Retirement did not suit Cape Coral’s Ted Horstman.
After selling his Ohio-based company that made rubber for sports applications, such as track surfaces and flooring for gyms, including L.A. Fitness and Planet Fitness, Horstman retired to Cape Coral.
There were only so many reruns of “Walker, Texas Ranger” he could watch.
“I got bored,” Horstman said.
Enter East of Chicago Pizza.
The Lima, Ohio-based franchise with about 100 locations added the first three in Florida over the past two years. All of them are in Cape Coral and co-owned by Horstman and Barry Goettemoeller.
“We wanted to blanket Cape Coral and do it right,” Goettemoeller said. “South Cape, mid-Cape and North Cape.”
Although East of Chicago opened its newest location in January, it chose May 22 to celebrate its grand opening by giving away 1,000 pizzas, with Cape Coral elected officials on hand for an afternoon ribbon–cutting.
“The city is really trying to revitalize downtown Cape,” said Goettemoeller, a former educator and football coach at North Fort Myers High. He now sells homes for RE/MAX Realty Group, and he brought an awareness of real estate to the East of Chicago franchise ownership group.
“We looked at it as an opportunity to take this older building, gut it, remodel it and bring it up to code,” Goettemoeller said. “Because it was a 30-year-old building.”
East of Chicago spent about $500,000 on rehabilitating the 2,400-square-foot building that previously had been a pet supply store and insurance office at 4706 SE Ninth Place, near 47th Terrace.
The other locations are at standalone, new construction buildings at 1306 Santa Barbara Blvd., Suite 7, and 1260 NE Eighth St., Suite 8, near Pine Island Road.
“This is a Midwest kind of a style,” Goettemoeller said. “We have six different crusts, enough for everybody’s favorite.
“We’re doing a deep dish, of course. Because everybody makes that correlation. Of course, we have thin crust, my personal favorite. We have a signature pan crust. We even have a cauliflower crust pizza.”
The three locations combined to have about 30 employees. They are trying to take elements of a mom–and–pop pizza shop and combine it with the franchise element.
“It starts with the water,” Goettemoeller said. “Water to make good dough. We make our dough fresh every day. Water in South Florida can be a struggle. We have to use a filtration system to make sure it’s right.
“All of our produce is sourced locally. And then our sauce and our cheese are high-end. That’s obviously what tops off good pizza.”
