The come back of a new pizza truck!

As a lot of you have come to the truck and seen the three of us (Cristian, Katrina, and our daughter Italy), we are a local family-run business and we love to serve amazing, fresh wood fired pizzas to our customers. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we unfortunately had to walk away from the truck. As we focus and move on from what has happened the past few weeks, we are now in need of our pizza/food community to come together and help us with our dream of fully owning our own pizza truck.

Cristian is the backbone of where the magic happens at Italy Paola Pizza Napoletana. He was born and raised in the capital of pizza-making: Napoli, Italy — hence one of the many reasons we named our beautiful 2-year-old daughter Italy. He’s been cooking for almost 8 years now, to try and work his way up to be one of the best pizza makers in not only Washington but in the whole US. He has been working really hard to fulfill his “American dream” to try and provide for his family. We want to continue this journey of having our own food truck so we can visit many locations and do catering for events around Tacoma and Pierce County.

Cristian moved from Napoli to Seattle in 2014 and started his journey of being a chef. Growing up in Italy where the food culture flourishes, he had always been amazed at the art of pizza making. He already had the basics, knowledge, and most importantly flavors. Cristian saw the food truck as an opportunity to continue and follow that path. Unfortunately this journey reached a sudden wall. One day we woke up and everything was gone, his dream and income was gone for our family of three. Obviously bills don’t stop coming in either! As a father and a husband, Cristian says his job is to make sure our rent is paid and food is on the table. Without a business, that looks really hard to accomplish. We not only want to provide a great product but, we also want to provide an experience. We want to provide you with a magical purchase that makes you feel like you just left Italy with the best pizza and the best ingredients on the market!

We did a lot of back and forth to get a GoFundMe up and going because Cristian has a lot of pride in him and wants to do this on his own. After we sat and talked for hours we had come to the conclusion to seek help from our community and customers because in the last week we have been shown so much love and support. We want to do this so we can repay you all and continue to serve you the best pizza in town.

Our GoFundMe will go on for 59 days, and hopefully in those 59 days we will be able to reach our goal of $60,000 that we will use towards buying and building the truck, licenses, and legal fees. Even if we don’t reach the goal, once we get up and running, we will host a 2-day free pizza event for anyone who helped contribute to our fundraiser. Whether you donate $1 or $1000 you can bring 1 person with you. On top of that, our daughter will choose 5 winners who will receive merch and a card for free pizza for 1 year!

Our goal now is to be an inspiration for the next generation that no matter how hard times get, they don’t last!! We can’t thank you all enough for the support, love and help you guys have given us so far. Our daughter’s name will rise again and this time higher!

ONE LOVE