Vince's Pizza

My earliest clue that I may be in the pizza business for the rest of my life came one snowy winter day in 1952. I was in the garage of our home riding my tricycle when the garage door opened and there was a big, black, Blodgett pizza oven in our driveway. My dad was setting up a pizza place in Akron, Ohio. Later, we went to the shop where the carpenters were building the walls and counters. This was my first experience of seeing how to open a pizza business. My dad’s formula for success was to love his customers, give them great food at a great value and have fast service. He opened it up, worked it for a couple years, sold it to my Aunt Mary, and got the bug to move to California in 1955.

We moved to Santa Monica and he started looking for a location. After about a year he found an an old real estate office with a house in back in Inglewood CA. He set up the tiny four hundred foot building (maybe smaller) with a counter, a pizza oven, refrigerator and two picnic tables outside. He made enough money to make the restaurant bigger and eventually buy the corner on the block.

The fellow that owned the corner lot on the block lived in Fallbrook. I still remember the day we got in the old station wagon and came to Fallbrook to pay the man off so my dad could build the new Andy’s pizza on the corner of Centinela and Beach St. in Inglewood. I also remember hearing my dad say when he retired he would like to move to Fallbrook, This was 1959.

My mom and dad were hard workers; they were always at the restaurant, so were we. Instead of getting a baby sitter we would do our homework and then go to work. My first jobs, at six years old, were stocking coke and cigarette machines, washing dishes, etc. By the time I was in high school my sisters and I were running the place.

In 1973, my dad sold the place and fulfilled his dream of moving to Fallbrook. Soon, in 1975 my wife Cathy and I moved to Fallbrook too. We built homes, trained horses and started a wholesale grocery business swearing to never return to the restaurant business again. Yea, right!

After working at the Fallbrook Pizza Company for a while, I got the bug to be back in the business. We found a location at 1331 S. Mission in Fallbrook. In about 100 days, we did a total improvement to the building and opened Vince’s Italian Restaurant in 1984. Our concept was to have a place with great food and low prices so people with families could afford to dine out in a nice place with the kids. We took off and stayed there till we were bought by Rite-Aid in 1998.

In 2004 we found our present location still maintaining our concept of great food, with fast, friendly service at low prices in a fast, to-go format. Since 1984, we have been thankful to have had the pleasure to serve the greatest people on earth, the residents of Fallbrook.