Community Highlights: Meet Jessica Hellaine of Black Dog Pizzeria

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Hellaine. 

Hi Jessica, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
There’s two things I’ve really loved for as long as I can remember—Good pizza and being a social butterfly. Now I live a life where I’m doing both of those things full-time! 

Ever since I began working as a teenager, I’ve always had customer-facing jobs and enjoyed it immensely. From hostessing clubs, promoting concerts, working community markets, bartending, and social media management, being able to be of service and interact with those around me is a passion I’ve always enjoyed. I’m definitely a people pleaser and feel best when I’m being of service. 

I met my fiancé Nick years ago when he was the owner/chef of a pizza shop near the bar I had been tending at. It was kismet, love at first sight, and we quickly began a life together and spent a few years focusing on and growing our family. 

Nick sold his original pizza shop and focused on his job in produce sales. We enjoyed running a produce stand together in our community during Covid—a market where we could provide fresh, locally sourced fruits and vegetables in a safe, no-contact environment at a time when grocery stores could be difficult and unsafe to go to. We got to know many of our neighbors through this endeavor and grew a great respect and love for our city thought this. 

Eventually, we thought why not take our combined front-of-house and back-of-house skills and knowledge to open our own pizza shop together? And so, we put our resources together and opened Black Dog Pizzeria in the north end of Columbus, Ohio, a place where we now share our love of food, service, and creativity here with our community. 

Black Dog Pizzeria is a place where we can showcase not only our creative specialty pizzas but also our love of art—as seen on our multiple local art gallery walls—and dogs—I mean, just look at our canine ‘punny’ pizza names! 

We’re both doing the things we love the most and watching it be successful quickly—it’s an awesome thing. 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Not at all! Anyone in the kitchen industry can tell you every day you never know what disaster or greatness is going to hit! Some days equipment breaks, and you’re struggling; other days, you’re so busy that you’ve made three days’ worth of profit in three hours. 

It’s a crazy mixed bag of ‘what will happen’, but I love the spontaneity of it and work best under pressure and with a changing landscape. 

It is absolutely relentless, but with all things, it’s only as rewarding as it is because we work so hard for it. Those difficult days make all the ‘wins’ feel really well deserved. 

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Black Dog Pizzeria?
Nick and I are incredibly hands-on at Black Dog Pizzeria. We’re not like a lot of the bigger chain places where we can have preserved crusts and dough and pre-chopped vegetables shipped into us. Everything that comes from our pizzeria is house-made: If we have a busy Friday where we sell hundreds of pizzas, it means we we’ve stayed at the shop until 5 am making every single dough and crust that was sold. 

We make multiple styles of pizzas at the shop—tavern style, New York crusts, pizzas based with basil pestos, garlic aoli’s, shallot purées—and each and every one of these pizzas and ingredients are made daily by us. It’s… a lot of work! Some nights we don’t come home, there’s so much to do! 

But I think that passion and work ethic comes through in our food, and I think that’s why people want to keep coming back to us. 

Our shop is a whimsical place with gallery walls of art by local artists full of as much creativity and heart as we put into each of our specialty pizzas. And like those gallery walls, we try to make each of our pizzas both tastes but also aesthetically pleasing—nothing makes me prouder than when a happy customer shares online a lovely picture of one of our pies. 

What does success mean to you?
Forward momentum and progress. Every day we see where we’re at, and then we move the goal post a little further. Watching our team quickly grow and become more cohesive. Hearing more and more kind and positive input from our neighbors, friends, and community. 

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.blackdogpizzeria.com
• Instagram: http://www.Instagram.com/blackdogpizzeria
• Facebook: https://www.Facebook.com/blackdogpizzeria
• Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com-blackdogpizzaoh
• Yelp: https://yelp.to/qO6JrPUO8rb