The Italian Food Company has one of those pandemic bad timing origin stories that would seem impossible to have a happy ending. Owners Isis and Tony Wright, who had been living in the Florida Keys after moving 80-plus miles south from Miami, bought an investment property and closed on it in the first week of March 2020. Then Covid hit.

The deal could have broken the couple, but instead, as they were deciding what to do with the building in Key Largo, Tony Wright ate a pizza during a trip back to Miami that would change everything. Isis, during a recent call with Appetito, describes it repeatedly as “serendipity,” explaining that her husband met a Neapolitan master pizzaiolo in Miami, and called her to rave about his pies.