Jim Cervone, the founder of Crust, a pizzeria in Pittsfield, will open another location on Spring Street in late November. This will be Cervone’s second Crust storefront.
Cervone worked as a businessman in New York City and the Berkshires before deciding to open his own restaurant in August 2020. The grandson of Italian immigrants, Cervone grew up cooking traditional Italian dishes with his family.
“You couldn’t go to my grandparents’ house without seeing food somewhere,” Cervone told the Record. “At a very young age, I just became involved with it. I enjoyed working with my grandparents and making food, making sauces. And so food was always part of my life.”
In 2013, Cervone and his wife, Lisa, opened Ayelada, a frozen yogurt shop, in Pittsfield together. The couple focused on incorporating only fresh, local ingredients into their products — a standard that remained a priority when they later opened Crust in Pittsfield in August 2020.
The pair also chose to open their second business in the same area as Ayelada. “We really liked the city of Pittsfield,” Cervone said. “We like the citizens, we like the customers, we like the support.”
Cervone was first inspired to open Crust after attending a wedding in Washington, D.C. with his wife, where they were exposed to a pizzeria business model that struck him. “You make it in front of people, you put it in the oven — it all happens in front of people’s eyes,” Cervone said.
Shortly after the trip, he began testing different recipes for sauce and pizza crust, settling on Californian tomatoes and 00 flour imported from Italy. Cervone would implement a similar model to the one he saw in Washington, D.C. at Crust: Customers can either order a pizza from the menu or build their own pizza with a select offering of toppings.
Cervone and his wife finally opened the original Crust location in 2020, only a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic. While the Cervones had initially planned to have 40 percent of their items be takeout, that number increased to 95 percent due to the pandemic.
“I’m not sure if [COVID-19] was a challenge for us,” Cervone said. “It was different than we thought. We made a decent amount of pizza instead of serving, and we put them in a box.”
Cervone explained that he visualizes Crust’s new location to be nearly identical, both functionally and visually, to the Pittsfield location. He said that the Spring Street locale would offer pizzas, salads, canned wine, and beer on tap, and — potentially — the addition of a dessert menu.
“I’m really very excited,” Cervone said. “[The students] are just so enthusiastic and just a really, really nice group of kids.”
