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Key Takeaways
When eating rooms shut down, Katie Lee targeted on survival, not reinvention.
By turning a restaurant pizza right into a frozen product in 24 hours and launching direct-to-consumer along with her current crew, she proved that pace and ease can unlock totally new companies.
When eating rooms shut down throughout Covid, Katie Lee was not making an attempt to construct a brand new enterprise. “We simply wished to outlive,” Lee says.
With eating places abruptly unable to serve company, she and her crew checked out what they already had and moved quick. On the time, Lee was working Katie’s Pizza & Pasta in St. Louis, the place wood-fired pizza anchored the menu.
“I prototyped the frozen pizza in 24 hours,” Lee explains. They cooked a restaurant pizza, sealed it, froze it and baked it once more the following day. “It was superior.”
As an alternative of redesigning the product for retail, Lee stored it near what got here out of her kitchens. Then, she flipped her operation nearly instantly. Her restaurant’s eating room turned a spot for a pizza meeting line. “We moved the entire servers and bartenders into supply drivers,” Lee explains. “They made $10 a field and had a 50-mile radius.”
She launched direct-to-consumer with a primary setup. The response was instant. “We bought 50,000 pizzas in six weeks,” she says.
Development introduced issues. After putting pizzas in grocery shops, Lee obtained a name from a federal agent. “We’re pulling all of your pizzas off the cabinets,” he instructed her. Promoting pizza with pepperoni meant USDA oversight. “I bear in mind saying, ‘Is that this an enormous deal?’” Lee remembers. “And he mentioned, ‘It’s a very huge deal.’”
The enterprise paused, entered inspection and continued below federal regulation. Momentum constructed from there. Lee utilized for Walmart’s Open Name and earned a Golden Ticket, a fast-track entry into nationwide distribution. “If you happen to get a Golden Ticket, you’re mechanically accepted into Walmart,” she says.
Not lengthy after, Goal reached out. Lee flew to Minneapolis anticipating a restricted regional rollout. As an alternative, the assembly ended with a full nationwide launch. The $20 million retail deal is placing Lee’s handmade frozen pizzas in each Goal retailer nationwide.
“After I discovered what the acquisition order was — 400,000 pizzas — we about misplaced our minds,” she says.
The crew scaled manufacturing shortly, increasing its facility, hiring dozens of latest workers and producing practically half 1,000,000 pizzas in simply over three months to fulfill the primary order.
Lee selected to not wait till the result was clear to inform the story. “You at all times hear the success tales afterwards. It’s very uncommon you get to be concerned from the decision and from there,” she says. A documentary crew filmed the method because it unfolded, whereas Lee started writing a memoir in chapters, documenting the work in actual time.
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Studying by means of life
Earlier than the frozen pizzas or nationwide retail offers, Lee’s story was already outlined in contrast. She didn’t come up by means of culinary college or formal coaching. Her expertise was in-built restaurant kitchens, formed by repetition and examined lengthy earlier than the enterprise scaled.
That background is how she explains the crew behind the model: “We’re a crew of misfits,” she says. “A single mother, cooks, creatives, former addicts, dreamers. And now we’re on the cabinets subsequent to billion-dollar manufacturers. We weren’t presupposed to be right here, and that’s precisely why we’re.”
Lee realized the trade by working in eating places, not lecture rooms. “I’m a highschool dropout,” she says. “Eating places will take you it doesn’t matter what.” Kitchens turned her training, and repetition turned her coaching.
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Time spent in Italy sharpened that basis. Lee lived in Florence whereas her mom taught high-quality artwork, and the expertise reshaped how she considered cooking. “I fell in love with Italian cooking,” she says, pointing to regional recipes and the best way meals is woven into every day life.
It was not about tendencies or presentation. It was about restraint and consistency. These concepts stayed along with her when she returned to america and opened her first restaurant.
That first restaurant introduced consideration shortly, and simply as shortly, issues unraveled. Lee battled dependancy whereas making an attempt to maintain the enterprise operating. She describes being faraway from her personal restaurant and finally dropping it.
Sobriety adopted, not as a dramatic turning level, however as a sensible reset. “Sobriety offers you so many presents,” she says. “Probably the most primary one is that we simply have extra time. We’re clear day-after-day.” It modified how she confirmed up and the way she took duty.
Household later reshaped her perspective. Motherhood pressured distance from every day operations and required belief in others. “You’re pulled away for some time, and also you’re pressured to depend on different individuals,” she says. Watching others run the enterprise with out her fixed presence was uncomfortable, however vital.
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Over time, that belief helped flip Katie’s Pizza & Pasta from a single neighborhood pizzeria right into a rising restaurant group, now working three places in St. Louis, with two extra set to open in 2025.
These classes carried ahead throughout Covid, when reliance on her crew turned important.
When Lee talks about success, she hardly ever frames it as private achievement. “Having the ability to share this success and dream huge with a gaggle of people that might not have had this chance [is] probably the most thrilling half,” she says.
For Lee, meals was the entry level. Sobriety, household and belief are what make the pace sustainable.
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Key Takeaways
When eating rooms shut down, Katie Lee targeted on survival, not reinvention.
By turning a restaurant pizza right into a frozen product in 24 hours and launching direct-to-consumer along with her current crew, she proved that pace and ease can unlock totally new companies.
When eating rooms shut down throughout Covid, Katie Lee was not making an attempt to construct a brand new enterprise. “We simply wished to outlive,” Lee says.
With eating places abruptly unable to serve company, she and her crew checked out what they already had and moved quick. On the time, Lee was working Katie’s Pizza & Pasta in St. Louis, the place wood-fired pizza anchored the menu.
