One of Atascadero’s longest-standing restaurants, Fatte’s Pizza, will be reopening its doors in September under the new ownership of Sam and Sarah Nutile, who own and operate Fatte’s Pizza in Paso Robles.
Over the past year, the Atascadero location experienced some ownership issues that led to the departure of several dedicated workers and legal trouble that shut down the popular buy-one-get-one pizza spot.
However, the Fatte’s faithful need not worry about any changes to their recipe or style of operation. This will be the second round of ownership for the Nutiles in Atascadero.
“We are excited about it now. It is kind of a sad story what happened with the Atascadero location. Our former business partner and a former friend got in a bad way. The business started failing. He ended up robbing us just a few months ago, and he is now in jail,” Sarah Nutile told The Atascadero News. “He completely lost that store, the customers have been upset because they can’t get their Fatte’s Pizza anymore, the employee’s lost their jobs, and so we were in the back of our mind waiting until things settled down and are now in there opening up brand new.”
The Nutiles understand that they will need to once again build up their goodwill in the Atascadero community. They are focused on three things — customer service, consistency and speed.
“Every owner runs their store a little differently, so when we go in here, we will be doing it our way and not the way it was done before, but we are really excited. We do have a reputation here, and we know people love Fatte’s, so we are excited to come back in and make it better than it was before,” Sarah Nutile said. “We focus here a lot on customer service, being friendly, being fast, and making things correctly and consistently. Some places you can go on a Friday and then go back on a Saturday night and get a totally different pizza, even if you order the same thing.”
Fatte’s Pizza, which has locations in Atascadero, Paso Robles, and San Luis Obispo, allows for subtle differences between franchisees, but the main deviation comes from the ingredients.
“They are all very similar but have subtle differences in toppings that you use, you have the freedom to choose. You could be buying the cheapest topping or the most expensive topping, but and we don’t like to skimp,” Sarah Nutile noted.
The new owners are excited to start cooking pizzas for hungry houses in Atascadero and become a part of the community. The new location has established a new Facebook page to interact with customers and answer questions and might be on the lookout for local youth teams to sponsor when sports can make a safe return.
“What we do here in Paso is what we would love to do in Atascadero,” Sarah Nutile said. “We sponsor a lot of sports teams. You know, soccer and softball and things like that and a lot of people love that, and they come to us looking for sponsorships for their kids, and we get them a plaque with their picture. We love doing stuff like that.”
