Sweet Taste of Italy

RestaurantsMinnesota, United States11-50 Employees

It all started in Crystal MN when our original location was built for DQ. Then in the mid 80's it used to be one of the original "Take & Bake Pizzas". What is our dining room today used to be the storage room/game room. While still a boy, Jim used to go and play the arcade games while his older brother Bob made pizza. Then in 89 a new restaurant moved in to the old building called LaGondoa. Around the time it opened some of the first people hired were brother and sister John & Tammy Stone. With a family of nine their dad liked the employee discount, and while not yet old enough, younger brother Jim Stone was hard at work raking and mowing lawns every weekend while delivering the local paper & doing whatever it took to be employee of the month at BK. When Jim finally was old enough to get a job at La Gondola he couldn't have been more excited. 
10 years later Jim was still at it, when the boss decided he needed a change of scenery, the La Gondola family had decided to shut their doors. While at the age of 24, Jim was not prepared to go job-hunting, so when the option to buy La Gondola was given to him, he jumped at the chance! 
Needless to say, you can't get a bank loan in three weeks. However, this job was Jim's life, and was what he was trained to do, he did not want to see it go. Jim went door to door to all of his friends that had a dollar, and got nowhere. With only a week left, Jim told his boss that he wasn't able to buy his dream and was going to watch it fade away. Jim's dad saw the emotional strain this was having on him, pulled a few strings and said a couple of prayers, and on March 13, 2000, Jim's dad made it happen and Sweet Taste of Italy was born. So now his dad eats for free. 
After only a year in business, the Stone family decided to expand. On February 26th 2003, the new store was finally complete. 
We want to say thank you to all of our die hard regulars that come in and support our restaurant, and keep us going and hopefully... growing!!!

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