What This Story Is About
- 312 Pizza, a family-owned Chicago-style pizzeria in Nashville’s Germantown neighborhood, nearly closed this week before a surge of community support gave it a temporary reprieve.
Why It Matters
- Owner Kimberly Wolff said revenue is down roughly 25% this year, reflecting broader financial pressure on small, local businesses in Nashville.
- Wolff said the weekend surge in orders bought the business a couple of weeks, but survival depends on customers returning consistently rather than only during a crisis.
For Context
- Wolff’s parents put their retirement savings into opening the restaurant 12 years ago after she found no Chicago-style pizza available in Nashville.
Catch Up
- 312 Pizza posted a message asking for help before it was set to close Monday, and hundreds of orders came in from the community over Labor Day weekend.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – 312 Pizza posted a final call for help as the business was set to close its doors this past Monday. The community responded this past weekend, giving the shop hope of staying open.
Chicago roots in Nashville
312 Pizza starts each day by sectioning off pieces of dough and turning them into family-owned pies with Chicago roots. The restaurant opened 12 years ago in Germantown.
“When I moved to Nashville in 2011, there was no Chicago pizza here. It just did not exist,” owner Kimberly Wolff said. “That’s the first thing we looked for when we were unpacking is, where can we get a pizza? And our realtor was like, there’s a chain pizza down the road. And we were like, that’s not quite what we were hoping for.”
When Wolff saw that gap, her parents saw a risk worth taking…