This new Pierce County pizza drive-thru started with a cheesy love story
Milton’s pizza lovers are in for a treat this spring.
Just a Pizza My Mind — a two-year-old pizza food truck business that travels across Pierce County each week — is opening its first brick-and-mortar location in just a few weeks.
The new location will be a drive-thru at 1102 28th Ave. Court, where Gravity Coffee was. Melissa Ranz, who runs the business with her husband Samuel, told The News Tribune they are aiming to open the location in May — but they don’t have a date set in stone yet because they are still working through the permitting.
Customers will have the option to order their food online and pick it up or get it quickly through the drive-thru, Melissa told The News Tribune.
“[It’s] so exciting and it always just feels like a dream,” she said.
‘It’s truly an art’
It all started with a cheesy love story.
Samuel Ranz — who is from Milton — was working for a large corporate pizza chain when Melissa Ranz was looking for a job. Nervous, he asked another manager to interview her.
He remembers thinking: “She’s so beautiful and I can’t be biased in our interview.”
They fell in love and got married in April 2020. Two months later, they decided they wanted to create their own business that “fights for the little guy.”
“Everybody kind of looks at food business as maybe a starter job or something and we want to build that place for people who can actually have a career,” Melissa Ranz said. “There’s so much that goes into pizza, it’s truly an art.”
They spent over a year working for a smaller business and learning the ropes, she said, before they sold their condominium and took a belated honeymoon road trip in November 2021.
“We were like, ‘I’ll just try different pizzas along the way and get new flavor profiles, inspirations and just to say we’ve tried pizza everywhere,’” she said.
They went to Florida, North Carolina, New York and more, one pizza at a time. In March 2022, they found their first food truck — which they call “Jackie” — online and made their dreams come true later that year, celebrating their grand opening at Puyallup’s Fierce County Cider in December 2022.
Since then, they have watched their business grow. During their first year, they focused on booking regular locations where customers could stop by the truck. Last year, they bought a second truck — and now, they’re leasing the brick-and-mortar location in Milton.
‘Why can’t you do all these unique things?’
Melissa Ranz said she is excited about the old Gravity Coffee location because it allows them to pursue their dream of making a pizza drive-thru.
“It was just, like, the perfect story because whenever we looked at a location, it was work to flip it to food or to have a drive-thru,” she said. “We always specifically wanted a drive-thru because of our speed. ... We will be out driving at night and we’re like, ‘I don’t really want another burger, or tacos, you know. I wish I could drive-thru for something else.’”
She said one of the benefits to having a brick-and-mortar business is that, unlike their truck, customers can go to the same location whenever they want a pizza fix.
She said that during the truck’s first year in business, they had to be selective about which events they could show up at because of wear-and-tear on the vehicle. For example, the equipment and the oven makes it hard for the truck to go up steep hills. During the truck’s first year in operation, they ended up spending thousands of dollars in repairs.
Samuel Ranz said one of the challenges of the brick-and-mortar location is adjusting their speed so that the drive-thru doesn’t impact traffic. They also plan to focus on their drinks once the location opens.
“Since it is previously a coffee stand, we do know there’s going to be a lot of people and confusion at the beginning of, like, ‘I thought I was coming for a drink,’” he said. “So we’re going to have the option of dirty sodas, energy drinks, cold brews, just so you don’t necessarily have to waste your time pulling up. You get a drink, try our pizza.”
As for the food menu?
“Pretty much any time we’re eating something, we’re like, ‘How can I make this a pizza?’” Melissa Ranz said. “To us, pizza dough is just bread, so it’s like, ‘Why can’t you do all these unique things on it?’”
Samuel Ranz said they try to release one new pizza each month. One of their most popular ones, he said, is a Thanksgiving pizza each year — complete with a turkey-gravy base, pizza cheese, mashed potatoes and stuffing with onion crisps on top.
“Even just in the month of Thanksgiving, people are like, ‘I can’t get enough of Thanksgiving food,’” Samuel said.
They dreamed up another idea after Melissa Ranz ate a Cubano sandwich one day. This prompted them to create a Cubano pizza with ham, pulled pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and Dijon sauce.
The brick-and-mortar location will be open seven days a week, and customers will also have the option of ordering online ahead of time. In the meantime, Jackie and Kitty, her second food truck counterpart, will still be hitting the streets.
“We will still keep the trucks going,” Melissa said. “[It’s about] reaching those new people and the different communities — it’s really just growing our team right now.”
To stay in the loop on when the new location opens — and to see where the truck is each day — you can visit their website at justapizzamymind.com.
