A deaf couple is set to open a new Neapolitan-style pizzeria in Washington, D.C., staffed only by deaf employees.
Mozzeria will be located on 1300 H St. NE, down the street from Gallaudet University, the world-renowned school for the deaf and hard of hearing where the couple first met. The restaurant will open in spring of 2020.
“It’s been a longtime dream to see a deaf-owned restaurant in Washington, D.C.,” said Russ Stein, co-owner of the new pizza joint. “We’re good at making sure our customer experience is a good one because we’re excellent at reading their body language.”
All pizza lovers, hearing or not, are welcome at Mozzeria, ordering by sign language, pointing, or pen and paper. The couple already has a 4.5-star restaurant and pizza truck in San Francisco wholly staffed by deaf people.
H Street is also home to Starbucks’ first “Signing Store,” solely employing those proficient in American Sign Language.
The Communication Service for the Deaf Social Venture Fund, dedicated to deaf-owned businesses, invested several million dollars in Mozzeria. The fund aims to raise, bit by bit, the employment rate of deaf people, which the National Deaf Center and University of Texas at Austin found was at 48% in 2016.
The D.C. location will require at least 30 servers, chefs, and hosts and will seat approximately 100 customers.
Christopher Soukup, the Communication Service for the Deaf chief executive, said this unemployment is because of assumptions that deaf people cannot handle high-stakes jobs such as serving in the food industry.
“That’s why Mozzeria is so important,” Soukup said. “The more we can put those success stories out there, brick by brick we can combat that perception.”
Mozzeria flaunts a menu of both classic dishes and out-of-the-box, exclusive pizzas, including a meatball-heavy pizza invented by Stein.
“There’s nothing more powerful than seeing that customer smile after eating that pizza,” he said.
