Our Story

A Family Dream

For years Darrell and Scott Draper dreamed of making pizzas together. Darrell, the tenacious businessman, was determined to make that happen.

The story begins in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where Darrell moved to for a short while after he retired. He had a small brick oven in his home that he used to make wood fired pizzas. Darrell later sold his house to move back to Indiana, planning to bring the oven with him, but as it was being moved out of his home, the oven was accidentally reduced to a pile of rubble. Darrell was determined to get another oven and Scott found one on eBay. Darrell bought the oven and Scott drove to Boston to bring the 8000 pound brick oven from Boston back to Indiana.

Darrell started making pizzas for the locals and his neighbors and would call Scott, who was now living in Florida, to get help on how to make them. But over time, Darrell would decide that maybe making pizzas wasn’t something he wanted to do after all.

It was Tracy, Darrell’s wife and partner, who would convince him otherwise. It was her idea to push things forward. She reminded Darrell of his dream and how he would bring pizza to Tracy’s three girls, Kamryn, Morgan and Sam and joke with them about how they could come work for him when he opened his pizza place.