Departments
|
Week of 19 March 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 27 |
Feature Article
Pizza break for alumnus brings in the dough
By Brad Seawell
What do you get when you pair a BU alum who wants a break from selling real estate, with a pharmacist who wants to try anything before returning to his profession? In Brighton, you get WizeGuys Pizza.
Gianpaolo Starita (SMG'95) was dabbling in real estate since earning his bachelor's degree from BU's School of Management four years ago. When he began to consider applying to law school, he also thought about trying something different before returning to academia.
The 26-year-old thought about pizza. "It seemed like the kind of business in which you could turn some brains and a lot of hours into a decent living," says Starita in the somewhat cramped quarters of his pizzeria at 547A Washington St. in Brighton. "And I know I'm not allergic to work." At BU, Starita explains, "we were taught that you can't possibly know everything, but you can definitely find the people who can teach you."
Starita's original partner was his brother Victor, who had some pizza-making experience. By the time they were ready to launch their business, however, Victor had to relocate to Pennsylvania.
Enter Richard Simon, 33, who graduated from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in 1989 and began working in Brookline. His brother Mitch earned a business degree from BU in 1984, and that gave Starita and Simon some common ground on which to build their friendship. Simon says he "burned out" on his Brookline pharmacy job, but was seriously considering going back into the business when Starita began lobbying about the pizza parlor. Eventually, Starita convinced Simon that it was time for a pizza break, and WizeGuys officially opened its doors on October 3, 1998. Simon, quite simply, became a pieman.
"We'll be expanding the dining area from two tables to five booths in the next few weeks," says Starita. "We do about 75 percent of our business at night, but it's almost all deliveries because there's no place to sit. The booths will get some customers to stick around."
When asked about his customer base, Starita boasts that he's captured the "neighborhood market" and isn't relying primarily on college students. When nearby Boston College went on spring break, Starita says, "we experienced only a 5 percent decrease in business. That's good news for the summer."
While Starita tosses out numbers, Simon tosses pizza dough, along with an occasional one-liner about working in a pharmacy. Just as Starita is at home tending to business details, Simon has taken to his role as a sort of front man for WizeGuys, which boasts "the best New York-style pizza in Boston." (New York-style pizza is made by having the toppings put on first, then the cheese.) Simon, originally from Westchester County just north of New York City, interacts freely with those few diners who decide to eat in.
"Is that the best pizza you ever had?" he asks a young local couple having lunch. "Definitely," they agree through bites of cheese and sauce.
Within minutes, Simon is back to showing a few diners what a stromboli ("like a calzone," the menu says, "only different") looks and smells like fresh from the oven. As head of the kitchen, Simon controls the sound system and that usually means something by the Grateful Dead, or reggae. "It's my motivational music," he yells across the kitchen.
While short-term plans call for an expansion of the dining area on Washington Street, WizeGuys' dynamic duo definitely harbor some long-term aspirations for their pizza business. Starita, who grew up in And