Girasole started about ten years back, when I was a young teenager making pizza with my mom every Friday night. My mom and I loved to try out various dough recipes, sauces, and topping ideas, even if it was just for the two of us. We use to dream up restaurant names, pizza specialties, interior design ideas, and locations. Throughout my teenage years my mom came close a couple times to buying a restaurant to finally fulfill our silly Friday night dreams. However, it was never the right time or right place, until this time. This past winter, before my fabulous chef mother took a job at a winery, she stumbled across a company that makes mobile wood fired ovens. She took a trip to Colorado to attend a seminar about the ovens and how to turn one into a catering business. Upon her return she accepted her new job at the winery, but could not let an opportunity like this pass, so she called me up. "Brittany, I have a crazy idea" is what she first told me. I braced myself, only to hear her offer to loan me the money to buy an oven and start my own business. How could I not? I have a beautiful 3-year-old daughter, a fantastic fiancée, and all the drive in the world to succeed. This was the chance of a lifetime for us, so we took it, and we never plan on looking back.
Since then, we have gotten everything together, practiced working in the oven until we had down, and devoured tons of pizza until it was pure perfection. Our dreams continue, we do not plan on stopping at just a catering business, we hope to one day own a wood fired pizza restaurant. In addition to owning a restaurant, I want to pay my good fortune forward. My mother took a risk in me, and I would like to do the same for other young mothers out there. I am currently attending PSU to get my bachelors in Social Work, and eventually a masters. Ideally, I would love to start a non-profit organization that teaches young mothers how to start their own businesses. Teenage mothers and mothers in the early twenties are grouped among the poorest across the country, and I am bound and determined to change that. I have begun the journey of achieving my dreams, and even turned some of them into fruition. I look forward to where this path takes me along the way!
