The three pizza ovens are fired up, awaiting the dough. Each oven is painted tomato red and bears a woman’s name in cursive – Filomena, Carolina and Maria –  the great-grandmother, grandmother and mother of Tutta Bella founder and CEO Joe Fugere. These pizzas, though, are not headed to one of Tutta Bella’s five Puget Sound restaurants.

Instead, they will be flash-baked for 60 seconds, vacuum sealed, and readied for shipping, most to 900 Kroger grocery stores in 28 states. By fall, Tutta Bella will be supplying pizzas to 1,200 Kroger stores in 40 states. This hive of activity takes place daily in Tutta Bella’s Culinary Innovation Hub, a 15,000-square-foot facility south of downtown Seattle where the company’s retail and grocery business is based.