When Pete Lombardi, owner and founder of Lombardi Pizza Co., studied cooking and baking at Baltimore International College and hotel restaurant management at Fairleigh Dickinson University, he wasn’t planning on one day cooking up Neapolitan pies in the then-unknown-to-him Martinsville section of Bridgewater.

Instead, the Edison resident planned on being a chef at a hotel restaurant. But, when he couldn’t find a place he wanted to work following his graduation from Baltimore International College in 2006 and then fatefully went on a family trip to Italy later that year, his plans evolved.