The pizza truck that took the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus by storm is back for its seventh semester — and isn’t parking there. But why is PizzElla different from other food trucks on campus, and why can’t ’Canes and South Floridians get enough of it? From the quality ingredients to the oven that creates a mouth-watering, slightly charcoaled Neapolitan pizza, here’s the real slice on the food truck that can transport you straight to Italy through one bite.
Whether it’s Dave Portnoy, the founder and owner of Barstool Sports, rating the pizza himself for his one-bite pizza reviews, or earning the number 40 spot in the “50 Top Pizza USA 2023” rankings by 50 Top Pizza, PizzElla is anything but crust.
Owner Larry Galper never saw a food truck as his future. In fact, his cooking career only started later on in his life.
“I left a 15-year corporate career when I was around 35 because I fell out of love with that business,” said Galper. “I didn’t know that cooking was going to be the answer, but I definitely knew that what I was currently doing wasn’t the answer.”
At that point, professional cooking wasn’t even on his radar; “I wasn’t cooking anything complicated. I wasn’t a trained chef by any means,” said Galper. “I just grew up in a home where my mom cooked almost every night. And as I cooked more of my meals, I became obsessed to the point where I was like, ‘this is something I want to do for my life’s work.’”
Galper then left his job for a new beginning and enrolled in the New School of Cooking in Culver City, CA. He worked two restaurant jobs during that time, but quit after school to work at a more elevated restaurant and hone his skill, he said.
“I would always ask to come in early to the kitchen because I knew they were prepping and I wanted to learn how to make [pizza],” said Galper. “Obviously, I couldn’t clock in and didn’t get paid for that, but I didn’t care. I got a late start at this in life, so I wanted to be a sponge and soak up as much as I could.”
Path to Pizza
Galper did just that. Something that he wanted to not only learn, but master, was pizza.
“I remember one of the first pizzas I made, I made for one of my best girl friends,” said Galper. “It was probably one of the worst pizzas ever made by any human being, but she was so sweet about it. At that moment, I remember thinking I can move forward one of two ways: I can be discouraged and never do this again, or the opposite and can take that anger and focus it on becoming better.”
From that moment on, he laser-focused on mastering the craft: “I made a decision in my mind that I’m going to make as many pizzas as I can every week,” said Galper. “It wasn’t even about wanting to sell pizza like that, I just wanted to be good at something that I wasn’t good at.”
Though at the time Galper might not have foreseen a career focused on making pizzas, cooking was always going to be in his future.
“I’m a ’90s kid, and in the ’90s there were a lot of romantic comedies, all with the same formula,” said Galper. “The guy ends up falling in love with the girl that was his best friend, and she was there all along. That’s how I look at cooking. It was always there, it just took me until the last act of the movie for me to realize it.”
And this journey led him to move to Miami in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic to start a business: a food truck highlighting his female family members that cooked throughout his whole life. Galper named it PizzElla, for Ella, his mother, and called the truck Doraya, a combination of both his grandmothers’ names.
Galper opened up PizzElla in Midtown Miami on Oct. 26, 2021, but it made its first appearance on campus on March 10, 2022.
Senior Branden Logatto, who majors in finance and accounting, was a first year at the time and an intern for the marketing company Archrival. Logatto was helping host an event at the Lambda parking lot for the cryptocurrency company Exodus. The event was organized to tie crypto to pizza — in honor of someone years ago using crypto to buy a pie of pizza, the first time somebody used cryptocurrency to buy a tangible item. Archrival chose PizzElla to partake in the event.
The event was very successful, and since everyone loved the pizza, Logatto talked to Galper about the food trucks on campus and put him in contact with UM Auxiliary Services. Since then, PizzElla has become a consistent food truck on campus.
“I feel like I’m getting more credit than I should. His quality and his food speaks for itself,” said Logatto. “I definitely feel like a part of the journey, and it doesn’t feel like three years ago. As a freshman hosting an event of that scale, [there] was definitely a lot of pressure, but we worked together through that and started this great connection. I was happy to see a familiar face on campus and help him out as much as I could.”
Campus Crust
PizzElla is in its seventh semester on campus, and Galper isn’t only focusing on the food.
“Getting the gig at UM weekly on a regular basis was a big turning point, because we have been so well received there ,” said Galper. “You have these little pockets of time where you can change the course of someone’s day. And in a matter of a transaction that can last a good two-and-a-half minutes — plus some delicious food that I poured my heart into — to change the course of someone’s day. If your food is good and you have that hospitality too, that’s always going to be attached to your brand.”
Sophomore and industrial engineering major Sydney Butterfield is particularly connected to the brand. Galper, who served a limited time special pizza with vodka sauce, brought it back full time, but now with a new name, the “Litty Sydney,” in honor of Butterfield messaging Galper on Instagram requesting to bring it back.
“He’s like a dad, his personality is very inviting and I feel like I can always talk to him about anything,” said Butterfield. “He cares a lot about his customers and wants to actually create relationships with them rather than just give them a pizza and move on. And when I got a pizza named after me, I felt a part of PizzElla and I love it so much. I always get my friends to go so they can try my pizza because it’s the best thing ever.”
Junior Alexandra Caruso, majoring in nursing and a New Jersey native, has been coming to PizzElla for three years now. Caruso’s mom sent her the food truck schedule when she was a first year and she decided to go.
“The first day I went, his brother was working the register and we found out we had the same name, Alex,” said Caruso. “Ever since, Larry would remember me because I have the same name as his brother, and I just started coming consistently and he kept remembering me. It helped me get over me being homesick because I was just missing some roots from home, like a good pizza. It reminds me of a nice home cooked meal, and Larry is a genuine nice guy, he’s like family.”
The theme of family continues with junior Brooke Poiesz, who majors in marketing. Poiesz started as a consistent PizzElla customer in her first year, and now is a part of the PizzElla team, helping Galper with public relations.
“It’s not only the food, but the people,” said Poiesz. “The whole team is just the best and it is something I look forward to every week. The food reminds me of home, but is also something new and special and I found myself over winter break just craving PizzElla. I think PizzElla is going to be something that I reflect on for the rest of my life and a staple of being in college.”
Trucking Forward
While not originally in his long-term plans, Galper, who changed his life from being in the corporate world to having a thriving food truck, has new ideas for the brand as PizzElla continues to grow.
“PizzElla, the brand, as it’s maturing, was never meant to be just pizza,” said Galper. “In my mind, I was going to bring people in with pizza and then show them all the other stuff, all the cool things I’ve learned and all the cuisines that have resonated with me.”
Although the structure of his brand might shift , Galper’s message for what he wants the brand to stand for has never strayed.
“I want PizzElla to mean a delicious community,” said Galper. “I want PizzElla to be a community with delicious food, so I’m going to call it a delicious community. I want it to be more than just a place where you go to eat. I want everyone to feel like they have ownership over it and they’re part of PizzElla. It’s like a culture.”
PizzElla has become not only its own culture, but a part of the UM culture. Even though Galper continues to seek opportunities to grow the brand, he doesn’t forget his roots. .
“My favorite moments are when my family is proud of me for doing what I did,” said Galper. “When I left my 15-year corporate career to be a cook, my parents thought I was out of my mind. It’s not lost on me that probably for the first couple years, they thought it was a fad and I was going to grow out of it. But now it’s almost 10 years later and we’ve won accolades, we’ve been recognized on a national level, and we’ve been on TV.”
Whether it is the family Galper was born into, or the family he made at UM, PizzElla will always unite people together, one pizza at a time.
words_clare lanscioni. photo_valeria barbaglio & marita gavioti. design_sal puma.
This article was published in Distraction’s Spring 2025 print issue.
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