Before business school, before boardrooms, before becoming an entrepreneur, Christopher Carosa learned how business really works in an unlikely classroom: his grandparents’ pizza stand at the Erie County Fair.
His teacher was his grandfather, Sam Butera.
The lessons didn’t come from textbooks. They came from sixteen-hour days, hungry customers, sudden equipment failures, carnival barkers, competitors, family, friendship, secret pizza sauce, oversized sunglasses, and the organized chaos of one of America’s great county fairs.
And Sam knew something about business.
His family pizza operation began in the 1950s, when pizza was still emerging from an ethnic specialty into an American favorite. In 1956, he brought pizza to the Erie County Fair. Decades later, the family operation he started would be inducted into PMQ Pizza Magazine’s Pizza Hall of Fame.
A Pizza The Action takes you behind the counter during the 1970s and early 1980s, when a teenage Chris gradually discovered that his grandparents weren’t merely teaching him how to sell pizza. They were teaching him how to work, how to deal with people, how to solve problems, how to recognize opportunities—and ultimately how to succeed in business and life. The book draws its stories from roughly 1974 through 1983 and organizes those experiences around personal, family, community, and business values.
Through funny, warm, and sometimes surprising true stories, Carosa uncovers 54 lessons that lead to 15 rules for success—lessons he would later carry into his own entrepreneurial ventures.
Along the way, you’ll discover:
- The Four Fundamental Basics of a Winning Business
- What Always Comes First—despite what you might think
- The Only Color That Matters
- Why the Odds Are Never in Your Favor—and how to change them
- The Two Secrets of Making Memorable Presentations
- The Six Rules of a Good Carny
- Why successful selling begins with a process, not a personality
- Why good marketing creates the sale—but good engineering keeps customers coming back
- Why you should always have a Plan C
- Why you should never stop thinking outside the pizza box
You’ll also discover something bigger than business.
You’ll experience the Erie County Fair from the other side of the counter: the morning preparation, the crushing rushes, the colorful carnies, the smell of fresh pizza, the midway after dark, and the strange little community that forms when families work side by side. Because in Grandpa’s pizza stand, family came before business—one of the central lessons running through the book.
And you’ll see how a self-described analytical kid—whose classmates once compared him to Mr. Spock—learned to sell by studying the successful carnies around him, especially his grandfather.
This isn’t a conventional business book.
It’s a coming-of-age story, a family story, a nostalgic trip to the Erie County Fair, and a practical education in entrepreneurship—all served one slice at a time.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, small-business owner, salesperson, side-hustler, student, or simply someone who believes some of life’s best lessons are learned by doing, A Pizza The Action offers business wisdom you can use inside stories you’ll actually enjoy reading.
Ready to discover what a pizza stand at the Erie County Fair can teach you about business—and life?
Buy A Pizza The Action right now if you want to learn how 54 lessons earned behind the counter can help you attract customers, solve problems, recognize opportunities, prepare for the unexpected, and build your own recipe for success.
Christopher Carosa as the oft-quoted President of the Bullfinch Fund and its investment adviser Carosa Stanton Asset Management. A popular and entertaining nationally recognized speaker from coast to coast, he has appeared in, among other media outlets, The New York Times, Barron’s, CNN and Fox Business News. Mr. Carosa was born in Buffalo. He is a well-known promoter of the Greater Western New York region and also recognized as the local author of the book 50 Hidden Gems of Greater Western New York, of which he’s spoken about to many area service clubs and organizations. He’s the first graduate from Gates-Chili High School to attend Yale University. Mr. Carosa has been a top rated AM disc jockey, at one time was declared one of Rochester’s “Most Eligible Bachelors,” has climbed to the top of two volcanoes (including Mt. Vesuvius), once earned a national prize for his academic research, has seen a stage play he’s written (The Macaroni Kid) performed to sold out audiences, and generally has had a pretty good life. Along the way Mr. Carosa has also been a successful serial, some say parallel, entrepreneur. He’s created a market research company, a weekly suburban newspaper, a trust company, a mutual fund, and a national media company. Although he has an MBA from the University of Rochester’s Simon School, Mr. Carosa says he did so only to tell people he didn’t need an MBA to be successful. In fact, he claims everything he ever learned about business he learned by working in his grandparents’ pizza stand at the Erie County Fair. Mr. Carosa has also written Hey! What’s My Number?, 401 Fiduciary Solutions ; A Life Full of Wonder; and, Due Diligence. In addition to other publications, he has written more than 500 articles for FiduciaryNews.com. If you’d like to read more by Mr. Carosa, browse his author’s site, ChrisCarosa.com; a site to a book he’s working on, LifetimeDreamGuide.com; a site devoted to his first love, AstronomyTop100.com, and a site where he, his son, and his daughter offer reviews to classic Hollywood movies, MightyMovieMoments.com. What he enjoys most, though, is sharing the spell-binding stories of Greater Western New York with family, friends, and fans of the region. Those willing to join him on his crusade to promote all things Greater Western New York are invited to visit GreaterWesternNewYork.com to learn more. Mr. Carosa lives in Mendon, NY with his wife, Betsy, three children, Cesidia, Catarina, and Peter, and their beagle, Wally.
