The Portland Pie Company / It'll Be Pizza Story

In September of 1997, Stephen Freese and Nathaniel Getchell opened the Portland Pie Company in downtown Portland, Maine, a delivery/take out business specializing in premium gourmet pizza with flavored pizza dough. The flavored pizza dough concept was born from a practical examination of the pizza industry. With a pizzeria on every corner, with frozen pizza available at every supermarket, in a saturated marketplace where you can buy a slice of pizza at every gas station and mom'n pop, how do you separate yourself from the competition? The answer is simple. Do it different. Do it better. Better pizza…better profit.

The results were evident from day one. Growing in popularity, with sales increasing by more than 50 percent each year, Portland Pie Company reached full capacity at their India Street store in 2000 and decided to move dough production to an off-site location. It'll Be Pizza was established by investing in state of the art technology to insure accuracy and quality control for our products, and by fine tuning our original recipes to produce a frozen dough with the same qualities and performance of dough made fresh daily. We use only high quality, natural ingredients, and only purchase flour with a high protein content, which gives our product a frozen shelf life of four months, and a great deal of flexibility in how and when it is used. We spend more making our product, and the end result is a consistency and quality that you can rely on.

In 2001, after four years of steady growth delivering pizza in Portland, Portland Pie Company opened a second retail location in South Portland to service the growing demand for gourmet pizza in that market. The South Portland store achieved sales volumes in year 1 to what the original store did in year 4, and after continued sales at both locations, a third store was opened in 2006 in Westbrook, Maine. The Westbrook store was an immediate success, and there are plans for three more stores in the near future.

Concurrent with the success of Portland Pie Company has been the emergence of It'll Be Pizza as a growing presence in the Northeast's frozen pizza dough industry. The production facility that provides all three retail take-out stores with their signature flavored dough balls is also distributed by Sysco Foodservice, U.S. Foodservice, Northcenter, Favorite Foods, Pine State Trading, and Island Foods to retail pizza shops and restaurants in every state in New England. Our flavored dough balls; Blonde, Wheat, Basil, Garlic, and Beer; have been vital in the success of Portland Pie Company. A customer of ours, the head chef of an upscale restaurant, recently said to us, "I went to school to be a chef, and I get more compliments on your dough than I do on any of my entrees."

It'll Be Pizza, aside from producing premium flavored pizza dough, also takes pride in helping its customers in all aspects of their business. We provide free consultation services to customers who may be new to the pizza business, from advice on equipment, ingredients, dough handling and troubleshooting, menu preparation and pricing, to shift itineraries and staffing schedules.