Meet Samuel and Leela Arroyo, Owners of La Bella Napoli Pizzeria

Welcome back to Down the Boulevard, a feature on Hasbrouck Heights Patch where we ask the business owners in our town a few questions about their business and themselves. Get to know your business owners.

With more than a decade of pizza business experience behind them, this husband and wife team now embark on a new venture – owning their own pizza shop.

Samuel and Leela Arroyo are the new owners of , located just a few steps off the Boulevard on Williams Avenue. The couple just took over the pizza shop, which has held the same name since 1958, and are now offering up their giant slices of pizza, expanding the menu to include dessert items and are even bringing in some Spanish delicacies.

Both have worked in the pizza business for years. Sam Arroyo originally began as a driver for a pizza shop in Teaneck and worked his way up to owning his own shop.

While working behind the scenes, Sam quickly began to learn the business. At the Teaneck shop he assisted with some of the cooking while teaching himself the art of making pizzas. He got the opportunity to fill in for the Sunday pizza chef when he was on vacation and Sam wound up serving in this position for the next two years until he became pizza chef in another sarea restaurant.  

He says the experiences he has had working for other owners taught him a lot about the business. In some cases the businesses he worked for were on the decline and he learned the ins and outs of what one needs to do to keep a business up and running. After many years of workingin the business he found it was time to take matters into his own hands and the chance to own his own pizza shop came along.

Sam and Leela knew the previous owner of La Bella Napoli who offered to sell them his business and that is how their new business venture began. Leela hands the business side of things while Sam does the cooking, he says.

In just a few weeks time the Arroyos have already brought in many new items which the community is quickly eating up, literally. Aside for their giant slices of pizza, they are offering empanadas - Spanish meat pies - which the Arroyos say sell out almost as soon as they take them out of the oven. They are considering bringing in some more examples of Spanish home cooking like pulled pork sandwiches and rice balls.

One of their new pizzas, an original idea known as the Munchie Pie features chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks and French fries, kind of like a phat sandwich but on a pizza. Sam says people are beginning to get away from the phat sandwich and this is whole a new idea.