A Crazy Idea About Pizza

In 2011, Thomas Edwards decided to take a step back from consulting and pursue what, at the time, sounded like a slightly crazy idea: pizza.

But not just any pizza.

Tom wanted to make naturally leavened sourdough pizza, baked at blistering temperatures in a mobile wood-fired oven. From a purely business perspective, it was hardly the obvious choice. Restaurants are demanding, margins can be thin, and there were certainly easier industries to enter.

But Tom was thinking about more than the economics of the business.

As his daughter, Megan, was growing up, he began thinking more intentionally about what he wanted to pass on to her. He wanted her to understand what it meant to work hard, to become genuinely skilled at something, and to take pride in doing it well. He wanted her to see firsthand how an idea could become a business. Just as importantly, he wanted that business to have a purpose beyond itself: to serve people and create something meaningful for the community.

The restaurant business brought all of those ideas together. It offered a place to build, teach, experiment, work alongside family, and create experiences for other people. It was also a challenge Tom simply wanted to take on and see if he could make work.

With the help of his family, that idea became MozzaPi.

Tom approached the restaurant with something of an Alice in Wonderland mentality: curiosity first, convention second. Why should a restaurant look like every other restaurant? Why buy something if you could figure out how to build it? Why accept the standard way of doing things when there might be a more interesting one?

The result was a space shaped by experimentation, craftsmanship, and a willingness to try things that might not make sense until they worked. Much like the pizza itself, the restaurant was built around the belief that doing something the slower, harder, or less conventional way can sometimes create something far more meaningful.

That philosophy has stayed with MozzaPi.

Sourdough remains at the center of what we do. Our dough takes time. We make careful choices about our ingredients. But MozzaPi has never really been only about making pizza.

From the beginning, it has been about bringing people together.

Around an oven. Around a table. At a wedding. During a bread class. Over a pizza shared between friends.

Over the years, MozzaPi has grown from one mobile oven into restaurants, catering, classes, events, and a much larger community. With each new chapter, we have tried to preserve the things that made the original idea special: curiosity, craftsmanship, hospitality, and the willingness to keep learning.

There have been plenty of experiments along the way. Some worked. Some didn't. That's part of the story too.

We are still a family business. We are still fascinated by fermentation, flour, fire, and the endless number of ways a restaurant can be made better. For us, MozzaPi is a home, and we hope that you can make it yours as well.

More than a decade after Tom fired the first pizzas from that mobile oven, that remains the idea behind MozzaPi:

We exist to bring people together through gathering, hosting, and experiences worth returning to.

The oven may be bigger now, but we're still following that crazy idea.