Courtesy Katie's
Katie Lee-Collier and Ted Collier of Katie's Pizza & Pasta Osteria recently got into the frozen pizza business as a way to keep the lights on and take care of their employees after COVID-19 shuttered their restaurants. What they didn’t realize was that, in doing so, they were launching something that would be so successful, they’d have to expand operations to accommodate demand.
“Every day, it’s been growing and growing exponentially,” Lee-Collier explains. “It’s been a lot to navigate and has been overwhelming. We had to sell out and recalibrate because we were making everything with our restaurant cryovac, which was a slow process, and we switched our recipes and just made everything better. Our mission has always been to make the best product and worry about everything else afterward.”
Courtesy Katie's
The Colliers have expanded their nascent pizza business in real time, something they had to do as they struggled to meet the demand for their new frozen pies and pasta bakes. After repeatedly selling out, they realized that they needed to grow the operation and get more efficient, purchasing a new, much larger cryovac machine, which allows them to make and wrap larger pizzas quicker.
They’ve also tweaked the recipes, which Lee-Collier says has resulted in an improved crust. “We’ve been making improvements as we go and testing each batch every day,” Lee-Collier says. “We used that information when we developed the larger size, so we could just make everything better.”
Courtesy Katie's
To thank customers for their continued support and patience as they “got their groove together” with their frozen pizza offerings, the owners are giving a $25 gift card to Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria with each order placed by this Friday. The cards are good for curbside and dine-in service when the restaurant dining rooms reopen.
Don’t expect the frozen pizza side of their business to go away when that happens, though. As Lee-Collier says, it will be an ongoing part of their operation, and she and Collier are already looking at building a dedicated kitchen for their frozen-food offerings to free up space in their restaurant kitchens once they reopen for full service.
“We want to respect the fact that things are going to be different after this,” Lee-Collier says. “If we don’t figure it out, we don’t want to be out of business. Right now, we are struggling to keep up with demand, but that’s a good problem to have. We’re just happy we didn’t have to lay anyone off and everything is still running.”
