[gentle music] My name is Jason Spore.

I'm the owner operator of IPPA Pizza Napoletana.

It all starts with mom, of course, as it often does in Italian American families, right?

And her pizza, I would put it up against anyone, so, that was really the inspiration.

Interestingly enough, the name for my pizzeria, IPPA Pizza Napoletana, started with my son when he was learning how to talk.

What is that?

Ippa.

Ippa!

The biggest challenge was understanding everything that goes into a food truck, or we call it a mobile pizzeria here, and gave me a whole new respect of the food truck community and what they have to do on a daily basis in order to pack up, get ready, make sure that they're not forgetting certain things as they go from event to event.

That really hit home with us really quickly as we opened the business, so.

We are a pizza first company.

Our decision-making process is always around flavor, so we try to appeal to all of the senses.

It's flavor first.

From there, it's seasonal, so we choose things that are in season, then we focus on texture, so how it hits your taste buds, and then appearance.

So whenever we're creating a new dish, we will always pick the thing that tastes best first.

Today we're gonna feature the garlic smasher pizza, okay?

The highlight in this pizza obviously is the garlic and the different ways that it can be prepared.

So what we do is we slow cook the garlic in oil until it becomes soft, and then we mash it up and that becomes the base, or the sauce, on the crust itself, okay?

We also put fresh, raw, sliced garlic on top of the pizza, and we also drizzle on top hot, house-made garlic oil, as well.

So, there's a lot of garlic in the dish.

I love garlic being Italian.

It is truly the highlight of this pizza, so.

[gentle music continues] We use several different farm partners, a gentleman that we work with very closely is Patrick Hart from Hart Farms, and he'll grow whatever tomatoes we want, and he grows us some garlic, he grows us some basil.

Anytime there's an opportunity to incorporate that into our main recipe, and recipes, that's what we do.

I feel like a lot of people don't know who we are yet.

So, the next step for us as an evolution is really to market, get the word out there.

One of the things that is of utmost importance is to establish a location that the people can get used to you being there all the time.

The people of Erie like to go out to eat.

They like to sit down, they like to bring their family, et cetera.

So I think that we're gonna be moving towards more of a brick and mortar concept where they're gonna be able to experience our pizza in that environment.

We hope to be something that the people of Erie can be proud of.

Our goal is to be one of the best pizzerias in the country and to compete on the same stage as all the individuals at the top of, you know, "Pizza Today Magazine" and PMQ, and all the other sources that you see in the pizza world.

So, we want to be one of the top and we're hoping that we can get there.

[gentle music continues]