When Lisa Storey moved to Castle Pines in 1999, there were zero pizza delivery options — or any food delivery for that matter.

“I used to have to meet the Blackjack guy off I-25 and Castle Pines Parkway,” said Storey. an Ohio native who had moved to the fledgling town south of Lone Tree and north of Castle Rock after being laid off from her job working for a national flooring company.

It sparked an idea that would become a Castle Pines institution for almost 20 years: MaMa Lisa’s Little Italy restaurant.

Though Storey had experience in the restaurant industry, she realized immediately she would need to learn the nuances of restaurant ownership before moving forward.

So she returned for three months to Plain City, Ohio — where she grew up on a farm — to work for free at the local mom and pop pizzeria.

“They were great and taught me everything from how to order inventory, to schedule servers, make pizza and run the counter,” she said.

She brought the knowledge back to Colorado, secured a Small Business Administration loan and signed a lease at the still-under-construction Safeway shopping center off I-25 and Castle Pines Parkway.

The next day was Sept. 11, 2001. But that didn’t deter Storey or portend as some ominous omen. She plowed ahead and Little Italy, as it was originally called, opened in January 2002.

It was apparent the new town’s residents were hungry for pizza.

“I bought enough food for three day’s business,” Storey said. “We ran out by 7 p.m. that first day.”

Storey and her 14 employees were “treading water for that first three months,” but caught up and managed to grow at a slow and steady pace. Storey remembers the days of following moving trucks to new homes, then visiting the new residents with free pies and sodas. Eventually, she got close with area real estate agents and kept the free-pizza-for-new-residents going for years, often securing a “customer for life.”

“Little Italy was definitely one of the first businesses to open in Castle Pines,” said former Castle Pines Chamber president and founder Carla Kenny. “The chamber wasn’t even in existence at that point.”

Storey said she was actually relieved when a chain pizza delivery restaurant opened in Castle Pines.

“They took the ‘coupon customers,’” she said. “We stayed true to our ‘mom and pop’ roots and branded ourselves as artisan pizza with an original recipe crust, high quality cheese and a lot of love into our product.”

The lunch crowd was strong with construction workers building new homes, and Storey worked hard to ingrain the restaurant in the growing community.

“She was approached by everyone for gift cards and donations,” Kenny said. “She always gave them. I don’t recall her ever saying ‘no’ to anyone — which is amazing for a small business like that.”

Little Italy’s strategy to target new residents grew into securing catering contracts with the area’s elementary and middle schools. It seemed Castle Pines first generation of residents grew up on Storey’s pizza.

“It was an amazing fixture in the community,” Kenny said.

2011 turned out to be a year of promise and peril for Storey. The restaurant had finally outgrown its small space at that first location and inked a deal to move into 1,400 square feet at the Village Square retail center nearby. Two months later, Storey was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had to spend a lot of time in Texas for treatment.

“I had a choice to close the business and walk away, or ride out the storm,” she said.

She chose the latter and MaMa Lisa’s Little Italy was born in its new location in January 2012 as a full-service Italian restaurant and catering business. The rebranding was an effort to make her more the face of the business and increase the catering brand. It also had to do with the ensuing divorce that year from her first husband, a Castle Pines town councilmember.

Though the restaurant side of MaMa Lisa’s floundered for various reasons, including a lower-profile location, Storey and her new husband, Mitchell Storey, realized the catering side of the business was much more profitable; they decided to close the restaurant in 2018 and turn it into an events space.

“We doubled our profit within 60 days,” Storey said of the move.

The Castle Pines Chamber and other groups hosted networking events there and the catering businesses flourished to the point where Storey quit advertising and taking new business in July 2019.

“We were the Cherokee Ranch (and Castle) go-to caterer for three years, which was more than 200 events per year,” she said. “We had as much business as we could take.”

Then in February and March, the hammer of the COVID-19 pandemic fell on the entire world, including Castle Pines.

“It just went from a faucet running full steam to a trickle,” Storey said. “We lost $400,000 worth of contracts in a matter of days.”

MaMa Lisa’s trimmed staff to just Storey and her head chef and tried to stay alive pre-packaging meals for delivery. Luckily, they had leased out their space at the Village Square in January and sold much of their equipment to the next-door Indian restaurant Tandoori Flames, which trimmed much overhead. They secured a PPP loan to keep things afloat until June 15, but they were reeling from the “triple whammy” of the pandemic, no events to cater and having to refund thousands of dollars in deposits. Storey realized a hard decision would have to be made.

MaMa Lisa’s Little Italy has four last catering contracts they’re hoping to fill in 2021 — if the pandemic recedes to the point the events can go forward. But for all intents and purposes, the business is now closed.

“I got a call from a longtime customer the other day asking to order the traditional Christmas Eve meal,” she said. “When I told her we weren’t able to, we just kind of laughed and cried together.”

It was one of the hardest decisions Storey has ever had to make, and it broke her heart. Especially when another area restaurant owner said: “I’m sorry you gave up.”

“For 19 years, the one thing I lived my life saying is ‘you never give up,’” Storey said. “What does it mean to fail? For 19 years I didn’t fail and gave it everything I had. I didn’t fail. I’m reassessing what success means to me and doing my best to get there. … It was a really good run and I’d do it all again.”

Storey is ready to move on from her persona as Castle Pines “local pizza shop girl” and possibly head back to a corporate career in 2021. But she’s comforted in the fact that MaMa Lisa’s Little Italy will forever be a part of the story of the birth and beginning days of Castle Pines.