President Obama recently marked the anniversary of Katrina with a visit to New Orleans. His goal was to remind everyone that they are not forgotten but with an uptick in entrepreneurs that focus might change reports NPR.
Not long after the storm, New Orleans native Robbie Vitrano started a pizza place in the recovering neighborhood of Broadmoor. It’s not just any pizza place: It’s a health-conscious, probiotic, 10-grain crust, healthy pizza place.
Naked Pizza, as it’s called, is a hit, and it’s expanding rapidly. The first franchise outside New Orleans just opened, in Miami Beach, Fla. And 300 more are in development, in places as far away as Dubai.
How did such a success spring from a flood-ridden neighborhood? Vitrano says Katrina forced those who remained to step up.
“It was that sense of re-evaluation,” he says. “It was a personal re-evaluation. It was an economic re-evaluation. It was a cultural re-evaluation. People here were inflamed with that sense that, ‘OK, we’re not sure what the way forward is, but we need to do something. We need to put ourselves in motion. We need to get at it.’ “
Photo by The Pizza Review