Family is this pizzeria’s special ingredient

Shawbong Fok

Nick and Carol Green of North Tustin have eaten at Nick’s Pizza in

Costa Mesa every single week since 1978.

The tang of pizza dough wafts in the air, the paintings of

Florence, Rome and Venice grace the earthen peach walls, the sounds

of Italian opera by Bocelli and Pavarotti permeate the air. The

Greens are loyal customers for two reasons: the family atmosphere and

the food.

Loyal customers like the Greens, lured by a warm family

atmosphere, keep family-owned businesses like Nick’s Pizza humming.

The restaurant has been in business far longer than most of its

competitors -- since 1968, when Lisa Fodera of Costa Mesa opened it

with her husband, Nick Fodera.

Many of her customers, she said, know her well. In fact, they know

her so well that some have let their kids play with hers, back in the

1960s and 1970s.

“The key thing to this restaurant is you always feel like you’re a

member of a family,” said Luigi Salcito, a longtime customer.

“Customers relate to that feeling. They see a familiar face.”

Merlyn Griffiths, a doctoral student in the marketing department

at the UC Irvine School of Business Administration and faithful

customer, agreed.

“At Nick’s Pizza you see warmth in their eyes, you see the smile

on their faces,” he said. “You see human expression. Customers

develop a sort of attachment. They have a level of rootedness. They

feel like they belong.”

On a typical day, Lisa Fodera sits down and chats with longtime

customers, one by one, to talk about the good old days.

The past -- as early as the 1950s and 1960s -- has been captured

in black and white and color photos of the Fodera family, hanging on

the walls at the restaurant’s reception, beneath potted green plants

snaking around. In some pictures, youth contrasts with the

progression of age in more recent pictures, capturing the changes

snippet by snippet.

Assuming that prices and food quality remain constant, a

restaurant’s human touch can make a difference, so much so that

customers go back again and again, said Swee Hoon Ang, visiting

professor of business administration and marketing at the UC Berkeley

Haas School of Business. For customers, knowing the staff, she added,

becomes even more important and more appreciated in today’s high-tech

world, where people tend not to know each other.

“When you know someone, it is really hard to turn back,” Ang said.