Business Profile: Nonna’s Brick Oven Pizzeria & Restaurant, Yorktown
Putnam Valley resident Adil Mustafaraj never initially intended to make restaurant owning his career, but for the past four years he has owned Nonna’s Brick Oven Pizzeria & Restaurant in Yorktown. He also owns Pronto Pizzeria and Restaurant in Croton.
He has been working in the restaurant business for about two decades, and believes he was destined for it to be the way he makes a living.
“I didn’t have a choice in my life,” said Mustafaraj, who moved to the United States from Albania. “I worked in restaurants. I stuck with it.”
He has cooked at other eateries and occasional cooks in his current restaurants. “Sometimes when you’re shorthanded, you have to jump in the line and cook,” he said.
Nonna’s was opened in the site of the former Michael’s pizzeria in the K-Mart shopping center.
The Yorktown restaurant’s gas burning pizza oven “cooks on a high temperature because it has a flame inside.” Mustafaraj explained. Pizzas typically cook at a temperature of between 500 and 600 degrees and it takes from six to eight minutes to bake.
Nonna’s offers a number of specialty items, including the top selling pizza, which features barbequed chicken; a seafood platter, Chicken a la Nonna, which includes shallots; prosciutto, asparagus and mozzarella cheese in a cognac brown sauce; and Chicken Cleopatra, which includes asparagus, artichoke hearts and arugula in a light tomato and white wine sauce.
Mustafaraj said the key to success in the restaurant business is hiring the right employees. “If you don’t have the right people it’s stressful,” he said. “Any mistakes they make, you pay the price. The customers don’t care who made a mistake. If they’re not happy with the mistakes that have been made they walk away.”
Mustafaraj has simple goals for his businesses: “paying my bills” and “making a living” are among them. “The goal is to satisfy your customers.”
“It’s not an easy business to be in,” he said, adding later, “You try to satisfy your customers, that’s how you succeed. That’s how you stay in the business.”
Nonna’s Brick Oven Pizzeria & Restaurant is located at 367 Downing Drive in the K-Mart shopping center in Yorktown. It is open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. For more information, call 914-962-0300.
