Yesterday, Rainier Valley business owner Joe Fugere – founder of Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria in Columbia City – met with President Barack Obama, Senator Patty Murray, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and two other Washington state small business owners at a roundtable discussion in Seattle about the importance of reinvigorating small business lending.
Fugere opened his first pizzeria in 2004 and has since grown the business to four locations with 180 employees. This month, Tutta Bella was selected, out of 33,000 pizza restaurants across the country, as the “2010 Independent Pizzeria of the Year” by Pizza Magazine.
Despite his success, when Fugere was seeking credit to open a fourth location last year in Issaquah, he was flatly turned down by the big banks.
“I was deeply offended,” said Fugere. “I had a healthy, profitable business and a blemish-free history of making every loan payment, in full and on time. And now, I was being called ‘risky’ by the big banks, when in fact it was their risky decisions on Wall Street that caused the economy to collapse in the first place.”
Having been rejected by larger banks, Joe approached a community bank and within a few weeks the loan was approved. In mid-2009 Tutta Bella’s fourth location opened and currently employs 50 people. Recently, an SBA loan under the Recovery Act has helped him improve the company’s cash flow.
To celebrate their success, Tutta Bella is offering one free pizza of your choice per table for this week only through this Sun., Aug. 22.
Tutta Bella is located at 4918 Rainier Avenue South in Columbia City. Photos/David Mullarkey Images
Who to know, where to eat & what to do in one of America’s most diverse zip codes!
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Thats cool, but if you go there expect to get one pizza per person (not very filling)
Very proud of his success!
The pizza is overpriced and not that good though!
I think the pizza is one of the healthiest you can find…and the portion is not too small and not to large…just right for baby bear
I’ll stick with “The Squirrel”
Vince’s baby! Although I refuse to park in their parking lot after dark due to mass break-ins.
What’s the point of having cameras without night vision?
overpriced and not that good? Huh?
Seriously, the some (perhaps most) of the best pizza in Seattle, and some of the best salads too.
I love Tutta Bella. It was/has been pivotal in the revitalization of Columbia City and has brought a whole host of good paying jobs to the South End. Rock on.
Maybe it was just the first 3 times I went that I wasn’t impressed.
I will give it 1 more try.
Congrats to Tutta Bella. We’ve been going there since before we lived in Rainier Valley, and I agree it’s a centerpiece of Columbia City. Every out of town visitor who comes to see us gets talked into a trip to Tutta Bella.
Self-admitted troll alert…
I thought the collapsed economy was George Bush’s fault?
I would question a bank refusing to loan TB money, since they are losing potential interest profit. But it is a bit odd to complain about banks’ bad risk then feel offended when the bank doesn’t take a risk on him.
That said, I have always found Joe to be friendly and personable. Our family has gotten tired of Neapolitan pizza and the expense of eating without getting full at his restaurants. We probably visited once a month or so when it opened, but now only go every 6 – 9 months.
ADHD posts – gotta love them. Mostly that’s what I get for posting from my phone.
I think it’s great that Joe got to be part of this – certainly he can speak well for small businesses in the Seattle urban areas. And they have been a model for business success these past 5 or 6 years.
From a purely “how do I like them” perspective, I have sort of grown tired of the TB menu. The food is certainly good (esp. the salads), and the overall quality is much higher than Vince’s. But in terms of how much you get for your dollar, I have a hard time justifying a trip to Tutta Bella anymore. For a while, I was hoping it would become one of my community restaurants, where I might go once a month, know the staff, and generally consider it part of my extended house, if you will. But the prices of the food have really made that impossible (oh, and a lack of salary growth hasn’t helped, either). And really, my kids don’t know the difference between TB pizza and anywhere else, so I might as well go for quantity when I can.
So congratulations to Joe and to Tutta Bella for great success, but I’ll probably not see much of either until the next life.
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