Ocoee pizza joint reopens with help of original owner of former Winter Garden Pizza Company

Ocoee's Santora's Pizzeria has reopened with the help of the original owner of the former Winter Garden Pizza Company, Willie Laboy.

Santora's Pizzeria, previously known as Franco's Pizza, was first re-opened by owner Anthony Santora in 2023.

Since then, the eatery has experienced a tumultuous journey, with several closings and reopenings, mostly due to a shortage of employees.

In March, Santora took to social media to share the news of the most recent closing. 

"We are saddened to say that Santora’s Pizzeria will be closed until further notice due to staffing issues," Santora said in the post. "We will update you all when we are in a position to open again. Thank you for your continued support."

After about three months, Santora posted an update on social media on June 13.

"I go up and check in (on) the place when I can to make sure everything is still working and clean," he said. "Truthfully, that's just an excuse for me to visit the place. Keep in mind I live 45 minutes away. I have had a lot of offers from people to buy the place, and I always find a reason to turn it down. I just can not seem to part with it, even as it's costing me a ton of money just sitting. I was at the shop this past Saturday walking around doing some unnecessary maintenance. The place felt very sad to me, like it wants to be of service to the community. Very strange presence on this particular day. I called my wife and told her I'm not 100%, but I think we need to get the place open. I just don't want to open then close again and go through all of that. I just needed another sign or something great to happen."  

The next day, someone threw a rock through the restaurant's front door window and smashed the glass.

"They had every opportunity to go in and freely take or destroy whatever they wanted but instead just walked away," he said. "I got a call from the neighbor, came to the shop, cleaned up the mess and repaired the glass. Now, it very well could have been someone just being stupid breaking stuff, but it felt like the sign I needed."

Santora called Laboy, the original owner of the Winter Garden Pizza Company, which unexpectedly closed in July 2023 after being passed off to several different owners. 

"I asked what he was doing, and I told him the shop was still closed," he said. "You would have thought he was waiting for my call. Within twenty minutes, he was ready to go. ... We are all very excited to get open and stay open with great leadership. Willie has already made some great changes to the menu and has great ideas for the future. I am very happy to be working with him."

Santora's hosted a soft reopening event with Laboy as its new general manager June 24, followed by a grand reopening event June 25.

Santora took to social media that day to express his gratitude.

"The guys did a fantastic job," he said. "Luckily, everything worked. Willie and I, with the help of our team, have been working nonstop for the last few weeks ... When I put up the original post that we were going to open on June 25, we had absolutely no employees, we had no food, we had to prep everything from scratch and none of the computers were working. There was a ton of work that needed to be done inside to get it ready.  New menu items, testing new food and new menus. I was very happy today to sit back and watch Willie and his team execute. They did an outstanding job. The customers that came in were so happy and so grateful that we were able to reopen the place. It just made it much more special."

Santora's Pizzeria is located at 5 W. Silver Star Road, Ocoee.

For more information, call (407) 877-4445 or visit the eatery's Facebook page here.