Italian-style pizzeria Bowie Pizza fired up its oven this month to open for business at 1522 NW 13th St. in Gainesville.  

The new restaurant is holding a soft opening through the end of the month, operating 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays and Mondays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.  

Bowie’s owner Eric Lencioni said customer turnout has been as good as he hoped so far, while also being light enough to allow room for perfecting recipes and staff operations. 

“It’s nice, it’s like [I] expected,” Lencioni said. “We need this time to understand and be better.” 

Opening his own restaurant has been a dream for Lencioni and almost two decades in the making. The Brazil native first tapped into the food industry in 2006 by opening multiple Subway locations and eventually a Domino’s Pizza in Brazil.  

In 2018, Lencioni said he began to think about opening a pizzeria in order to craft his own product outside of franchises. He traveled to Italy to learn about the different types of pizza equipment they use and started perfecting his own recipes.  

But he said the dream was put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic when Brazil’s strict shelter-in-place rules squelched the economy. 

After Lencioni’s wife got accepted to the University of Florida for dentistry three years ago, the couple moved to Gainesville with their two children. Lencioni said he was staying at home taking the kids to soccer practice and still running his eight Subway franchises in Brazil when the location on 13th Street popped up for rent in September last year.  

The dream of opening his own restaurant was back on. 

“[Having] a business in another country [is] another experience, another culture and I want to understand everything and to grow,” Lencioni said. “I think the business will be designed to grow; all the processes [are] very consistent.” 

“Bowie” is a name Lencioni said that just came to his mind one day. It just so happened to connect to the pizza industry, he said, as Bowie, Arizona, produces wheat for flour like what he uses in his pizza. 

Although various other pizzerias are popping up around town, Lencioni said competition is just a normal part of the business. He said Bowie Pizza dough is unique because it undergoes 48 hours of fermentation which allows more air to make it softer and lighter.  

While Bowie Pizza will eventually serve 12 different flavors—from a classic mozzarella cheese pizza to a shrimp and Catupiry combination—Lencioni said they’re only offering a few recipes during the soft opening and will release more as the staff adapt to demands and get used to the oven. 

Although working with six months of English and trying to get the perfect equilibrium between the dough and the oven have been challenging, Lencioni said they’ve also been his favorite parts. 

“I like the business to [be able to] talk with the people,” he said. “I’m not so quiet in Portuguese.” 

Lencioni hopes to offer delivery within the next month and maybe find a muralist who can incorporate the restaurant’s other decorations representing Gainesville—like Tom Petty and Ben Hill Griffin Stadium—Italy and his family. 

“I need to understand what we can do to integrate the business with the community,” he said. “We have four partners; I’m living here but we have three in Brazil and all of our business is located in the community. [They’re a] good place to work, [people] respect one another and we want to do the same here.”