Pizza chief big on Florida

When Joseph “Joey” Ciolli decided to expand Grimaldi's Pizzeria to Florida, he picked Fort Myers for the first location.

Some questioned Ciolli's decision because when the restaurant opened in Fort Myers two years ago, the area was in the depths of the real estate and consumer spending had fallen. “Everybody kept saying how bad the recession was down there,” Ciolli recalls.

But Ciolli reasoned that if the Fort Myers restaurant performed as well as he thought it would, he could be successful in other Florida locations.