We were lucky to catch up with Stefano Romanello recently and have shared our conversation below.
Stefano, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?
Running your own business takes equal parts ignorance and determination. Not ignorance about how to run a business, but ignorance about how much work and time it takes to make a business successful. Unfortunately, I already know it requires a tremendous amount of effort and time. That’s why most days, the first thought that comes to mind when I wake up is considering the idea of having a “regular” job. I think many business owners experience this. The huge gamble not only with your finances but also with your time often leads to dreams of a different path. Time is the most valuable resource anyone can give, and owning a business requires you to invest a significant portion of your time. I dream of having days off or not having to spend all my days and nights working. If you break down the number of hours required to run a business, most people would likely reconsider starting one. It can also be very stressful—stressful when it’s busy and even more stressful when it’s slow. Everything falls on the owner—they must either do the work themselves or find the money to pay someone else.
When I finished graduate school, I had to make a decision: get a “regular” job or continue with the business I had helped build with my family. We had already worked so hard to make Godmother’s Pizza a successful business, and I didn’t want that work to go to waste. I not only wanted to continue but also to expand. So I made the tough decision to not only continue but also strive for more. I already knew the challenges of running Godmother’s because I had been immersed in it for 10 years. Continuing meant sacrificing holidays, nights, and weekends for the business, as well as dealing with the stress of ownership. It was not an easy choice. It came down to two questions: would another job really make me happy, and which path would give me freedom?
Over the last 25 years since we opened the shop, I have had other side jobs, but none of them made me happy. Some were enjoyable, but every job has its difficulties. Many annoyances exist whether you are an employee or an owner. People often imagine there are fantasy jobs that pay you to do nothing, but these jobs don’t exist. I’ve looked really hard for them! Knowing this—that a regular job won’t provide all the answers to my happiness—helped me make my decision.
I often think about freedom at work and, objectively speaking, I may never achieve the freedoms that motivate me. Each of those freedoms comes with caveats. Certainly, a regular job would provide instant freedom: I would do my work and then go home. My time outside of work would be mine. I also wouldn’t have to stress about my work making me money—working for someone else means if I work, I get paid. That is very tempting, but that could be the only freedoms provided by a regular job. Working for someone else would mean the typical 9-to-5 until retirement, which satisfies many people. Go to work, hope to find fulfillment in your job, and spend your money and free time on what truly matters to you.
If I hadn’t invested years helping build Godmother’s, the path of working for someone else might have been enough for me also. Since we had already invested so much effort into Godmother’s, taking it to the next level and achieving my desired freedoms seemed achievable. Of all those freedoms, the freedom over my time is the most important. I dream of the day when the business doesn’t consume all my time. Although we’re not there yet, I’m still hopeful I can reach a point where the business works for me instead of the other way around. Owning a business also allows me creative freedom—creating and cooking something that brings joy to others, designing a t-shirt that makes someone smile, or crafting a promotional post knowing someone will take a moment to see it. I can be as creative as I want, as long as I have the time. Financial freedom is also a significant motivator for anyone starting a business. Generating income to support your dream is essential, but when you own a business, money is not guaranteed. After deducting all the expenses, it may not feel like freedom; it may feel more like a prison. That is definitely not freedom.
After 25 years, I’m still ignorant and determined. I’m still working and dreaming of those freedoms, purposefully trying to ignore the time and effort required to achieve my goals. Intrusive thoughts of a “regular” job occasionally arise throughout the day. For me, the potential freedoms from owning my own business drive me. I push daily to achieve those freedoms because I believe that is the true goal of any investment: to provide you with freedoms you can’t attain by working for someone else. Ultimately, I cannot know if a different path would have made me happier. All I can do is try to shape the path I’m on.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
The day after I turned 15 years old, my father asked me if I wanted a job at a pizza shop. A family friend of ours was a manager at a local shop, and my father thought it would be a good opportunity. It wasn’t a job I particularly wanted, but it was a way to make some extra money at 15 years old. That was 29 years ago, and I have been working in the pizza industry ever since.
In 1999, my parents decided to take a chance and buy their own pizza shop. My parents emigrated to the United States as teenagers and met in an English as a Second Language class. Both of them came to America with nothing and worked very hard to build a great life for me, my brothers, and my sister. At the time, my father was a successful real estate agent. He was the agent selling the pizza shop and equipment that we eventually purchased. Despite his success, he was disillusioned with how the real estate industry was changing. He talked to my mom, and they decided to take a leap and open their own shop.
Neither of my parents had experience working in a commercial kitchen. They were both excellent home cooks, but they had never cooked professionally. I left the pizza shop where I was working to help them. I didn’t want them to start their own shop; I only wanted to work in food service until I went to college. I remember begging them not to do it. Yet, somehow, time passed quickly. My parents, along with my brothers, sister, uncle, and I, worked hard to build in those first few years of Godmother’s into what it is today. The last 25 years of Godmother’s have definitely not been easy either. Working with family can add complexity, and a strong foundation is necessary for it to work. But from chaos, good things can emerge.
Godmother’s is what I like to call Midwest-style pizza. It’s not as thin as New York style or as thick as Chicago or Detroit style, but somewhere in the middle. Our pizza features golden brown crust, provolone cheese, fresh vegetables, and sausage, with sauce that’s slowly cooked for 5-6 hours. We make our own dough and bread, shred our own cheese, and spend hours cooking our own sauce, just as my Nona used to.
In 2010, after I finished graduate school, I added two new businesses to complement Godmother’s: Godmother’s Sauce and Erie Reserve Beverage. Godmother’s Sauce is an all-natural pasta sauce made with whole vegetables and herbs, no added sugar, and slowly cooked until a robust flavor is achieved. Erie Reserve Beverage Company produces all-natural sodas and teas using whole fruits, grains, whole leaf tea, and roots, sweetened with cane sugar. These beverages are brewed and carbonated in a process similar to how beer is made, resulting in small-batch, spicy, full-flavored sodas and teas. The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant consolidation to our core products, but we are slowly working to return to where we once were.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
Godmother’s is mainly a pizza shop, but we are also a commercial cannery and bottler. We manufacture Godmother’s Sauce and Erie Reserve Beverage in-house. When I first started, I didn’t know anything about hermetically sealing sauce or soda in a container, or how to go about obtaining licenses, contacting stores, or marketing my brand. I didn’t even know where to source all the ingredients or containers. Starting any business requires a lot of effort. People often imagine it’s all about making a good product and that everything else will be easy. It could not be more opposite. The easiest part is making a good product; everything else is hard.
I used to joke around with customers who would ask me for the recipe for the sauce or tell me they had a product they knew would sell. I would tell them I could explain exactly what they needed to do to get a product made, but I didn’t want to scare them. Our regional health inspector always suggested that we find a co-packer to manufacture our products. One day, if we grow large enough, we may need to find a manufacturer. I’m actually dreading that day. I’ve spoken with many co-packers, and they all told me the same thing: they wouldn’t cook my sauce for 5-6 hours; they would make it taste like it had been cooked for 5-6 hours. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it made my decision easier.
One day, if we continue to grow, I will have to find a manufacturer that will preserve the way we do things, which won’t be easy or cheap. But after those conversations with co-packers, I decided to research how to obtain our own licenses, get process approval, and source ingredients so we could make the products our own way. Every year, we undergo 2-3 inspections, some of which last for days. We have to process the products in a specific way, testing and documenting everything. Cooking the sauce for hours and canning it is challenging enough, but the soda-making process is even more time-consuming. We have to cook the fresh fruit, roots, and herbs for hours; then cool the mixture and transfer it to stainless steel tanks; then carbonate it over a week or two; and finally, conduct a 10-hour-long bottling and pasteurization session.
When you run the numbers, it really doesn’t seem worth the time invested. Operating multiple businesses and doing all this work for just a few products can be daunting, and “daunting” might be an understatement. It sounds discouraging, but if I had to do it again, knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn’t start. You have to fail a lot to make something good. It takes time, and there is a lot of stress. If you don’t understand the entire process of making, sourcing, and selling your product, and the rules for doing it legally, you will never reach a point where people can enjoy it. Business plans help, but they don’t describe all the time you will have to invest.
I continue to make the sauce and soda because I believe in the products. I want other people to enjoy them, and I hope it will eventually pay off. We had our sauces in about 6 local markets and 3 local Earth Fare locations. We also had an agreement with multiple local Whole Foods stores for both the sauce and sodas. However, COVID-19 greatly affected our wholesale market. We lost a few accounts due to closures and let others go due to a lack of employees in our pizza shop. But we are slowly rebuilding what we had, and we hope to incorporate online sales soon and add a few local wholesale accounts back.
Have you ever had to pivot?
COVID-19 was the ultimate pivot of our time. Every business had to adapt or else risked failing. People were scared and hesitant to work. I was hesitant as well. We faced a crucial decision: to close down or push forward. Before the pandemic, my parents had already decided to retire, and I was planning to take over the business as the sole decision maker and manager.
When COVID-19 began shutting down businesses and forcing people into online meetings, I held a meeting with our employees to discuss our future. I asked them whether they wanted to continue working or preferred staying home and filing for unemployment. I was fully prepared to shut down permanently and start anew. Our long term employees wanted to continue working, while some other employees opted to stop working due to the pandemic. I decided to stay open for the sake of those who wanted to work.
During the first year of the pandemic, we had an extremely lean crew of a couple loyal employees that included my sister helping me. We were busy, and many days it was just me, my sister, and a delivery driver. On other days, we might have had one or two other employees. We locked our doors to walk-in customers and offered curbside delivery for all pickup orders. Godmother’s Sauce and Erie Reserve Beverage were put on hold while we focused on running the business with a small crew. We shortened our hours, closed an extra day each week, and slashed our menu. Some of these changes are still in place due to ongoing staff shortages, but we are moving in the right direction.
The reduced menu was a blessing in disguise. COVID-19 offered us an opportunity to implement something I had wanted to do for years. Previously, we hesitated to remove menu items out of fear it would affect our bottom line. However, I firmly believe that a restaurant should focus on a few menu items and do those well. Establishments with a concentrated menu are my favorite places to eat. We still need to cut more items to reach a place where I feel comfortable.
While challenging, some of the pivots we made during the pandemic have benefited us. Our doors have been open to customers for a while now, Godmother’s Sauce and Erie Reserve Beverage are slowly coming back, and we are working on new marketing ideas and menu items. COVID-19 brought us many new customers. People spent more time on social media, which allowed them to discover us from the comfort of their homes. We’ve experienced many ups and downs over the last 25 years, but the down times don’t have to be entirely negative. They can offer opportunities for growth.
Contact Info:
- Website: GodmothersPizza.com
- Instagram: Www.instagram.com/Godmotherspizzaandsauce/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/godmotherspizza