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Katie’s Pizza and Pasta is a new, artisan-Italian restaurant that will open its doors in Rock Hill sometime this summer. It is also a restaurant that came very close to remaining little more than a dream.
Owner Katie Lee’s celebrated kickstarter campaign, the first (and the most outrageously ambitious) for a restaurant in St. Louis, reached its lofty goal of $40,000 two nights ago, with a scant 40 hours left to go in the campaign. Kickstarter only charges the donors if the whole goal amount is met; fail to meet the goal and you get nada. One can only imagine Lee’s tremendous relief and joy at finally learning the funds were in hand.
So what now? When will the new joint open? What will happen to Lee’s popular Richmond Heights spot, Katie’s Pizzeria? And will the bartender at KP&P actually pluck leaves of mint from the “living green wall” inside the space and then mash them right into your mojito? (Hints: summer, it will stay open, and yes, respectively.)
Let’s hear from the creative Ms. Lee (above):
What did you do when you learned you’d achieved your Kickstarter goal?
I was working at the time and I had a little freakout moment and then I had to pull it together for work. We didn’t expect it to happen that day. We expected it to get closer to the wire. We expected to have to wait a few more days to see.
Why $40,000 – what does that number represent?
The budget for the restaurant is much, much more than that, but we had some financing already in place. The number was kind of hard to pick. We wanted a number that would help us reach our total goal and give us exposure for other, deep-pocket investors. And that worked out, luckily
So, what now?
It’s really exciting. Through the Kickstarter and the exposure of the video and the concept, people contacted us and became investors. Many of those investors have incredible skill sets, so we put together this amazing team, and met with the landlord of the property yesterday, after we submitted out letter of intent. We’ll be singing a lease in the next week or two, then start building immediately. My fiance and I have been working on the project for a year, and I’d been conceptualizing it for about two years. We have a general contractor who’s done a lot of restaurants and we have a pretty good idea of what we need to do. I think the best part about it is I didn’t expect such an outpouring of support. What’s happened in the last 45 days has given us even more strength than we had before.
Had you ever heard of anyone using Kickstarter to fund a restaurant start-up before?
No. I was e-mailing people and talking to them about my project and someone said you have such an incredible social-media network and a loyal following from five years of success at Katie’s, and he suggested crowdfunding. We researched Kickstarter, and found it's mostly artists, musicians, writers, and video games and techie stuff. There were retail food products and a few restaurants in bigger cities, but none that I saw here.
What will your Kickstarter donors get?
There’s all different levels of backing. We felt like they were giving us a loan – we didn’t want them to feel like it was a charity. We wanted the rewards to be equal or greater to what they were giving. So say, at $25 you get an entree and a drink, for $50 lunch for two with drinks. We sold a lot of cooking classes. There was one level where the donor gets to spend a night on the line cooking a dinner service with me. The restaurant will have an open kitchen with a wood-burning oven and some seats at the counter where you can see us cook. There are tickets for the grand opening, private parties, kids’ parties…
Tell us about the menu changes and the big plans for Katie’s Pizza & Pasta.
We have a very tiny kitchen here and I’ve always wanted to do fresh pasta. When I was growing up my mom taught fine art and got to go to Italy, and I got to experience food in Italy. I’ve worked for my Aunt Zoe at all her restaurants. I’m obsessed with pasta but there’s no space to cook it here. We'll be cooking pizzas in a wood-burning oven and making handmade artisan pasta, which we’ll dry on display racks throughout the restaurant. (You won’t actually eat that pasta, but you’ll see the process.) We’ll do in-house artisan cheeses and cure meats out in the open. People like to see the process, feel like they’re part of it. We’re also going to do a living green wall behind the bar, a growing vertical garden. We’ll have a nice specialty cocktail list, too.
So people can pluck the mint for their mojito right off the wall?
The bartender could, yeah.
Where will the restaurant be located?
In Rock Hill, near the intersection of Manchester and McKnight, in the “Market at McKnight,” a new development.
When can we expect Katie’s Pizza & Pasta to open?
We are confident that it will be open by the Fourth of July if things keep falling in line like they have.
What will happen to the current Katie’s Pizzeria location?
This one is staying open and my father will keep it. He owns the building and started Katie’s Pizza with me. The menu will stay the same, I just won’t be running it any more and I’ll no longer be the owner. The split is amicable, and I’ll be consulting here to make sure everything transitions smoothly.
Anything else?
Yes. It’s really important to me that the community gets to feel a sense of ownership in this. I felt that was a cool idea. I’m going to keep the Kickstarter page open so I can update everyone on every step of the process. I’m going to do some videos and pictures of the build-out so the backers can experience the process of what it takes to open a restaurant.
