Fairfield County Business Journal 060517

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3 | LOOK WHO'S 40 June 5, 2017 | VOL. 53, No. 23

13 | WOMEN'S WORK

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Little Box food truck offers pizza with a purpose BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com

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retailing during West Coast business trips in his 25-year career in fashion wholesaling, primarily with footwear companies. “This idea is more prevalent out there,” he said. “You can find them from Washington state through southern California. There are also integrative pharmacies in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., but no one was doing it in Fairfield County.” Hein added that his interest in the integrative pharmacy concept coincided with a desire to make several life changes. “I was in the corporate world for a long time and it was kind of the perfect storm: My kids are five and eight, and I wanted to spend more time around here. And all of the boxes were checked.” Researching pharmacy retailing, Hein decided that his store would avoid duplicating the look and impersonal operation

asting about for a new franchise-ready concept, restaurateurs Angelo Viscoso and Brad Nagy hit upon a novel idea — a pizza truck. That may not sound particularly innovative — trucks serving pizza and other comestibles have become familiar sights around the country — but Little Box Pizza offers something different: an opportunity for the underprivileged and underemployed to turn their lives around as entrepreneurial operators in their own right. “We’re not looking for people who have college educations and would like to get into business — they have plenty of roads open to them already,” said Viscoso, who with Nagy also owns Frankie & Fanucci’s Wood Oven Pizzeria locations in Hartsdale and Mamaroneck in Westchester County, Sotto 13 in Manhattan and il Fornetto in Brooklyn. “We’ve built a pretty good network of people through our other restaurants and finding someone who’s got good sense and ability but who hasn’t been able to succeed in business or in life isn’t necessarily too hard. We found James (Gibson, the owner-operator of the first Little Box Pizza) through a connection of Brad’s, at the church he goes to.” Nagy said Gibson is serving an apprenticeship and “will matriculate through that process and become the official owner of the Stamford business by year end.” The truck is now owned by Little Box Pizza Benefit LLC. “We bring in every person as an apprentice to train them and give them more and more responsibility over time until they matriculate through to partnership/ownership.” Nagy said the restaurateurs put up the capital required to start the business and finance it. “The capital gets returned in the form of a percentage of profits from the business,” he said. “It aligns our interests

» Pharmacy, page 6

» Food truck, page 6

Startup pharmacy brings new retail approach to Fairfield County Owner Phil Hein combines traditional prescription-filling with alternative health and wellness products at Shoreline Integrative Pharmacy in Westport.

BY PHIL HALL phall@westfairinc.com

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airfield County is not lacking in pharmacies. From the big — box chains to supermarket pharmacies to the occasional neighborhood independent pharmacy that is still operating, there is a wealth of options for those in need of filling a prescription. But the latest entrant in the field claims

to differ from its competition. Since its opening in February, Shoreline Integrative Pharmacy at 1835 Post Road East in Westport, combines both traditional and natural approaches to wellness in a single location. There is a full-service pharmacy but the store is also packed with herbal and vitamin supplements, homeopathic formulas and health and beauty products that stress organic and natural ingredients. Phil Hein, the store’s owner, first became aware of that approach to pharmaceutical


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