THE HISTORY OF BRUNO’S PIZZA
Welcome, and thank you for choosing Bruno’s Pizza! The first Bruno’s Pizza location opened on the Emerald Coast back in 1990 and now we are bringing it to the WindMark Beach® community. We take pride in our pizza and it shows with the ingredients that we have carefully selected to make a great tasting pizza. We are serving up pizza with freshly made dough from scratch and homemade marinara. Enjoy a few words from Jeff, the founder of the original Bruno’s Pizza.
My family used to vacation on the Emerald Coast when my brothers and I were just kids. After getting fired from a job in the city, Birmingham/Huntsville in the spring of 1990, I did what an irresponsible 23-year-old would do, I packed up my car with my Golden Retriever, and moved to the beach!! My big plan was to wait tables here during the summer, and then spend the winters in Telluride, Colorado, waiting tables there. Well, as most plans go at that age, so did mine. I met a man named Joel Smith, he was the owner of the Wheelhouse restaurant. He wanted to open 30a’s first pizza shop, but he had a problem. He had never made a pizza in his life, had no recipes, or even any employees. I had some experience working in a pizza shop while going to college, so I said sure I would give it a shot. I can still remember the very first pizza we made, it came out of the oven half-cooked, because I had no previous experience cooking with the old-school deck overs that we had just turned on 1 hour before we opened the doors!!! When the lease came up for renewal in 1991, the landlord and Mr. Smith could not come to an agreement, so Mr. Smith asked me if I wanted to buy it? $12,500 from a bank with questionable loan guidelines and I was the proud owner of 30a’s only pizzeria! I wish I had a good story about where the name Bruno’s came from, but the truth is when we were trying to think of a name, the name of the grocery store chain in the south called Bruno’s, sounded pretty good, so we went with it. I like to say that we are a classic old-school pizzeria in that we still make our own dough and sauce every day, we still hand-toss it into the air, and we have an open kitchen that allows you to watch your pie being made from start to finish. Our pizza is more expensive than any of our competitors, due to the fact that we buy the freshest produce, and the finest meats and the best cheese which we shredded by hand, we also hand cut all of our produce, oven roast and season our chicken breasts, Ribeye steaks green peppers and onions, I also smoke all of our Boston butts and beef brisket over cherry wood for 10 hours. Trust me that these things make a BIG difference that you will be able to taste.