I try to feed my customers the way I feed my family.

We are strolling through Flying Turtle Farm, the 68 acres in Cloudland, Georgia, where Dorris Shober and husband John care for pigs, Brangus cattle, a spiral garden, vegetables and flowers - like celosia and zinnias, which Dorris gently talks about like they're dear friends - when this one question almost jumps out of my mouth.

I've been wanting to ask it for years.

Thousands of other Chattanoogans probably have, too.

Nearly 30 years ago, Dorris opened Lupi's Pizza Pies in downtown Chattanooga, a decision that wonderfully and permanently changed our city's food scene.

So, there are lots of questions to ask.

But this particular question? It's a tad personal, so I wait a while longer, content to walk with Dorris past the hen house, ebullient pigs and cattle.

We gaze at the flowers. Her hand brushes over the top of the zinnias.

Now, looking back at the morning, the answer to my question was there the whole time.

On March 6, 1996, Lupi's downtown opened its doors.

At the time, the Tennessee Aquarium was barely four years old. Downtown? A ghost town.

"There was no place you could get a slice and a beer," Dorris remembers.

In the early 90s, Dorris and ex-husband Greg Beairsto were living in Atlanta - both Notre Dame High grads; he was in school, she was working as a nurse - and often sat outside Fellini's Pizza, exhaling with a draft beer and slice of pepperoni.

Why doesn't Chattanooga have something like this?

"We used to sit down there at Fellini’s and just watch and kind of dream of this," she said. "A pizza place. Chattanooga needs this. We can do this."

With no business or restaurant industry experience, Dorris borrowed her neighbor's countertop KitchenAid and began working out the dough recipe from scratch.

It's been the same since '96.

"We did not change the recipe," she said.

Also unchanging?

• Lupi's commitment to sourcing from local growers. Dorris has maintained relationships with dozens of local farmers, putting Lupi's as a regional farm-to-table leader.  
• The recipe for crushed tomatoes, flour, cheese, fresh herbs and spices has been the same since '96.

• Folks love it.

They named it Lupi's: "short, sounds Italian, sounds fun, catchy, easy to remember."

"We were busy from the day we opened," she said.

A Hixson store opened in 1999 - on Sept. 25, Lupi's Hixson will celebrate its 25th anniversary with 25% of sales going to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank - followed by Lupi's in East Brainerd, Cleveland, Ooltewah.

After her divorce in 2002, she kept Lupi's and later, married John. They began farming Flying Turtle, allowing Dorris to build a farm-to-table process remarkably intimate: her farm, her restaurant table.

"I had never worked in restaurants before," she recalls.

Never?

"And no business experience," she added.

I held my tongue; my question could wait a little longer.

We pause near the hogs, possibly the most fortunate swine in Tennessee; every morning, Dorris feeds them buckets of leftover Lupi's - croutons, gluten-free cheese slices, iceberg heads - detoured from the landfill.

In the coming months, they'll be processed for Lupi's sausage pizza.

Same with her cows. "We always use local ground beef," she said.

Such decisions -- like sourcing locally whenever possible -- cost money; Lupi's could save thousands by using canned paste or big-box beef shipped in from God-knows-where.

But then Lupi's wouldn't be Lupi's.

And Dorris wouldn't be Dorris.

"I want to give my customers the healthiest pizza I can," she said.

Each week in the summer, she brings cut flowers from Flying Turtle - celosia, zinnias, the dear friends - and puts them in watered vases in all her stores. Vases at the entrance, greeting people. More in the women's bathroom.

"They make people smile," she said.

That's when it hits:

All of this is for us.

You. Me. Us. The hundreds of thousands of Lupi's customers over the last 28 years.

Dorris does this all for us.

"I try to feed my customers the way I feed my family," she said.

Every year, Dorris and John throw a big party at Flying Turtle Farm - a reference to the indigenous myth that the earth floats on the back of a turtle - for all Lupi's 125 or so employees.

"My employees' experience is as important to me as my customers'," she said. "I want them to feel safe and to be treated with respect and keep attitudes at the door."

Attitudes at the door. Dorris is no push-over. You don't build a five-store pizza empire without also holding a very firm line.

"Half-ass just doesn't work for me," she said.

Like many restaurants, Lupi's is post-Covid short-staffed; she just can't find enough hardworking people to hire. Dorris won't allow rudeness, disrespect or, well, half-assedness.

"We have the cleanest kitchens in town," she said. (Dorris was a nurse, remember.)

But for those who find Lupi's? Many stay for life.

"Lupi's is my life," said Tom Maynard. "I've been with Dorris for 27 years now. It's everything."

He's the longest serving Lupi's employee. Next up? Matt Douglass, her "right-hand-man" who started washing dishes and now oversees all five Lupi's locations.

"We're family," said Dorris.

In 2006, a friend suggested to Robbie Hanshaw: go apply at Lupi's.

He did. Today, he's the general manager of the downtown restaurant.

"There have been very few days I've ever come to work in 18 years and not left in a perfectly fine mood," he said. "That makes such a difference in my life."

In an industry with an average turnover rate of nearly 80%, Lupi's represents a longevity built on care.

"You know the people you work for care about the product, food, quality and how it's prepared. Dorris is not the type of business owner who's going to skimp," he said. "Does that make sense?"

Completely.

"Dorris has been a rock in my life. If I ever needed anything, I could always call Dorris," he said. "I’ve seen her go out of her way to help employees over the years."

It's a two-way street. Dorris calls Lupi's "an enormous gift in my life." Now, at 62, she's looking back over her shoulder at the last 30 years of Lupi's.

"I've grown so much in so many ways. It's opened me up to so many things and people. I'm a pretty strong person because of it now," she said.

So as we stroll through her family farm, snorting with the pigs, exhaling with the cows, talking with the flowers, this woman with no business or farming or restaurant experience is now, well, a leading restaurant and farm-to-table farmer and businesswoman who - in all decisions - thinks of others first.

Her customers.

Her employees.

The farmers and land around her.

Near the farm windmill, I figured it was time.

Dorris, where does all your generosity come from?

She smiles at my question.

"It comes from somewhere really deep."

Dorris grew up the daughter of a preacher man; she was five when her dad enrolled in seminary as an Episcopal priest. They moved from Lookout Mountain to Paris, Tennessee.

There, she met a friend.

And her friend invited her to her grandparent's farm.

And everything changed for young Dorris.

"I just loved it," she said.

Shooting stars late at night and laying in the cornfield and talking with the cows and wandering through the tall grass, crows calling, the sky overhead like the back of a turtleshell.

"There was such a feeling of freedom," she remembers. "I knew I always wanted to be on a farm."

Her parents embodied an ethical grounding -- "if you're going to do something, do it right" -- and a gentle, everyday spirituality.

"My mom was the kindest person and treated everybody and everything so well," she said. "An angel, really."

All of this accumulates in the heart; early decisions - let's source locally and treat employees and customers like family - build, one upon the other, so that 28 years later, the tallest tower of generosity has been created with rooms for so many people: employees, farmers, pigs, zinnias, Chattanoogans wanting to exhale with a slice and beer.

"It's in giving that I receive," she said. "That is where generosity comes from."

No business experience. No restaurant experience.

But the heart knows. The answer was there the whole time.

"All I’ve learned? It has to have come from a sort of integrity and treating people well," she said. "The things that come from these simple things are pretty amazing."

All photography by Sarah Unger (sarah@foodasaverb.com)

All design by Alex DeHart

All words by David Cook (david@foodasaverb.com)

Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com

This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.