Leonard Toia–called Ben, a childhood nickname of unknown origin–and his sons, Sam and Leon, run Leona`s now. Even though the copy on the delivery menus implies that the elder Toia is Leona`s son, he actually is her son-in-law.
Leona`s began in 1950 when Leona Pianetto Molinaro Scemla–whose family emigrated to America from Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot–opened a pizzeria at 928 W. Belmont Ave. after she had a falling out with her brother, with whom she ran Pat`s Pizza for almost a year in a building their father bought in 1918.
Though Leona vowed to put her brother out of business, they were on speaking terms again in six months as both pizzerias flourished. (Pat`s Pizza, at nearby 3114 N. Sheffield Ave., is still owned by Pat.)
In an era that did not produce many female entrepreneurs, Leona was a woman ahead of her time. As her grandson Leon Toia notes, Leona was ”not a fat Italian lady in an apron who had all these recipes. She was a shoot-from-the-hip businesswoman, and she ruled with an iron fist.”
Leona bought a small fleet of Chevys, then topped them with neon signs advertising Leona`s Pizza, ”long before (Domino`s Pizza baron Thomas)
Monaghan knew what delivery was,” says Sam.
By all accounts, she was flamboyant, a neighborhood celebrity. She wore a mink coat and left big tips. She was volatile, especially when an employee did something stupid. Then she was known to order him to stay off Belmont Avenue. Two old photographs that hang in the Sheffield Avenue restaurant offer a glimpse of her personality: Leona in madras skirt and sandals, sitting on the window ledge of her pizzeria. Just before the shutter clicked she made an expansive gesture, looping an arm around a figurine of a white-aproned chef hoisting a pizza. In another, a jumpsuited Leona poses jauntily in front of her delivery cars like an earthy Betty Furness.
Soon after Leona`s Daughters opened in Rogers Park last November, a man called one evening and asked for Leona. He got Leon, who sadly informed him that Leona died almost four years ago. ”Is this part of the family, actually Leona`s family?” the caller insisted. When Leon said yes, the man told him a story.
During the Korean War, he and his fellow soldiers were hunkered down in a foxhole one day looking through a Booster newspaper one of them had received from home. They saw an ad for Leona`s Pizza and, as a lark, sent her a letter saying they wanted a pizza sent to Korea. Leona wrote back, saying: ”Sorry, boys. I can`t send you a pizza, but here`s $12. Buy a case of beer and have a nice time on Leona`s.” That`s the way Leona was.
And when the veteran came to Leona`s Daughters for dinner the next evening, he brought a floral arrangement.
Leona had three daughters–Sue and Marie with her first husband, Art Molinaro, and Paulette with her second husband, Leo Scemla.
Sue was working in the pizzeria on Belmont one day when Ben Toia walked in. They had met before, but something like delayed love at first sight zapped them this time, and soon they married. Ben was involved in a tavern business and worked as a printer for Popular Mechanics magazine. He had been a cook in the Marines and in the mid-1950s became manager of Leona`s, living with Sue above the store, where Leon was born.
”I was raised in the restaurant in the true sense of the word,” recalls Leon. ”I used to go to Ann Sather`s for breakfast and leave a quarter tip, and the waitress would walk me back across the street. I remember riding my bicycle down Belmont to a candy-and-cigar store that was on the corner. I`d go in there and pick out all the candy I wanted, bring my friends, too. I had a tab, and my grandmother would pay it. She owned the street.”
In 1960 Leona decided to retire, and she sold her pizzeria to Ben and his brother Jack. Leon recalls that his father and uncle each worked 3 1/2 days a week: ”You know, Italian-style–no two same-size egos in the room at the same time. We had a domestic life. That was great because in this business you don`t.”
Leona soon grew bored and opened L & L Pizza (for Leo and Leona), which she and her husband operated for 15 years at West Addison Street and North Hoyne Avenue.
In the meantime, Ben and Jack bought a small storefront at 3215 N. Sheffield Ave. when the block was devoid of commercial life and moved Leona`s there in 1975. There was room for a 16-seat, no-frills dining room.
The following year, Leon bought L & L Pizza from his grandparents. He had tried college and dropped out and at 22 already had opened and closed a gift shop, then launched and sold a successful sports bar on Irving Park Road.
”When I went to L & L Pizza, there were only two employees–me and another guy,” Leon says. ”I remember one time I took an order for a pizza–
I`m 34 years old and I feel like the guy that`s 90 and used to walk 10 miles to school, you know?–because I remember taking an order for a pizza. You got to envision all the steps. I got the phone call, took the order, made the pizza, cooked it. I had only one driver, and if he didn`t show up, I was out of business. So I locked the door, I left, I delivered the pizza, I went back, I opened the door.
”I ran L & L for two years, and I lived above it. I learned a tremendous amount about the sacrifice that`s necessary to be in business. That kind of education wasn`t a technical one. It was one where you realized, `Oh man, this is rough stuff.` What every adult learns. I never got a day off. It all came at me, and I was just exhausted after two years, and I said: `Hey, Dad, you want a partner?` My uncle was thinking about retiring, and so my father helped me finance my uncle out.
”I brought L & L`s phones and menus to Leona`s, and we started to run two restaurants from one facility. You were crazy about L & L Pizza and you would call L & L and maybe you would say over the phone: `I had Leona`s pizza last night, and boy, was it terrible.` And we`d be on the phones saying,
`Yeah, Leona`s pizza is terrible, thanks for calling.`
”We`d hang up and send the pizza out from Leona`s. It was the same pizza, it was identical, everything. It was the same recipe. We sort of phased L & L out over the course of time, and people became aware that Leona`s and L & L were related. We made a lot of mistakes. We hurt L & L`s customers maybe, but we finally grew up and became Leona`s Pizza with confidence.”
Adds Ben Toia, ”It was all trial and error. We made enormous mistakes, costly ones in food ordering and marketing. Spoiled food. We had students passing out fliers, and then people would tell us they were dumping piles of fliers down the sewer or in trash cans or leaving big stacks in the entryways of buildings.”
The elder Toia is a guarded man with salt-and-pepper hair and a preppie wardrobe. He says he never expected his sons to join him in business, and he seems almost flummoxed by Leona`s success. ”You know, it`s a multimillion-dollar business now,” he says in a confidential tone.
An understatement. In addition to the highly successful flagship, Leona`s Daughters is expected to eventually gross $4.5 million a year and Leona`s Neighborhood Place $2 million, that much less only because it`s smaller and the delivery potential isn`t as great as on the densely populated lakefront.
”It was a big step to open two more restaurants, and I had reservations at first. But with two aspiring sons–they convinced me,” says the elder Toia, quickly amending that to ”I became convinced.”
The Toias tend to amend lots of statements this way, usually changing
”I” to ”we” in a quick accommodation of three strong egos and even stronger interdependence. They are invaluable to each other and extremely close, as any employee who tries to play one against the other politically discovers quickly.
”If someone tries that with me, I just tell `em: `Do it the way so-and-so told you,` ” says Leon. ”Then they recognize your strength. They see your love and your commitment to each other, and they don`t do it anymore.”
Nevertheless, the three possess very different personalities.
Ben is conservative, cautious, plays his cards close to his vest. He expends a lot of energy dissecting the kitchen operations and frequently orders people to clean up or mop the floor. Each of the three restaurant kitchens and dispatch areas is monitored by closed-circuit television with recording capability. Ben often views tapes of the previous day`s production. Though he contends he checks the tapes only in the event of some sort of dispute, his sons say their father is a ”stickler” who discusses any procedure he sees that he disagrees with.
Sam and Leon are a study in contrasts–Type A and Type B, a carnivore who goes to a health club for the steam room and a vegetarian who jogs six days a week.
Sam, 27, is a whirlwind of kinetic energy. Even his hair is spiked up. He moves fast and talks faster. When he gets wound up, his sentences come out this way: ”I thought it would make a great Leona`s–you know what I mean?–pizzeria, restaurant–you know what I mean?–and the density is there–you know what I mean?–and we`re also a restaurant on wheels, that`s 60 percent of our business, right out the back door. . . .” He throws his whole body into an interview, leaning into your space and sometimes standing up as if he were performing for a TV camera.
A graduate of De Paul University with a degree in political science, Sam may be the family`s closet politician. He`s president of the Lakeview Central Business Association, relishes public speaking and representing Leona`s at neighborhood political events.
Leon, 34, is mustachioed, subtle, laid back, capable of giving you his undivided attention. He is Leona`s romantic, the creative force who looks at the big picture, articulates the concept–he writes the copy on the menus and table cards–and moves things forward.
But he believes his brother makes a better front man and has been known to send Sam to a business appointment in his place without notice, especially a first meeting. ”He`s well educated and keeps up with politics, and people like him,” Leon says. ”They tend to take him in. People don`t like me as much. It must be the mustache.”
For his part, Sam depicts himself alternately as ”Leona`s mascot” and as the boisterous middle child clamoring for attention. (The brothers have a younger sister, Jackie, a nurse at Children`s Memorial Hospital.) ”I think being a middle child makes you more well rounded,” Sam says. ”I`ve heard the middle child is the one that copes the best. The oldest sets the standards. I think we have a very competitive family.”
Officially, Ben Toia is the president of Leona`s Pizza Inc., with Leon as vice president, Sam as secretary and Ken Trenchard, an accountant they hired five years ago, as treasurer. In practice Ben and Sam involve themselves in operations, and Leon handles the menu, employee morale, restaurant ambience.
Leon says he is in the middle in terms of the working arrangement. ”I couldn`t imagine having gotten things done without Sam. Or my father. It`s the best of both worlds. You have intellect and energy. You`ve got 60 and 20. Wisdom and strength, almost obnoxious strength. You capitalize on both. When you have to finance a project, you go to my father. When you have to expedite a project, you go to my brother.”
Are there disagreements? Fights? Feuds?
”We have some healthy conversations,” Sam says. ”Definitely between Leon and myself quite often. He might have one idea, and I might not agree with it. He might not agree with me. Our philosophy is that if it bothers you, wait until the next day. If it still bothers you, address it. So we try to do that. But we don`t stay mad. Never. Leon and I are very close.
”With my dad, even if he thinks what we`re doing is wrong, he might let us do it and remind us of it. He`s been in this industry a long time, so he knows the art of getting along with partners. It`s kind of hard when you have your brother and your father as partners–all three of us have healthy egos.” Says Leon: ”We get along well, in a loving fashion. We make a point of it. There`s enough responsibility to go around, and we all make decisions. We all feel secure in a different area. It takes a unique partnership to run this business. If someone feels strong enough to change something–if they`re that motivated, they`ll get behind it and make it successful, so why debate?”
