Slice it up

After a lifetime of restaurant and hospitality jobs, from running a white-glove fine dining operation to owning Subways, Jon Gaudineer made a new discovery.

The find was in 2006. Gaudineer, also a Tampa-based general contractor, built a pizza store in a New Port Richey strip mall for a client. He was invited to the friends and family night at the store, the first Florida location for Marco's Pizza, a Toledo, Ohio-based chain. Gaudineer never heard of the pizza. But he was impressed.

“It was a great product,” he says. “This was far superior to anything else I had tried.”