We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Colleen Constant a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Colleen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

We are a husband and wife team that spends 99% of the day together, and we love it. We work well in close quarters (we started our entrepreneur journey in a food truck), you’re constantly knocking into, reaching around, and reaching over each other. We’re out in the elements (it’s hot, windy, rainy, freezing) we’re tired and hungry and still always have a blast. In our restaurant we each have our respected “areas” behind the service counter along with our own tasks which helps with responsibilities, all of the weight is not on one person, we have a pretty great 50/50 split. I would say at times we have a difference of opinions when handling issues with customers, however, we always support each other and the decisions we make.

I have the wonderful privilege of being a bonus mom. Isaiah’s kids loved helping on our food truck and equally enjoy being in the restaurant. His son recently learned to make pizza dough and is incredibly interested in being a part of Pizza By Ruffin one day. Isaiah’s youngest daughter has also expressed interest in being a chef in the future, it’s an awesome and heartwarming feeling to experience the genuine excitement of your kids wanting a similar future for themselves. I would love for them to join our family business one day.

As for other family businesses, we fully support them as much as possible. It’s no easy feat to start a small business, let alone with your family. I believe you will always get the most authentic experience if you support a family owned business. I love walking into a place and meeting the owner, hearing their story, learning about their journey and how they ended up where they are now, what their passions are and what keeps them showing up every day. It’s such an authentic experience, I know my dollars are being well spent.

Colleen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Colleen Constant. My husband, Isaiah Ruffin, and I are the owners of Pizza By Ruffin, a Roman Style pizza restaurant in Seattle Washington. Isaiah is a classically trained professional chef who has worked in restaurants all over the world with a true passion for all things pizza. I myself have an administrative background and just happen to love eating pizza. We originally started our pizza journey with a wood-fired pizza food truck called Project Pizza in Fort Collins Colorado. We had great success and after two years of being on our truck full time we decided to move west to Seattle for more opportunity in the food industry. In Seattle we worked on our food truck for almost one year before signing a lease on our current brick and mortar where we provide Roman Style pizza by the slice to hungry pizza fans of South Lake Union in Seattle. One thing that sets us apart from other establishments is that we are the first Black-Owned pizzeria in the state of Washington. We are also a Veteran-owned and woman-owned business. We are primarily a lunch spot open from 11-4 at Fairview Market Hall in South Lake Union. I am unsure if we are solving any problems for our customers aside from putting a smile on their face when they eat some of the best pizza Seattle has to offer. We focus on food from the Black Diaspora which means when you come into Pizza By Ruffin you will be surprised at the toppings we offer. Our number one selling pizza “The Doro” has Doro Wat on it. We are known for our off the beaten path toppings, our genuine customer service, welcoming and inclusive environment.

I am most proud of the fact that we have a restaurant, period. It is no easy feat to open a small business…especially in food service. We created everything by hand that we have in our space, the only thing we didn’t build or install on our own was our plumbing. We were savvy, kept our pockets tight, spent so many days out on our food truck and evenings trying to work on getting our space up to snuff so we could open. We worked super hard to make our dream of having a brick and mortar come true and we did that within just a couple of months of signing our lease. We moved to Seattle with a dream of opening a restaurant and made it happen in less than one year.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We originally wanted to open a pizza restaurant where we were making wood-fired pizza. This is what we had been doing on our food truck and it felt like a natural transition for us. We quickly discovered that Seattle has very strict venting laws for smoke and it’s difficult to find a brick and mortar with the hopes of running piping for ventilation unless you’re grandfathered in. We quickly had to pivot to a differently style of pizza to make our business a success, which ended up being a Roman Style which is what we do now.

How did you build your audience on social media?

It was super easy for us to build a presence on social media in Fort Collins with our food truck. We quickly gained a reputation and almost hit 3,000k followers which is a big deal for a food truck in a town of 150,000k people. With our restaurant in Seattle our popularity changed in one week when we had social media influencers, a local news channel, and a James Beard award winning author and chef come through and feature us. Our business doubled over night.

Keeping up with social media can be a full time job on it’s own, consistency is key. My suggestion would be to post at the same time every day (use the feature on Instagram where you can put a timer on your posts). Be genuine, be human, be a business owner. I don’t censor myself, I am always 100% authentic and tend to be vulnerable at times. People enjoy knowing we are real people. Respond to messages, engage with the comments, post a lot of photos and tag businesses. Support other small businesses and tag them. Encourage your customers to engage with you on social media or even Google! We have had so many people say they have come to us because our Google reviews. I tend to do a shameless plug when people comment on our pizza I always say “we love Google reviews” and give a little wink….but it does work. Also, reach out to people and invite them into your space for an honest review.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pizzabyruffin.com/
• Instagram: @pizzabyruffin
• Facebook: @pizzabyruffin
• Other: TiKTok – ChefIsaiahRuffin