Tollfreenumber.ORG Customer Spotlight: Pima Pizza

Posted by Tollfreenumber.ORG  at July 10th, 2014

When Mark Toscano was a teenager he got his first job making dough and washing dishes at a small family-run pizzeria down the street from his house in Mesa, Arizona. Almost immediately he knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. “It may sound crazy,” he says with a chuckle, “but I had more fun doing that then anything else.” It was fast-paced work that paid little at first but Mark fell in love with the restaurant business. “It felt good making food that brought people so much joy,” he says. With his dedication and love of the business it was no surprise that within a couple of months he moved up to delivery boy and then assistant manager. “The old man there he had no kids and I think I became like a son to him,” Mark told me. By the end of the year he was managing two days a week and working separate shifts making and then delivering pizzas. But eventually his ambition grew. After three years of of working at the pizzeria he felt the need to branch out and explore new things. “I think I broke his heart leaving there,“ Mark says with a hint of remorse, ”but ultimately I had to follow my dreams.”

At the age of 19, Toscano enlisted in the US Navy as a cook. He traveled the world in the bowels of a ship, slaving away in hot kitchens by day and talking shop with his fellow seamen by night. “You’d have never guessed the talent on board,” he confides. “Some of those guys really knew how to cook. And I really learned a lot about working in a full kitchen. However, when it was all said an done, I knew that a sailors life was not for me.” But still he didn’t get far from the sea. Over the course of the next decade he worked up and down the California coast in restaurants both big and small. “I’ve done just about every job you can do in a restaurant,” Mark says. “Heck, once I even waited tables for a week but after I spilled lobster bisque on a gentleman celebrating his birthday I realized that maybe my calling was inside the kitchen.” Despite working in world-class kitchens in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, after a while the itch grew again. “Working in those restaurants was an amazing experience,” he explains, “but I got sick of working for other people. I needed to make my own way.” And so he did.

By the time he returned to his hometown the old pizza place was gone. “I really wish I could’ve talked to the old man one more time. I felt like it kind of ended on the wrong foot. But what did I know? I was just a kid.” Mark had managed to save up a bit of money over the course of the previous year and a half and he had his eye on opening up his own pizza parlor. “I’ve always felt like pizza is one of those things that is so perfect in it’s simplicity but has the capacity to become something transcendent.” And with that in mind, Pima Pizza was born. Like with any business there were hard times and uncertainty early on but over the years the business has grown to three locations. “I’ve never wanted to start a chain. I prefer that small, intimate feeling you get from a great family-run business,” he says. “So we’ve stayed small but highly profitable,” he adds with a wink and a smile. Mark became a Tollfreenumber.ORG customer four years ago when looking to integrate his (then) two locations more completely. “I’d read a lot of good things about Tollfreenumber.ORG and the toll free service you guys provide so I figured it was worth a shot. There was literally no risk involved since I had complete ownership of the number anyway so it was kind of a no-brainer.” Since then, Mark has had no regrets. “I have all of my stores tied into one toll free 800 number. The customer selects the extension for the store they want and, bingo, that’s it,” Mark says. “For anyone out there that’s looking to be their own boss and make their own dreams come true I definitely recommend working hard and investing in a toll free number from Tollfreenumber.ORG.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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