Many of you have heard about our back story, but since opening in the fall of ’19 there have been many new adventures, stories, side quests, all of which have created some hard city miles. Austin and Frank Battaglia were just boys when they opened. Austin was 25, and Frank was 23. They were unaware that the many challenges ahead were going to make them men. Businessmen, that is.
They officially opened October 11th of 2019. Every business has growing pains. Stunod’s was no exception. The boys immediately had to learn how to operate a busy operation, all while having very limited funds. They quickly realized they needed a proper point of sale system. All of the companies wanted thousands. The boys didn’t have it. So paper and pen it was. When that failed, Austin reached out to his best bud Shane to see if he could help create a basic POS system. So they all got to work. They quickly created a program that got the job done for less than $500.
Then they needed to teach their staff how to work properly and efficiently, all while learning the system themselves. With each mistake, they gained experience. Just as things started to smooth out, the ovens they inherited started to fail them. Still extremely limited in funding, the boys were graciously gifted a set of Bakers Pride Y-600 ovens by their father. With that came much more learning to do. Each oven had its own tendencies. Although the ovens were brand new, the boys had to learn how the ovens wanted to cook their style of pizza. They reworked their dough and monitored temps. They got it down pat. All of a sudden it felt as if Stunod’s was a well-oiled machine.
This is now February of 2020. Friends and family called us from across the pond. Our people in Italy called us to tell us the horrors they were experiencing. A disease was running rampant, and people were in serious danger. We prayed for them. Yet the boys foolishly thought that we here in the States would never face that issue.
By the second week of March 2020, the president announced the shutdown. The COVID-19 pandemic. The boys had a harsh reality to face. A staff that looked at them for answers. Answers that the brothers could not provide. The truth is they were just as scared as everyone else was. The immediate concern was the well-being of their loved ones. The boys had a sense of impending doom. Neither could say it out loud. The fact of the matter was that, by all appearances, their brand-new business was going to suffer as well. Neither of them could say it, but both thought their dreams were going to end this way.
As the president announced the closure of all businesses, the boys sent the majority of their staff home to be with their families. The boys stayed. They stayed all night, sanitizing every inch of the shop and then discussing the plan.
The plan was simple. Battaglia boys don’t quit. As each brother held back his true emotions, they decided fear was not the proper course of action. The boys opened up because they are rebels. Because they are renegades. The boys were inspired by business owners that blazed trails. Under no circumstances would they consider closing the doors. Businesses don’t fail, people quit.
Not closing for a single day, Stunod’s stayed open. The first month all of the new customers the boys gained stopped calling nearly as much. There were no more walk-in customers. The phones were quiet. Yet the bills kept coming. The boys had to seriously adjust. As time passed, customers started to call again. With every passing week, more customers came back, and new ones started to arrive. Then weeks turned into months. Masked up, no tables, and not sure what each day would bring.
Many restaurants would have a COVID outbreak. The whole staff would be seriously sick. The restaurant would close with no telling when it would open back up. The reputation they spent years earning could be shattered in a day. The boys needed to avoid this at all costs. When the staff felt ill, the boys picked up the slack. Working long, hot days, no questions asked.
Then Chicago faced riots. The only day the boys closed early was after warnings from the 8th District Police Department. Watching some of their favorite places get vandalized was gut-wrenching, knowing how much these families were already facing. At a time when small businesses needed so much help, they instead had to deal with more bullshit. The industry we loved was in a nosedive.
Customers were passing away, and the brothers’ parents got very ill. Their father needed to go to the hospital. The boys recall rushing over to see their father. Their biggest inspiration was very ill, but even more stubborn. As they pleaded with him to go to the hospital, he argued that if he could do 20 push-ups, then we had to leave him alone. We agreed. He did it.
Our father survived, and then thrived. Weeks later the IRS showed up at our door. They believed we were a front. We pleaded with them, arguing that this had to be the worst front of all time. Who would work 70 hours a week for a front lol. We found out the hard way that we filed our taxes incorrectly. We faced many fines and penalties. In my defense, I barely passed algebra class lol. Well, we faced enough fines and penalties that we considered closing the doors. Yet we are Battaglia Boys. We don't quit.
We worked long days to catch up. We sacrificed our weekends, relationships, friendships, and time with our family. For some reason, we stayed so damn determined that our lil pizza place would one day be a big pizza place with many locations and that all of our dreams would turn into reality.
