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David Nienow, owner of Ramunto’s Pizza in downtown Middlebury, has worked in the food industry nearly his entire life. A native of Southern Wisconsin, Nienow got his first food service job as a dishwasher the same day that he received his driver’s license, and has worked in the industry ever since.
Yet Nienow has come a long way since his days of scrubbing pots and pans. Soon after he started working as a dishwasher, he was promoted to a fryer at the restaurant where he worked. Nienow says his involvement in the food industry essentially “took off from there.”
After attending the University of Wisconsin, where he majored in psychology, Nienow married his wife, Jackie. After an unsuccessful job search in the field of elementary education in Northern Wisconsin, Jackie decided to look for jobs in Vermont, where she and her husband “fell in love with the state.” After Jackie got a teaching job at Weybridge, the two decided to move to Vermont in 1978.
Nienow’s restaurant career in Vermont began at Mr. Ups, where he worked as a line cook. He then worked as the manager and chef at an Italian restaurant called Paisano’s, which was located in the space currently home to Two Brothers Tavern. In addition to working at Paisano’s, Nienow operated a market next-door that sold fresh fish and homemade pasta.
But eventually, slightly burnt out by the late nights of the restaurant business and craving a temporary change of pace, Nienow created a USDFA food manufacturing business called Vermont Quality Products, which he owned for 10 years. His business produced a wide variety of food, including seafood, stuffing and, of course, high quality pizzas.
The popularity of the company’s pizzas inspired Nienow to look for a retail space in town in which to open a pizza shop. In April 2004 Nienow purchased a space in downtown Middlebury and opened a restaurant called The Back Home Kitchen, which specialized in fried chicken, pizza and smoked ribs.
“I wanted to make my restaurant like a place you would see on the Food Network,” said Nienow, an enthusiastic watcher of the station.
Unfortunately, The Back Home Kitchen was not as successful as Nienow had hoped. Instead of quitting, however, Nienow closed the restaurant for a few weeks and decided to re-open it as a pizza place. He made a deal with Cliff Ramunto, who runs Ramunto’s Brick and Brew Pizza in Bridgewater, Vt., for the name. Nienow has owned a successful business ever since.
“The pizza business is a lot more fun than a lot of other areas of the food business,” said Nienow. “It is not as stressful, and you can put a smile on people’s faces all day long.”
In addition, Nienow loves working in a small town like Middlebury where he has developed relationships with many of his customers.
“Whereas in manufacturing you do not develop connections, in Middlebury we are now connected to the community,” said Nienow. “People know who we are.”
Although Nienow has stepped back from much of the cooking at Ramunto’s, he has taken a greater role in the marketing side of the restaurant, working to develop the signature cartoon character of the restaurant, also known as “The Slice Guy.” Nienow refers to himself as the art director of the restaurant. He designs cartoons featuring “The Slice Guy,” and has a friend produce the artwork, which appears on t-shirts and postcards that Nienow distributes to younger customers.
Nienow prides himself on the restaurant’s wide variety of flavors and selections, ranging from Thai Chicken Pizza to BLT pizza. He says that this is part of what distinguishes Ramunto’s from other pizza places. Nienow also sees each pie as more than just dough with things thrown on top.
“At Ramunto’s, we try to create entrees,” he said. “We want the flavors to play off each other, we want the textures to work, we want it to have great color and we want our pizzas to have eye appeal.”