Inspiring Conversations with Roman Marquez of Pizzaza

Today we’d like to introduce you to Roman Marquez

Hi Roman, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I wouldn’t call it a direct path. I’ve been scatter brained my whole life and to be honest there’s never been an end goal nor a plan. I just sort of improved my way through life and landed on pizza because I just really like pizza as a food. I started making pizza when I was stationed in Texas at Fort Hood, my friends and I enjoyed watching movies on our down time and I enjoyed making meals and I started making these little pan pizzas. My friends would eat it up and a few of them toyed with the idea of me doing this as an actual business, whether or not they were serious, I don’t know but I chose to on a whim. Im pretty blessed I’d say to have a girlfriend/ business partner and creative partner as supportive as Lizzy who plays a major role with Pizzaza. She’s an incredible force in the kitchen and being vegan, her choices in flavors is very refreshing. We owe a lot to the owner of an establishment that no longer is standing called The Hangout. Shout out to Melissa for giving us our first chance and also to an institution of Fullerton, The NightOwl coffee shop and to our ghost kitchen owner Dina Feldman of Feel Good Enterprises. Theres so much more I can say but I’ll leave it there for now.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The entire process of getting started was the most daunting thing to face. I remember I walked into the business bureau of Long Beach City Hall and told the clerk “treat me like a child, I really don’t know what I’m doing, but this is what I’m trying to do”. And they helped me out, gave me a list to follow in order and everything. I’m also very much the exact opposite of a social butterfly so speaking with most people has been quite possibly the biggest challenge for me. Again a reason I’m so glad a person as incredible as Lizzy is in my life since she’s very sweet and approachable and very conversational. I still ask myself what is it she sees in me.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Our business name arose from watching The Exorcist II: The Heritic while I was making pizza and I heard the name of the demon from film, ‘Pazuzu’. I cant help but word associate so Pizzaza was a natural progression for me. We take real food seriously and we source as much as we can both locally and organically as possible. All of our pestos and marinaras we make with ingredients found at local farmers markets, community gardens and what we grow ourselves are free of any artificial chemicals. We truly believe that a food like pizza that is renowned for not being a typical health conscious option can be reimagined.

What’s next?
We do hope to become bigger in the near future, perhaps a food truck maybe even a brick and mortar. Who knows. What we really want to focus on is giving the people an ethically sourced product while also doing everything we can to spread awareness of eating food that is actually good for you and leaves as little of an environmental foot print as possible

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @pizzaza_2022