Marcello’s Pizzeria owners Jim and Lisa Rosema with employee Jessica Wolski opened for business Sept. 26. (Leader photo/CAROL NOVAK)

Lisa and Jim Rosema turned the search for a good pizza into a business.

The couple recently purchased Marcellos’s Pizzeria across from Stone Lake on South Broadway.

Neither have experience in the food service industry.

Originally from the southwest suburbs of Chicago and living in Grand Rapids, the Rosemas decided to buy Marcello’s after having trouble getting a good pizza.

“My family has a home on Diamond (Lake), so we come here quite often,” Lisa said. “In the summer, we have Friday night pizza night and we were tired of not having good pizza here anymore. My parents or my siblings would sometime bring in pizza on their way into town from Chicago but that was kind of a hassle.

“It kind of started out as a joke. It was like ‘hey, why don’t we buy Marcello’s so we could have good pizza when we come here again.’ We started looking into it and decided hey, this might be a fun venture.”

The conversation about purchasing the business took place over the July 4th weekend. After that we started calling and talking to Fred Stein the previous owner and looking at the possibility.

“It all happened pretty quick,” Lisa said. “It took less than two months.”

The Rosemas opened the doors on Sept. 26.

The reason the couple kept the name was that they were purchasing an existing business that was ready to open.

“The previous owners were willing to give us a lot of training on their equipment and some of their recipes, being new to the industry, it was a good starting point for us,” Lisa said. “We were able to just come in and kind of reopen as it was and then slowly put ourselves into it. We may change the name at some point, but we will cross that bridge later.”

While the name and some of the recipes may be the same, the Rosemas are definitely putting their own touch on the business.

“We have a lot of the same recipes, but we are doing different things with them,” Lisa said. “We are re-opened, but we are new. It is kind of tricky because people will call and ask us if we have the same pizzas? We have the same pizza dough and sauce recipes, but we are doing different things with them as far as how we top the pizza.

“I’m from the Chicago area,” Lisa said. “Chicago thin crust is what I grew up on and so that is what I wanted it to look like. I am working on a deep dish.”

Business has been good as the word is starting to get out to the community that Marcello’s have reopened.

“We are hoping people will give us a chance and try it again,” Lisa said. “It might be a little bit different than they remember.”

Marcello’s is currently open Wednesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and on Saturday starting at noon.

The Rosemas, who are commuting from Grand Rapids to Cassopolis are looking to find a home in the area. Once they move, Lisa said that the will be open on additional days.

They currently have three employees in addition to themselves.