Credit: Submitted Photo
Credit: Submitted Photo
How did Bella Sorella get started?
Bella Sorella, the first wood-fired pizza food truck in the Dayton region, was started in 2013 at a time when no one in the area had heard of food trucks.
“I had to call people and beg them to let me sell pizza,” Weizman recalled.
Before starting Bella Sorella, Weizman was working as a middle school English teacher and Okafor was a chef in San Francisco.
The idea behind the business came about when Weizman’s husband built her a wood-fired pizza oven on their farm. She recalled visiting a friend in Sacramento, California, and going to someone’s house with a wood-fired oven. When she returned home, she wanted one of her own.
Soon after, she and her sister attended a conference about mobile pizza ovens in Boulder, Colorado, and that’s where they started planning their dream.
An Italian heritage
Bella Sorella means “beautiful sister” in Italian. The sisters, who grew up north of Dayton and went to Chaminade Julienne Catholic High School, come from an Italian heritage.
“Food is the center of life when you grow up Italian,” Weizman said. “We’re eating one meal and thinking about what we’re eating the next.”
When they were growing up, they ate a lot of pasta and had family recipes for tomato sauce and meatballs. Homemade pizza wasn’t a huge thing.
“Pizza was something we kind of had to figure out on our own,” Weizman said.
The hardest thing to figure out when starting their business was the perfect dough recipe, especially because they were mobile. Their dough is made fresh weekly, using only four ingredients.
“Our crust is the perfect texture because it’s chewy and it’s crunchy at the same time,” Weizman said. “It’s always well baked with the char and everything, but it’s also our ability to use the freshest of everything. We grow a lot of what we put on our pizzas at our farm.”
Weizman grows all of the herbs they use on the pizzas and many of the vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes and eggplant. The items she doesn’t grow they get from local vendors.
From food truck to catering company
Over the years, Bella Sorella has evolved from a food truck to a catering company. The sisters are planning to scale back on public events this year as they focus on private events and the restaurant.
Bella Sorella is open April through October and does an average of 20 to 25 events a month with three mobile units. If they do a public event, it’s typically at Yellow Springs Brewery or the Englewood Market.
Credit: Submitted Photo
Credit: Submitted Photo
“The thing we’re most proud of is the business culture we’ve created,” Weizman said. “Without really knowing much about that, we’ve created this really tight family who respects each other (and) works together.”
The business started with the two sisters, Weizman’s husband and her daughter. Now, they have about 30 part-time employees.
Weizman said she remembers one class in particular where she and her sister were asked to write down the key words that would be important when starting a business.
“The first three words we wrote were exactly the same,” Weizman said. “We wrote food, family and community and we still run our business on those three words.”
The desire to open a restaurant
The sisters have been working on opening a brick-and-mortar location for at least five years.
“We were almost ready to commit to something and I called it off because I didn’t know what was going to happen with me,” Weizman said.
In 2020, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that attacks bones. She has had two stem cell transplants and has been in chemotherapy for five years. She is on her 14th “recipe” of chemo and, for the first time, it’s working.
“It kind of all worked out at the right time because I’m doing so much better now,” Weizman said.
What to expect at Bella Sorella
The sisters are working with Ferguson Construction on the build-out of their new restaurant.
The 3,500-square-foot restaurant will be on U.S. 40 between Esther Price and the Kleptz YMCA. Ground-breaking is planned for February.
Credit: Facebook Photo
Credit: Facebook Photo
Bella Sorella will be a casual, sit-down restaurant that’s family-friendly. Weizman said they’re hoping to create a warm atmosphere where everyone feels welcomed. Plans include seating for about 50 people inside, plus 30 on a patio.
“It’s a privilege and honor in Italy to work at a restaurant,” Weizman said. “We want to try to lean on that a little bit. We want it to be as Italian as we can make it because that’s really who we are.”
Customers can expect a menu of pizzas, salads, sides and desserts. A bar program is planned.
The kitchen will serve the restaurant and all three mobile units and is being built for easy expansion, Weizman said.
MORE DETAILS
Weizman said they are thankful for their customers who have kept coming back for the last 12 years. She also appreciates the positive and encouraging comments from their followers on social media when they announced they were opening a restaurant.
For more information, visit www.bellasorellapizza.com or the business’s Facebook page (@bellasorellapizza). A behind-the-scenes look at the progress of the restaurant will be available on Instagram (@bellasorellapizza).
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