Katie Lee: Founder of Katie’s Pizza & Pasta

Episode 871

On today’s episode, we welcome Katie Lee, Founder of Katie’s Pizza & Pasta — a chef-driven Italian restaurant and fast-growing CPG brand based in St. Louis. Katie’s journey from high school dropout, recovering addict and single mom to James Beard-recognized restaurateur and one of the fastest-growing food entrepreneurs in America is a powerful story of resilience, grit and building something from scratch.
In this episode, Katie shares how she launched her first restaurant in 2008 and helped ignite the artisan Italian pizza movement in the Midwest. She talks about taking Katie’s from a beloved neighborhood restaurant to the national frozen food aisle, why handmade quality and rigorously sourced ingredients remain core to the brand, and what it took to produce 400,000 pizzas for Target in just 96 days — all by hand. We also discuss clean comfort food, building a brand with real identity, staying true to your roots while scaling, and what founders should do when the idea they believe in still isn’t working.
A must-listen for founders, operators, food lovers and anyone interested in resilience, restaurant growth, CPG, brand building and what it really takes to scale without losing the soul of the product.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up. That I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be. We just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don’t get knocked out. Knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go! Let’s go! Hi, everyone. and welcome back to the Kara Goldin Show. What does it actually take to go from a neighborhood restaurant to the frozen food aisle without losing what made people love you in the first place? Today, I’m joined by Katie Lee, founder of Katie’s Pizza Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Pasta, a chef-driven Italian restaurant and CPG brand based in St. Louis, that is now growing nationally like gangbusters. Katie’s story is one of grit, resilience, and a lot of handmade pizza and sauces and pastas. She. by the way, I’ll let her share this story. But an incredible story of being a high school dropout, a recovering addict, a single mom. I mean, amazing, amazing, amazing what she has been able to accomplish. And she launched her first restaurant in 2008. Multiple restaurants now, and has helped ignite the artisan Italian pizza movement, especially in the Midwest. So today, Katie’s Pizza Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Pasta is known for wood-fired pizzas, homemade pastas, rigorously sourced ingredients, and food that feels both elevated and comforting, and so so good. In addition to other outlets, you can find her products in Target. She also has a book coming out in early September that I’m so excited to read that she’ll share a little bit more about it’s called unemployable, so I cannot wait to hear more from Katie all about how she’s been able to accomplish what she has. So, Katie, welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. So nice to meet you.

Katie Lee 2:34
Thank you. So great to meet you. Great intro. Oh,

Kara Goldin 2:38
thank you, thank you. What I love most about doing this podcast is meeting incredible founders, and you know, you just have woken me up this morning to and given me hope, right, for people who have gone out and done the impossible. So I mean that sincerely. In addition to having a great company and great product. So, for listeners who may not know Katie’s Pizza Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Pasta yet, how do you describe the brand and really what makes it unique?

Katie Lee 3:11
Well, I think you did a great job. But yes, it’s a you know Italian restaurant. We pride ourselves on really cool, beautiful ingredients. We make everything from scratch, including our pastas that are handmade and hand filled in beautiful pasta rooms, wood fired ovens, and we just our food is really bright and lively and comforting at the same time. It’s just a really fun place.

Kara Goldin 3:39
Prior to actually becoming an entrepreneur or a founder, you had a a life that was a little bit different. Can you explain sort of what your life looked like prior to launching Katie’s?

Katie Lee 3:55
Yeah, well, I grew up and with a father who was a junk picker, like a junk man, and my mother was a fine artist, and so it was an unorthodox childhood. I became a little troubled with it all. My father was also epileptic, so he had brain damage and suffered from epilepsy. It was that was difficult. Went to school, couldn’t really handle life as a young kid, and ended up dropping out around 14 or 15, and went to the place that will take you know people without a degree, and I went straight into restaurants. So started working restaurants very young, worked in a lot of restaurants, probably 20 in total, many years, did every position, and really fell in love with it. It was a place that got to learn how to connect with people, and found out that I absolutely love food and love creating, you know, these special moments for people. So I did that for a long time, and then in my late teens, early 20s, I got. A chance to go to Italy. My mother was living there, teaching art through a study abroad program, and fell even more in love with food, specifically Italian food, as you can imagine being in Italy. And came back and said, “I’m going to open a you know a pizzeria with all these beautiful ingredients, and it was you know, mostly just me forcing it to happen, and I did it by the age of 2526 Opened my first place and struggle was struggling with my addiction the whole time, in and out of treatment centers and hospitals, and eventually got kicked out of my restaurant. Became homeless, landed in a halfway house in St. Louis, and lived there for about six months, and have been sober ever since. So that was 15 years ago, and then I began to build the brand and the restaurants and the company that you see in Target and everywhere else.

Kara Goldin 6:02
So, were you in St. Louis then the whole time that you were experiencing that?

Katie Lee 6:08
Pretty much. I mean, I had, you know, like I said, I lived in Italy with my mom. You know, she was she taught there, so I’d go in the springtime a few times, and and spend a lot of time there. And but mostly St. Louis and then Florence. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 6:24
you’ve been very open about being a high school dropout, a recovering addict, and a single mom. How do those experiences do you feel shape who you’ve become as an entrepreneur?

Katie Lee 6:40
Well, I think like they’ve given me a lot of great perspective. I understand how difficult life can be because I’ve been in those tough situations. So every day, right? You know, I’m super grateful to have what I have and be with the people I am I’m with now and build what we’re building-it’s you know like an incredible amount of gratitude because of those experiences. But you know, I believe like pain is such a great teacher, and anytime we get to go through those painful experiences, which we all do, everyone can relate to you know my story in some way or you know in much more painful ways. And those are the times when you’re kind of left with nothing but yourself, and you you know get to really reflect and and hopefully change and grow and learn. And so I’ve had those really tough moments that have just kind of taught me what’s important in life and given me the strength to really accomplish anything.

Kara Goldin 7:41
That’s incredible. So you launched, I guess you launched your first restaurant, and then ended up leaving that. And then 2008 eight, you launched Katie’s.

Katie Lee 7:53
So sorry, 2008 I did launch Katie’s. Lost, got kicked out of that.

Kara Goldin 7:59
Okay,

Katie Lee 8:00
and then came back, you know, after living in that house, getting some sobriety, came back and got the business back. So, and then I I opened Katie’s Pizza Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Pasta, which is what you see today in 2013 Yeah,

Kara Goldin 8:18
when did you realize Katie’s could become more than just one restaurant and a CPG brand,

Katie Lee 8:27
more than one restaurant probably just because of the way that I’m built. I just love to build things. I love to grow things. I can’t sit still. I can’t have a day off. So, and the idea of being able to touch more people and create more opportunity has always been something I’ve wanted to do. So I’ve always wanted to have multiple restaurants. Having the CPG thing was really not an accident, but it was you know based on COVID happened. They shut. They mandated that dining rooms were to be shut down, and I was, you know, pretty freaked out that I was going to lose the two. I had two restaurants at the time and lose my team, and quickly, you know, jumped into action with my team and said, “Let’s, you know, freeze a pizza tonight. And so we fro, we made one in the restaurant. We froze it. We used a cryovac bag because we had Cryovac machines as chefs, and came back the next day and cooked it. And thought, okay, we got to get this out there. It was a safe way to get food out, you know. And so launched a very basic e-commerce site, announcing that our restaurant was going to do this. And within six weeks, I think we had sold 50,000 pizzas across the St. Louis metro area. So our dining rooms were like assembly lines, and then our servers and bartenders became delivery drivers. It was a really special experience, and you know, it just was such a good product that the growth growth. Local grocers just started contacting me and saying, you know, we’d love to see your product in our stores. And I had no idea what CPG was. I didn’t know what that meant. I had to ask and like, how do you do this? How do you make a nutrition label? And we just kind of had a lot of people that just helped and figured it out. And you know, that was really by 2001 we started to grow the the the pizzas across the country in small specialty retailers. Went to our first Expo West, and you know today we’re in I think 5500 doors, and that’s in a matter of really like three or four years. So it’s pretty pretty crazy, yeah, and multiple SKUs, multiple categories, and this full line of Italian foods. So, and a big team, and we make everything. So that’s the also the really cool part.

Kara Goldin 10:52
So I just want to clarify. So I think you said 2001 2021 right?

Katie Lee 10:57
21 Thank you. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 10:58
yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Well, so in 2020-one you really took off at that point. You know, it’s it’s fascinating talking to so many entrepreneurs in all different categories. I mean, in many different ways, COVID was, you know, just a it was eye opening, right? Like it was scary. It was eye opening, especially in the food industry. But it seems like there were a lot of ideas that ended up happening for so many founders that maybe they couldn’t have even imagined, right? But they were sort of forced to pivot, or you know, come up with new ways to survive more than anything. But would you agree?

Katie Lee 11:46
Oh yeah, I always think like you know, when you’re left with very little, that’s when you’re the most creative, and when you have to survive, that’s when you’re the most creative because you’ve got to figure out you know really out of the box ways to make it work and really truthful ways because you have very little and you have very few options. So you’re not doing something necessarily to make money. You’re doing something to survive, and that usually is the most honest way that you can create. And I think that’s why the product is so exciting for the market. Is it’s a really great product. It’s based on what we truly believe in, which is clean, you know, comfort food-food that tastes good that you recognize, but is used with beautiful ingredients, just like Italy. So it’s been it’s been cool.

Kara Goldin 12:35
I love it, especially when you don’t have experience in the CPG or Frozen, I I’m sure that you ran into doubters along the way. Whether it was you know industry people, right? Industry people, or I always say like family and friends. You know they want you to be safe, right? So it’s like, why do you need to go do this? You have four restaurants, like you know, why not to? So, can you talk about that experience and and what would you say to anybody who’s having to go through that as well? I’d love to kind of hear your your take on it.

Katie Lee 13:20
Well, I always think like I always say: people that are successful are not smarter or better than, or you know, than the average person. We’re all very the same and average. It’s just a matter of, you know, not giving up and not being defeated by no’s. And I think no’s for me are always a point. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder where I want to prove prove people wrong, and so that’s always been a catalyst for me. But you know, I would say if you are building something, you are going to have doubters if you believe in it and are doing it for the right reasons, and you can just hang in there and just keep fighting. You’re probably going to make it just because of that. And a lot of people really just do give up when they hear the no’s or they come close to not making payroll or a disaster or whatever. It’s really hard to just keep going and and fight for it. And I have that’s probably the one thing that I’m good at is able to believe in something, see the vision, and keep going. But I still have so-I mean, we still we still have so many doubters just because we are an unorthodox company that doesn’t maybe come from the space, and it’s just so exciting to see what we’re able to do. You know, with with what we have, I just I love it.

Kara Goldin 14:43
That’s so great. So when you think about the the road, it’s one thing to be selling pizzas in direct to consumer, but then you took the brand to conventional grocery and perhaps other other. Outlets as well. Can you talk about that and how different and and maybe challenging that is versus what you were used to?

Katie Lee 15:08
So challenging because of all of the hidden fees and things that you know pop up as you go that you figure out the hard way. You know, you think you can just get accepted and send your pizzas, or just send your pizzas. But there’s this balancing act of the distributor and the retailer, and pulling from certain DCs, and so finding a distributor that believes in you, so that the retailers can then buy from you, or finding a big enough retailer to believe in you that the distributor will take you on. You need both of those things the same time, and it’s that that was difficult to figure out, navigate, and then you know you’ve got to support the retailer and promote the brand, and those are things that you don’t realize are going to cost you so much as as you go. So you get the big PO, and you think that’s the final number, and it’s never the final number. And you’re just constantly trying to navigate all of that and make sure that in the end you have a cash flow, which you don’t always.

Kara Goldin 16:15
It’s so true, and you’ve been self-funded as well, which is amazing,

Katie Lee 16:23
totally self funded, which has been, I think, you know, it’s it can be frustrating because luckily I had the restaurants, and luckily we’re very nimble, and we have been very, we’re great scrappy, we’re very good scrappy, but you know, I would say a lot of what we were talking about earlier, where people, banks or institutions, just didn’t necessarily believe that this restaurant group could do what we’re doing, have never really bought into it, and because of that, it saved me from having to sell equity, you know, and now I we we still retain control because I think, to be honest, up until recently it was kind of an unbelievable thing that we were doing. As I scale and grow, I’m of course going to have to figure that out and work towards that. But in the meantime, it’s been pretty, you know, another great part of the story to have this team kind of do it on our own.

Kara Goldin 17:26
So the first big retailer that you went into, can you talk about that and how have you expanded?

Katie Lee 17:34
So we were traditionally just in small specialty retailers, stores that had like 50 or less locations, and then Target at Expo West one year connected with us had come up to Minneapolis. We went up there, and they said we’d like to do a full chain launch with your frozen pizzas. Can you do that? I of course said yes, not really realizing how major that was. Went back, did some quick math based on what a small specialty retailer would order, not realizing I was going to have an end cap, and thought, “Wow, that’s going to be a lot of pizzas. Team, can we do it? We all agreed that we would push really hard to do it, and then the actual PO came in. It was four times the amount that we had predicted. It was almost half a million pizzas that we would need to fill these end caps in 90 days. We’re hand stretching. We’re wood firing everything, and it was a miracle and like total magic that we were able to quickly scale, quickly figure it out with just the team we had, just the space we had, and so we launched into Target last late summer. Shot to like number six in the category, maintain that you know just a really strong presence there, and from there they’ve asked us to bring in all of our other skews, our pasta bakes, our frozen pasta bakes just on launched, our sauces just launched, and then this fall we’ll have our dry pasta, our olive oil, and then the book that I wrote about this whole story. So it’ll all be on a big tower. But they’ve what’s been great about the Target thing is obviously it’s taught us how to scale. It’s taught us how to navigate all of these unknowns, and we’ve made a lot of mistakes, of course, that have cost a lot during it. But we’ve learned a lot. But we’ve also gained a lot of awareness, not just with the customers, but with other retailers. So since then, we’ve gotten into Publix. We’ve gotten into Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Kroger, all of these other wonderful retailers, Sprouts that we’ve been trying to for years have just seen what we’ve done at Target, seen the data, and then all of the sudden, you know, now they want us. So that that that I think was. The really special thing,

Kara Goldin 20:02
I love that. So when you think about the days of of building Katie’s, what has been the hardest part about? I mean, you’re juggling a lot. Like you’ve got restaurants, you’ve got this CPG, and by the way Frozen, which for anyone who is not, I mean that adds another piece of complexity to the mix, and you are you know opening new retailers. I mean, there’s there’s a lot. Do you feel like you just have so many balls in the air at times, and and you’re just hoping nothing drops. And but I’m curious, you know, what has been the biggest challenge?

Katie Lee 20:52
All of those things are extremely difficult. I think being sober is great because I, you know, keeps me clear, keeps me on every single day, but no, I have very hard days where cash flow isn’t, you know, working out. Payrolls coming up. I’ve got huge POs. I’ve got you know all of these things that I want to do that we want to do to make sure it happens, and you know it’s just like a matter of. I think every day is a creative act where we have to figure out how to balance it and make sure that we can still accomplish what we’re doing, which has almost put us in a boot camp of sorts where we have gotten so good at honing our skills to accomplish quite a bit, but there are absolutely just really scary days for sure. I don’t even know. I mean, you know, and it’s it’s just hard to explain. But I think the sobriety piece is is huge for me because it just keeps me, you know, as level as you can possibly be at this during like all of this madness, and then the team-the team is huge. The you know the more powerful your team is, the the stronger they are. They can they can give you time to take a break when you need it, and you can give them time to take a break when they need it. Because there are moments where you’re like, I need a couple of days just to reset myself, and so having a team that allows you to do that is pretty major.

Kara Goldin 22:29
Yeah, definitely. So, how have you gotten the brand out there, and what do you think has been the biggest way that that you’ve been able to get people to know Katie’s

Katie Lee 22:43
well, I mean, the big challenge was with the Target deal. Is like we have to support this retailer, and nobody knows us, so we’ve got to figure out a way to be nationally recognized or slightly because we were at zero for this launch. So I come from you know a family of artists, and I’m connected to a lot of great artists, designers, marketers, and so I just quick as as hard as it was to make those 500,000 pizzas. I also, you know, quickly went to you know my database of people that I had connected with over the years and said, “Can you help me? And so we built like in our company this bespoke marketing firm that can make things specifically for retailers, can pump content out, but you know the content has to be authentic and real. And so it’s great that we have these restaurants that we can, you know, show what we’re doing. I import from Italy, so we go to Italy. I, you know, wrote this book to really get the origin story out there and connect with my customers. So it’s everything. You’ve got to constantly be looking at your world and and figuring out how you’re going to tell the story and bring them into that world. So we bring you behind the scenes of what we’re doing and the plant. We take you to Italy. We, you know, the book obviously is one thing, and then we just create really beautiful art that surrounds it all, and and work really hard to get it out there. But it is a whole other business in itself, and it’s super important in this day and age that you know you pay as much attention to that as you do the product.

Kara Goldin 24:27
I love it. So your book that you mentioned-it’s called Unemployable. I’m so excited for you to get it out there, and that will launch in early September, and you have an exclusive initially, right? With Target on that,

Katie Lee 24:46
yeah, they’ve been following me and hearing about the book. So when it was complete, they asked if they could have it first to market exclusive. I was blown away and so excited about that. So the. It’ll be in a big display with all of our products, early September through October, and yeah, it’s just the story is about growing up with my mother and father and those challenges and gifts, and then sobriety and building the restaurants and building the CPG brand and all the characters and wonderful people along the way, and all of the disasters and COVID and all of that. So it’s a story of like grit and hope, and it’s funny and it’s fun and it’s very fast pace. And then you get a lot of behind the scenes restaurant stuff, like you would with you know the show The Bear or a Kitchen Confidential. So it’s got all of that.

Kara Goldin 25:41
So if you could, last question: if you could go back and tell your maybe 20-year-old self, maybe it’s slightly a different age. One thing: what would you say?

Katie Lee 25:53
Oh my goodness! I think I would say find what you love. You know the the Joseph Campbell thing, follow your bliss. Like that’s always, you know, you’re going to have the most success when you believe in what you’re doing and you love what you’re doing. So if you can find that as quickly as possible, I know that can take years, but if you can find that and follow it, you should have a lot of fun and you know go through the ups and downs, but at least she’ll love what you’re doing.

Kara Goldin 26:23
So, Katie Lee, founder of Katie’s Pizza Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Pasta, thank you so much for coming on today and creating incredible products, an incredible company, and restaurants. And I’m so excited for your book, Unemployable. Your story is such a powerful reminder to all that building a brand is possible, not always neat, easy, or linear. And you’ve built something just you should be so proud of. So I love everything about it, and your resilience is is so admirable. And for everyone listening, be sure to check out Katie’s Pizza Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Pasta, and look for Katie’s obviously in grocery stores nationwide, also online. So, I’ll see you next time on the Kara Goldin Show. But Katie, thank you, thank you so much. It was so fun. I appreciate it. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin Show, if you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit, and of course feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal best-selling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint: We are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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