By Alexandra Mortati | Photos courtesy of Victoria Tiso
Editor’s note: This article was written and published on the Women in Pizza Instagram account before Victoria Tiso opened Tori Ti’s in April 2024. It includes her reflections on her time at Louie & Ernie’s as well as updated information about her own restaurant.
Victoria Tiso, owner of Tori T’s Pizzeria in Long Island, grew up surrounded by pizza. Not only could you find it on nearly every block where she grew up, it was also her family’s business: the legendary Louie & Ernie’s in The Bronx, co-owned by her father, John Tiso, and her uncle.
But, first, Tiso had to go her own way—and find herself.
“I think I always had this idea that I wanted to do pizza and be around it, but I also wanted to have my own sense of being, so I went to take on the sports world,” Tiso recalls. She built a career in college athletics, all the while still dedicating time to the pizzeria. “I thought I’d always have a part of this (pizza world) in me, but I was a huge athlete growing up. I played college softball and majored in sports management. I wanted to be an athletic director. I became the head softball coach in college and assisted athletic directors. I had my hands in a lot of different things, but after my eighth year…I completely changed gears. There weren’t many women making pizza at the time. It’s a male-dominated industry, so for me to go and do this, I thought, ‘Is it alright?’ To come back 100% and stop working with the college was a whirlwind. Even now I need game-day management. It’s not that different from restaurant management.”
Pizza has been a constant in Tiso’s life, but she didn’t always fully grasp the impact it would have. “I always found time to do pizza, though it got harder as I worked more jobs. I knew my dad was getting older, and part of me was always in the pizza industry. I saw where my career was going in athletics, and I saw I was being overlooked for positions. It was degrading. I thought, ‘Why am I running away from what I know and what I’m good at?’ I was at a women-in-sports-management conference in Atlanta, and I looked around and realized, ‘This isn’t for me.’ I wasn’t challenged, so, I said I was going to come back and learn to run the [family] business—from the back all the way up to the front. My dad said, ‘If you’re willing to learn every part of this business, I’m going to put you up to it.’ It took 18 months to learn every little bit of it and get it under my belt.”
A Life in Pizza
Founded in 1987, Louie & Ernie’s is open seven days a week, and Tiso worked six of them before branching out on her own. “My dad and uncle worked for Ernie back in the 70s,” she recalled. “The business has been around for 65 years, and my dad is now on his 40th year. My dad was 21 and his brother was 18 when they started. They came from Italy and learned as they were going. When I was 21, I thought I was going to be taking on the world and working for a big school.”
Instead, Tiso began leading the younger generation of women who were involved in the family business. “My uncle has three daughters—all women in pizza! One graduated college and works for a social media company, but she’s there all the time on a smaller scale. His middle daughter is going to be a teacher, but she still works there, and the youngest is 16 and working there.”
Time has given Tiso a greater appreciation for the business. “I was around it my whole life, but when you’re watching it, you’re processing it very differently than when you have to do it and you realize, ‘Oh, wow, there’s an actual reason for the sauce-to-cheese ratio.’ I was going through the motions for a long time.”
Tiso and her father share a strong foundation of trust. “My dad and my uncle are old-school and do it with their eyes closed because it’s second nature to them,” she says. “My dad’s, like, the man of no words. He’s a cool dude, but he’s very docile. I have my mom’s personality and am very outgoing 100% of the time. We have a good rapport, and he knows I only have the best interests of the business in mind. What he’s taught me is…to always be super attentive to people who come in, and consistency is everything—consistency of the pizza, the product, how you make people feel…because what we do is going to resonate with our customers and leave a long-lasting impression.”
Changing the Old-School Mindset
But it was still hard, at times, to work with family. “They’re old-school, and I [was] always trying to bring in a new mentality. [Louie & Ernie’s has] a website that I built and an Instagram account now—that’s a big deal! We also started frozen pizzas, but I couldn’t do too much with my dad and uncle. I had to start with baby steps.”
Over time, however, the older men became more receptive to new ideas while adhering to their timeless values. “They believe in KISS—‘Keep It Simple Stupid’—and I get it. Some things are simple,” such as the Louie & Ernie’s menu. “Sometimes it feels like [they’re] living in 1959. To get them out of that realm of what they know and into a whole new world is very hard.”
Part of that new world has been an Instagram account, which the more adventurous Tiso added several years ago. “I put it out there to see where it would go. People are always sending us photos online and tagging us. It’s free marketing!” The pizzeria has customers from all over the world, she notes. “There’s a big map in the restaurant where people pin where they come from. We only have one state left: North Dakota! When we collaborated with [clothing brand] Fila, people would send us pictures of where their shoe was. Having IG allowed us to connect, share and repost.”
The Fila collaboration came as a big surprise. “The store received a phone call, and I thought it was a prank call,” Tiso remembers. “My uncle spoke to them and told them to get something on official letterhead to get the ball rolling. They sent us a bunch of different shoes to pick from and some designs. We went with one of their newer lines that was more retro. We were given a blank canvas and told to have fun with it. We picked red, white and green, the color of our neon sign that says Louie and Ernie’s, and the colors of the Italian flag. Inside, it had a silhouette of the Bronx, and the bottom was clear, with the pizzeria on it. We picked an old photo from before Hurricane Sandy, when the original signage was up, to go with a more classic look. The toe of the shoe even said, ‘Cash Only, No Delivery.’ The shoe was a great success.”
The pandemic ignited more changes Louie & Ernie’s. “Frozen pizza started when I was in college, and my dad would make me these 12” pies that I would bring to school in Ziploc bags. When the pandemic hit, we had no indoor dining or delivery, so we thought maybe we could make them for our customers. It kind of blew up from there. People were really receptive to it, and we were selling a ton of pies. We were like, ‘This works, maybe we should start the whole Uber Eats thing.’ People wanted us on those platforms. We started with Uber Eats and ended up adding them all. They still do all of our delivery. It was easier on our end because we didn’t have to worry about another employee.”
The pandemic also brought challenges. “We lost a lot of good customers throughout the pandemic, but pizza brings everyone together. It’s still the cheapest thing to do with your family. At first, we were glad we weren’t delivering because we still got to see people. It gave us a sense of normalcy. We knew, ‘If we can get through this, we’ll be alright.’ We saw a decrease in business, but we were able to stay on our feet more than others. We’re very fortunate.”
Launching Tori T’s: She Won’t Be Told No
As a woman, working at Louie & Ernie’s meant fighting outdated perceptions and biases. “Nobody makes pizza except my dad and uncle, and then I come in, and it’s like, ‘Whoa!’ I think more people would be receptive if I was my brother,” she muses. “They just associate me with being a waitress, and it gets old at the end of the day. I’m also short, only 5 feet tall, and my ovens are 6 feet tall. But I won’t be told ‘no.’ Everything I do is on a grander scale. The ovens aren’t changing, so I’m going to have to make it work. I will stand on my toes and have my calves burning to prove a point. It’s my competitive nature coming out.
“I think, in New York, a lot of the women you see making pizzas aren’t doing New York style, they’re doing Neapolitan, brick oven or something very different. So, seeing me is one thing, and they have to be able to physically and mentally adapt. I’m living in the shadows, but I want to establish my own and name and brand. I don’t want to be ‘John’s daughter’ or asked, ‘Which daughter are you? There’s so many.’”
That’s less of a problem now, since Tiso has gone her own way with Tori T’s, where she bakes up New York, Sicilian and Detroit-style pies. She made the move after learning that her dad was ready to retire after 44 years in the business. “At that point he gave me a choice,” Tiso said in a March 2024 Women In Pizza conversation with Don Antonio owner Giorgia Caporuscio, who happens to be the daughter of another legend, Roberto Caporuscio. “It was deciding whether or not I was going to take over from him or go out on my own. I chose to go out on my own.”
Like Giorgia Caporuscio, whose father is widely credited for introducing Neapolitan-style pizza to the U.S., Tiso grew up under the shadow of a pizza legend. “Although I’m not at Lou & Ernie’s anymore, I’m still dealing with the same background of stepping out of your comfort zone and moving out of [my dad’s] shadow but now forging my own path…but [Lou & Ernie’s] is still in the family. My uncle’s still running the business with the kids. It’s never going anywhere. But my legacy is now moving on somewhere else.”
Today, as a full-fledged pizzeria owner and operator at Tori T’s, all of the pressure is on Tiso. “There’s no one telling me no, no one telling me yes. You’re your own boss. You’re on your own worst critic or best critic. And if you’re hard on yourself, you can take anything else coming your way. You’re always trying to form into your own person. You’re trying to step out of that shadow and have your own vision and ideas and trying to bring them to light, with [the family] always lingering in the background because you’re always going to be associated with them—they’re blood—and it’s hard.”
She adds, “I’ve been able to kind of adapt, learn what I like, blend the two (New York and Detroit) together and bring my own flair to the menu.”
Coaching Teams to Success
Tiso’s experience as a coach also shows in her restaurant management style, which is different from the men who mentored her in the pizza business—albeit in a way you might not expect. “We’re all different in the way we manage people,” she says. “I know what it’s like to manage 100 people, and I know what it’s like to manage five. I’m very cutthroat because I come from that corporate side, whereas they are gentler. But I understand that leaders eat last, and the best way to lead is by example. I’d rather my employees see me putting in the hard work than say it was handed to me. I had to work towards the same goal we were all working towards and be a team player, both as an athlete and a business.
“As a coach, I learned the psychology behind these kids. Everyone is different and comes from different parts of the world. How you’re teaching one person might not be how the next is going to learn. It’s the same with work. You have to know your employees on a one-to-one level. It’s a fine level of respect because you have to turn on the switch and be a boss. I think most of my success comes from what I did before in athletics. If I didn’t have all the people, communication, social media and branding experience, I wouldn’t be able to do the things I come up with.”
Tiso said her goal was to “leave Louie & Ernie’s better than how I found it. “I’m building my own brand….I have my foot on the gas, no stopping. I’m 200% or nothing. I’m never going to give you anything less. I was like this in sports, too. People ask me when I sleep because I do 14-hour days. I haven’t had burn-out, and if I haven’t found it yet, I don’t think it’s going to come. I have a burning passion to keep wanting more. There’s always the expectation that I need more. It comes with being a woman, and I want to keep showing the world that I can do it all.”
For other women out there, Tiso’s advice is what she lives every day. “You just have to go for it. I wish I wasn’t so apprehensive in the beginning. It’s really cool now, with social media, to see how people are out there doing their thing. If you take the time and effort and really put your best foot forward, no one is going to deny that you want to learn. If you show up and put in the effort and a little hard work, you’re guaranteed to succeed, and anyone will be willing to take you under their wing.”
Victoria doesn’t let barriers and obstacles deter her. She doesn’t let naysayers slow her down, either, and works hard to do her best for herself and everyone around her. She’s insightful, passionate and tenacious, always looking to share her success with others.
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. This article originally appeared on the Instagram account for Women In Pizza. Click here to learn more about the organization.
