By Charlie Pogacar
Leah Scurto worked her tail off to get where she is. The owner of PizzaLeah in Windsor, California, Scurto spent over two decades helping scale Pizza My Heart, the Northern California-based chain, before going solo.
Scurto may be one of the few people who opened a pizzeria to have less stress in her life. For decades, Scurto said “yes” to six- and seven-day workweeks and long commutes—and a regretful “no” to family gatherings. PizzaLeah, which opened in March 2020, was Scurto’s venture into doing pizza on her terms.
“I missed vacations, holidays, birthdays,” Scurto said on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “I don’t ever want to do that again. Now, I’m not compromising. I want to live a happy life.”
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That recalibration didn’t mean letting go of ambition—only reshaping it. Scurto still competes internationally, recently joining the World Pizza Champions after years with the U.S. Pizza Team (and about 18 months in between, where she competed by herself, for herself). Scurto has won at least five pizza competitions and appeared on Hulu’s Best in Dough series in 2022.
As Scurto explained on the podcast, she built PizzaLeah on many of the principles she learned at Pizza My Heart. The location, for example, was chosen in part because of a tip she’d learned from Pizza My Heart President Chuck Hammers. She spent over a year searching for the right location before finding a space in Windsor that was located next to an upscale grocery store in Sonoma County called Oliver’s. She thought the demographic that shops at Oliver’s would be interested in trying her pizza—”people who care about local food, who are willing to pay for quality,” Scurto said.
“There’s a Starbucks right there, too,” Scurto added. “One of the things I learned from Chuck at Pizza My Heart is that Starbucks spends millions—if not billions—on location scouting. So they’ve already done the work for you. If you can go in next to a Starbucks, it’s probably gonna be a good spot, no matter what.”
The location has been a good one, as PizzaLeah has been open and thriving for over five years. Each time the pizzeria ends up on another “best of” list—including those distributed by the San Francisco Chronicle and Sonoma Magazine, to name just two—the business experiences another bump in business.
Scurto has, at times, considered expanding PizzaLeah—she nearly signed papers, in fact—but something stopped her both times. In retrospect, she said, that was probably for the best. To illustrate the point, Scurto detailed a recent conversation she had with someone else in the pizza business who asked Scurto what her long-term goals were. She told that person she just wanted to live a happy life and to have a pizzeria that gave her balance and the ability to travel when she wanted.
“And he said, ‘I want to be a millionaire,’” Scurto recalled. “And that’s great for them. Do I want to do as much as I can and open as many locations as I can so I can become a multi-millionaire? No, I don’t think so. It’s not really my goal in life.”
“I love making pizza,” Scurto went on to say. “I love sharing pizza. I love sharing my love for pizza—teaching classes, teaching people, whether they’re home pizza makers or employees or professionals, whatever—and I think I’ll always do that, as long as people let me.”
To hear the full conversation—including a story about skateboarding legend Tony Hawk dining at her restaurant—check out the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast:
