “We live, work, laugh and cry together. It’s a grind, a controlled chaos at times, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Pizza Roots
Lou Perrotta was born in Brooklyn, New York. His mother was a first-generation Italian immigrant, and the family frequently traveled back-and-forth between New York City and Naples, Italy. In fact, Lou spent a year going to school in Naples, where he experienced authentic Italian cuisine firsthand.
“Every day after school, my mom would ask, ‘What do you want to eat?’ and every time I was like, ‘pizza,’” Perrotta said. “’That’s what I want.’”
When the family moved back to New York, Perrotta’s parents opened up a bakery. The business required long, demanding overnight hours, which the family ultimately found unsustainable. To pivot away from that schedule, the family began experimenting with pizza making and found success.
But before long, the Perrottas were ready for another change. Instead of being a small fish in the big pond of New York City’s pizza scene, the Perrottas decided to move to Florida in 1989, at a time when Florida had very little in the way of great pizza. They launched Primo Pizza, and then eventually opened an Italian eatery called Italian Delight. They ran both for two decades.
Primo Pizza was so successful that the family opened multiple locations, with Lou taking over one of them as a teenager. Eventually, he branched out and started his own pizzeria, Anthony’s Pizza, which he ran with great success until he sold the concept to an ownership group that still runs it to this day. At that point, he transitioned out of pizza, taking jobs in sales and other fields.
As his three children grew up, they started clamoring for another run at the pizza business. The sons, Anthony and Vinny, wanted to re-launch the family business. It took little convincing: The Perrottas have always had pizza in their blood.
A New Venture
When the Perrottas arrived in Canton, Georgia, the town was in the midst of a massive growth spurt. From 2000 to 2020, Canton’s population grew over 400%, from about 7,000 people to over 30,000. It is still growing rapidly, but the Perrottas timed their move well. When they arrived in 2017, there were few, if any, other independent pizza shops. The Perrottas correctly read this as being a ripe opportunity.
Perrotta’s Pizza implemented a two-pronged approach to win over locals. For one, they used a grassroots playbook that will be familiar to a lot of independent pizzeria operators: They sponsored Little League teams, high school teams and donated to local fundraisers. They weren’t shy in donating pizza or their time.
“We really dove into the community, getting involved in anything they’d let us be involved with,” Perrotta said. “I knew if I could get them to taste the pizza, they’d be my customer for life.”
The second thing Perrotta’s Pizza did with much aplomb was start simple with the pizza itself. While Perrotta’s Pizza now has some unique, elevated specialty pies, the brand first focused on simplicity and quality. The Neo-Neapolitan pizzas were enough of a new speed for the area that Perrotta thought crazy-sounding pies might be a bridge too far.
“The pizza didn’t really change much from what we had been doing in Florida,” Perrotta said. “But we focused on adapting it to meet the community’s tastes. So we kept things really simple at first and started introducing new styles and pizzas as we earned the trust of customers.”
Perrotta called this right, and the community has since warmed up to some new things. These days, you can find adventurous “Pizzas of the Month” on the menu at Perrotta’s. Some recent examples: the Brussels Galore pie (alfredo base, mozzarella, tempura-battered Brussels sprouts, bacon, balsamic glaze), or the Lobster Ravioli pizza (alfredo base, lobster and cheese stuffed ravioli, roasted red peppers, pesto, fresh garlic, Parmesan).
A recent, truly wacky pizza was dubbed “Save Room for Dessert.” The pie was about 75% a standard pepperoni pizza, but a quarter of the pie was rolled up to become a nutella and peanut butter stuffed turnover with powdered sugar on top. Save room for dessert indeed.
A True Family Operation
Perrotta’s Pizza is a true family operation. Lou mostly focuses on the expo station, while his wife, Gina, oversees front-of-house operations. Their sons, Anthony and Vinny—in their 20’s—have begun to learn every facet of the business with a particular focus on the kitchen, while their daughter, Giana, 18, is on the same track but with a front-of-house emphasis. For consistency’s sake, all of the food that makes its way to a customer goes through three checkpoints: kitchen, expo, front of house. Everything has to be perfect.
If the Perrottas can’t be in the shop, Perrotta’s Pizza closes. When the family goes on vacation, for example, they’d prefer to not open for business than to let somebody else run the shop. They feel the operation runs smoothest when they are there, and they like to keep a personal touch on everything that they do. After six years in the community—and having won a variety of local awards for the best pizza in their county several years running—they feel they have a reputation to uphold.
The plan is that, some day, Lou and Gina will retire and leave the shop to their kids, who are already receiving the education of a lifetime by being so heavily involved in day-to-day operations. For now, though, Lou and Gina aren’t going anywhere. They love running the pizzeria with their children, and the rush that comes with it.
Even the Perrottas’ vacations are planned, short trips, like heading up to Nashville for a Jets game. In some ways, it’s no surprise the Perrottas struggle to avoid talking about the pizzeria when they are on those vacations. The line between work and pleasure hardly exists for the Perrottas—and, to hear Lou tell it, they like it that way. It is the “pizza life,” after all.
“The business is like another family member,” Perrotta said. “It’s like another child: You learn to love it even through the chaos. And like I said, at the end of the day, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
