Green Mountain Pizza, located at 303 FL-Hwy 50, Clermont in Sunnyside Plaza, specializes in making everything in-house, made to order, and delicious. The menu is designed for all food lovers. The take-out dining restaurant specializes in Italian favorites including hand-tossed brick oven pizzas, calzones, stromboli, pasta dishes, deli fresh cold cut sandwiches, homemade bread, sauces, tiramisu, and Bindi Desserts (imported from Italy), as well as authentic European-style coffees. Popular American favorites include burgers, wings, breakfast sandwiches, and hot subs. Dine take-out and catering for all size events.
Green Mountain Pizza was established in 2013 by best friends and South Lake County natives Roberto Del Verme and Miranda Straugh as a way to provide an honest, simple living for their families while also serving the community they love and grew up in. Roberto and Miranda have over 30 years of experience cooking and serving their local community and are proud to continue the family-style tradition in Clermont.
I recently dropped by Green Mountain Pizza and was able to discover a unique blend of friendship, love, talent, and good cooking.
Tablet: Tell me a little about the history of Green Mountain Pizza
Roberto and Niki Del Verme /Miranda and Mike Straugh
We are life-long friends that met at Clermont Middle School and South Lake High School. All of us graduated between 1998 – 2002. Hard to believe it was 20 years ago! We really consider ourselves family at this point.
This restaurant was an experiment to see if the four of us could combine forces to run the place together, in an effort to have more time with our families as we raised them. We believe in the importance of a tight family unit, and nothing gets prioritized above the needs of our children. It’s a team effort, and it’s not easy, but we see it as making a sacrifice for putting our family first (hence, why we’re closed Sundays!)
We are part of the “old” Clermont”. Watching the growth of our tiny town over time has been phenomenal. We’ve met so many new great families that have moved here and have reconnected with so many families from our past since we’re now in Clermont. It’s been awesome.
TABLET: How did they come up with the name Green Mountain Pizza (GMP).
Roberto, Niki, Miranda & Mike – The previous owner was an old friend of ours (also from South Lake High School) and was running Green Mountain Deli. The name “Montverde” means “Mountain Green” in Spanish, so we kept the name because that’s the town we were operating in, and just added the word “pizza” because….that’s what we wanted to primarily make and sell! We definitely like to keep things as uncomplicated and as simple as we can, so it just seemed like a good fit.
We talked over possibly changing the name when we came to Clermont (Gem of the Hills Pizza or Clermont Pizza), but the move was already hard enough emotionally, and we’d rather spend the extra time focused on raising our families and not on reinventing the wheel (also went with our motto of keeping life simple!) so we kept the name because it just felt like part of who we were. It’s also a daily reminder of our roots of where we started back in Montverde.
South Lake Tablet – Roberto, Where did you train and develop your culinary skills?
Roberto – My cooking roots and pizza-making skills run deep. My aunts and uncles started moving to Lake County from Italy in the 70s, and began to open up pizza shops throughout the county. My parents, close behind, emigrated to Lake County from Italy in the 80s. Speaking little English, they somehow ended up in the once-small community of Clermont. A few years later they opened the popular Italian eatery Capri, sharing the same location as Green Mountian Pizza today in Clermont’s Sunnyside Plaza. I worked in several of my uncle’s restaurants throughout Lake County including Mount Dora Pizza, Luigi’s (where Miranda & Roberto worked together), Vincent’s of Mount Dora, and Gi Gi’s Italian Restaurant. I honed my craft and management skills in the food industry across Manhattan before returning to open my very first restaurant, Green Mountain Pizza.
TABLET – You moved your business from Montverde to Clermont. Why? When?
Roberto, Niki, Miranda & Mike – We officially opened Clermont at the end of April 2019, so we’ve been open a little over a year in our new take-out spot. We were originally looking for a second location to expand our business, but the universe doesn’t really care what your plans are. Our lease was ending in Montverde, the building was old and falling into shambles, the build-out was more expensive and took more time than we expected, and we just felt like it was right for our families during that process to completely relocate. The decision was incredibly difficult, because we absolutely love the people we met out in Montverde, but the good news is our most loyal customers still come to us today, and for that, we’re incredibly grateful!
South Lake Tablet: Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your business?
Roberto, Niki, Miranda & Mike – It’s so crazy for all businesses during this time. 2020 has not been an easy year so far (and we’re already not in an easy business). We moved to Clermont with a take-out business in mind and were considered essential, so in the name of keeping good positive mental health, we tried to focus on “business as usual” as much as we could. We felt like our customers were now leaving their homes searching for community and comfort, spending their hard-earned dollars on food for their family. It’s a big responsibility for us to be a positive force in their lives. Sometimes when a customer comes to the restaurant, it’s their only time out of the house that week, and we don’t take that for granted.
Consistency and kindness are so important to instill faith and trust with your customers. We are grateful that our customers have been kind and patient while we all try to navigate through this together. Supporting local businesses has never been more important than right now!
South Lake Tablet: Is there anything else you’d like to share with the reader?
Roberto, Niki, Miranda & Mike – We just want to say that our mission here is to just spread love in our community. We try to do that with our food. The world feels like it’s so bleak right now, and instead of feeding into that energy, we’re just going to continue to promote love and kindness and hope that others do the same. Food really does bring people together, and over 90% of the population eats pizza, at least one time a month – so we can at least all agree that we love pizza! Our customers are some of the greatest people you’ll ever want to meet, and we hope that we’re able to keep meeting new people and new customers. We want to serve our community for years to come.
South Lake Tablet: Support our local businesses. Green Mountain Pizza is a great family-owned business. Drop by and congratulate Roberto, Niki, Miranda, and Mike on their 7 year business anniversary!
