Pizza and Craft Brew: A Recipe for Entrepreneurial Success in San Diego

Nov 01, 2011

Can Pizza and Beer Help Create 190 Jobs?

Transcript – How a life of pizza, beer and surfing led to the creation of 190 jobs

Gina Marsaglia, CEO, Pizza Port: I was going to school at Cal Poly and I found out that there was a little pizza place down in southern California that was not doing very well and it was gonna go out of business. I walked in and it was a rainy night, it smelled like pizza, and I fell in love. It was mainly an opportunity to have my own business next to the beach and I loved pizza so I thought, why not? I invited my brother out to work and deliver pizzas and then he never went back to Colorado.

Vince Marsaglia, Vice President, Pizza Port: You’d wake up and you’d make pizzas all day, then you’d get to go surf ya know, then you’d go to sleep and you’d do that the next day. It was just really fun.

Gina Marsaglia, CEO, Pizza Port: Freedom! This is great; it was exactly where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing. We had extra square footage in the back, that’s where we started brewing beer just as a hobby.

Vince Marsaglia, Vice President, Pizza Port: Then we just decided we wanted to make a bigger brewing system. I was involved with Gina in getting the first loan to put this brewing equipment in here. After signing the papers we came out of the branch and, we were so happy, that I just screamed at the front and a couple of people looked at my like what did we just do. Without that loan, none of this would’ve happened. When we first started the brewing, sales went up ten times from what we were selling before – so that was pretty incredible.

Dave McKibben, Patron: Pizza Port was the second craft brewing in San Diego County and once they started winning awards and people saw how good their beer was, ya know, they spawned a great beer market in San Diego. Pizza Port has made their name by being creative with their beer.

Gina Marsaglia, CEO, Pizza Port: There are so many different combinations of malts and hops and yeasts that you can brew into a batch of beer that it’s endless creativity.

Vince Marsaglia, Vice President, Pizza Port: We don’t tell the brewers at each location what to brew. It’s kind of the difference between coming to work every day and making what somebody’s telling you or being an artist.

Gina Marsaglia, CEO, Pizza Port: When we were looking at ocean beach for that location, Bank of America took our loans from the start to the finish and made the operation happen. They help us connect all of the pieces to make a deal come together.

Gina Marsaglia, CEO, Pizza Port: What we have created is based on customers. What they want and what they suggest and creating a place that makes people happy.

Pizza and Craft Brew: A Recipe for Entrepreneurial Success in San Diego

In 1987, Gina Marsaglia was looking for a job and a way to relocate permanently from her home in Colorado to California, where she had been attending college. She heard about a pizza parlor that was about to go under in Solana Beach and she thought she would check it out.

“I walked in and it was a rainy night—it smelled like pizza and I fell in love,” Gina said. She scraped together all of the cash she had and made an offer that got her the restaurant. She invited her brother Vince out that summer and he’s been working with her ever since, growing Pizza Port into a nationally recognized restaurant and craft brewery without losing the comfortable informality of the family-run business that attracted and kept their first customers all those years ago.

From the start, Gina counted on Bank of America for the deposit services that every business needs to process its revenues and pay its bills. But it wasn’t long before this dynamic sister-brother team identified opportunities to grow and turned to the bank they worked with every day to convert those opportunities into success stories. In 1992, a loan from Bank of America helped them lease beer brewing equipment. Vince Marsaglia recalls with a chuckle, “After signing the papers [for the beer equipment loan], we came out of the branch and I was so happy that I just screamed…and a couple of people looked at me like, ‘What did he just do?’ Without that loan, none of this would have happened.”

The combination of craft-brewed beers and delicious pizza drove sales through the roof. Within a year, Pizza Port was doing 10 times the business that it had before adding beer to the mix.

In 2010, Pizza Port celebrated another milestone—its fourth location overall and its first one within the city of San Diego.

Gina notes that, “Bank of America was monumental in making it [the San Diego location] come together. They handled the real estate, the building purchase and pulled the whole package together. I couldn’t have done that.”

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Pizza and Craft Brew: A Recipe for Entrepreneurial Success in San Diego

Pizza and Craft Brew: A Recipe for Entrepreneurial Success in San Diego

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