Today we’d like to introduce you to Brianna Tamburello.
Hi Brianna, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Our story is really a love story—between the two of us, our family, the restaurant business, and the community that has supported us along the way.
Benard has spent more than 30 years in the restaurant business. He started with a small hot dog shop in Birmingham in the early 1990s and, over the years, built and operated everything from Southern comfort food restaurants and steakhouses to fine dining. Food has always been his passion, but more than that, he has always loved creating places where people can gather, feel welcome, and share a great meal.
I came from a very different background in sales, training, hospitality, and business operations. Our paths crossed in 2012 with the help of a mutual friend, and from the beginning, we realized we made a pretty great team. Benard is the dreamer, the chef, and the creative force. I’m the one who takes those ideas and figures out how to make them happen. We joke that he creates the chaos and I organize it—but somehow, it works.
In 2014, we opened Vecchia Pizzeria & Mercato together in The Preserve in Hoover. We poured everything we had into it. Benard trained with pizzaiolos from Naples, Italy, to learn the art of authentic Neapolitan pizza, and we wanted to bring a little piece of Italy home to Birmingham. What we didn’t fully understand at the time was that we weren’t just opening a restaurant—we were building a community.
Over the years, our customers have become friends, our staff has become family, and Vecchia has become part of so many people’s lives. We’ve watched first dates turn into marriages, babies grow into teenagers, families celebrate birthdays and milestones, and kids who once came in for pizza grow up and come back to work for us. Those are the moments that mean the most.
Like most small business owners, our journey has not been a straight line. We’ve had incredible highs, really hard seasons, concepts that worked, concepts that didn’t, and plenty of moments when we had to pick ourselves up and figure out what came next.
One of those moments came in 2025 when we closed the restaurant concept we had operated next door for eight years, Moss Rock Tacos & Tequila. It was emotional and uncertain, but we weren’t ready to give up on the space—or on ourselves. So, we took a deep breath, dreamed again, and created Vecchia Gelato & Café.
The Café opened in November 2025 and feels like a new chapter of our story. It is the sweet, savory, totally Italian sister to the Pizzeria, filled with all the things we love—artisan-made gelato, espresso, pastries, breakfast, Italian street food, spritzes, and the everyday café culture we’ve fallen in love with during our travels through Italy.
Today, we operate both restaurants side by side, and our family is still very much at the heart of it all. Our kids grew up in this business. Our lives, our marriage, and our restaurants have all grown together. There isn’t always a clear line between work and family, but we wouldn’t know how to tell our story any other way.
After all these years, we’re still learning, still changing, still dreaming, and still figuring things out together. And maybe that’s what we’re most proud of—not just the restaurants we’ve built, but the life we’ve built around them.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not. Our road has been anything but smooth.
Running a restaurant comes with challenges every single day—the long hours, staffing, rising costs, unexpected problems, and the constant pressure of knowing that so many people and families depend on the decisions you make. But nothing could have prepared us for 2020.
When COVID hit, we had to completely rethink our business almost overnight. Closing was never something we wanted to accept as an option, so we pivoted, adapted, and found a way to keep going. We never closed for a single day, and one of the things we are most proud of is that we were able to retain our entire staff during that time.
But in the middle of everything happening with the pandemic, our world was turned upside down in an even more personal way when Benard was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer.
Suddenly, we weren’t just trying to save a business. We were fighting for Benard’s health, caring for our family, raising our kids, supporting our employees, and trying to hold everything together during one of the most uncertain times the restaurant industry had ever faced. Brianna stepped fully into the role of running the businesses while also becoming Benard’s caretaker and continuing to be a mom and hold our family together.
It was exhausting, scary, and incredibly difficult for both of us. There were days when we truly didn’t know what the next day would bring. We simply kept putting one foot in front of the other.
Today, Benard has a clean bill of health, and we don’t take that for granted for a single day. That season changed us—personally, professionally, and as a couple. It reminded us that the hardest moments can exist right alongside the greatest blessings, and it gave us a very different perspective on what success really means.
Our road has never been easy, but every difficult season has made us more resilient, more grateful, and more determined to keep building this life and these businesses together.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
At the heart of everything we do is one simple idea: we want people to feel like they are part of our family.
Vecchia means “old” in Italian, and for us, that represents honoring the old ways—the traditions, techniques, recipes, and belief that good food takes time. We are incredibly proud that so much of what we serve is made by hand and from scratch, using quality ingredients and methods that have been passed down for generations. The luxary is totally in our food.
Vecchia Pizzeria & Mercato is best known for our authentic Neapolitan pizza. Benard trained in the old ways of Naples, Italy, and we use traditional Acunto wood-fired ovens built in Naples, Italian 00 flour, and house-made fior di latte mozzarella. But the Pizzeria has grown to become much more than pizza. We are known for our Not Your Nonna’s Meatballs, house-made Italian sausage, pasta dishes, cooking classes, wine events, and the kind of hospitality that makes people want to stay awhile.
Next door, Vecchia Gelato & Café is the newest chapter of our story. It is the sweeter, softer, sexier sister to the Pizzeria—a place for artisan-made gelato, espresso and coffee, pastries, breakfast, Italian street food, sandwiches, spritzes, and cocktails. The Café was inspired by the everyday culture we love so much in Italy, where people gather throughout the day for coffee, food, conversation, and connection.
What sets us apart is that we have never wanted to simply copy Italy. We want to honor it while still being authentically us. Benard’s Italian and Sicilian roots, his decades of experience, our travels, our family, and our Southern hospitality all come together in what we do. We care deeply about the ingredients and the techniques, but we care just as much about how people feel when they walk through our doors.
We are also very proud that we are still an independent, family-owned business. We are hands-on owners—you will find us in the restaurants almost every day. We know our regulars, we work alongside our team, and our family has grown up in this business. For us, Vecchia has never been just a brand. It is our life.
Brand-wise, we are most proud of the community that has grown around Vecchia. We have watched first dates turn into marriages, families celebrate milestones, and children grow up coming through our doors. Our cooking classes, live music, wine events, family activities, and neighborhood gatherings have allowed us to create something that goes far beyond a meal.
We want readers to know that Vecchia is two restaurants with two different experiences, but one shared heart. Whether you are sitting down for a wood-fired pizza, stopping in for your morning espresso, bringing your children for gelato, joining us for a cooking class, or raising a spritz with friends, we want you to feel welcome.
At the end of the day, we are not trying to be the biggest. We want to be a place that matters—to our family, our team, our neighborhood, and the people who choose to spend their time with us. That is what we are most proud of.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Something that surprises most people is that Brianna handles all of the social media, marketing, branding, and website activities for both Vecchia Pizzeria & Mercato and Vecchia Gelato & Café.
Every post, caption, event promotion, email, website update, menu design, photo, video, and piece of branding you see comes directly from Brianna. There is no outside marketing company or social media team behind the scenes—it is all done in-house, usually while she is also juggling the daily operations of two restaurants.
Because Benard is naturally the face of the food and the creative personality people often see, most people assume there must be a marketing team working behind the scenes. The funny part is, the “team” is Brianna—often with her phone in one hand and a completely different restaurant problem to solve in the other.
What makes it even more personal is that the voice of our brand is truly our voice. The stories, the humor, the personality, and the connection people feel online come from someone who is living the business every single day. Brianna knows the customers, the staff, the food, the stories, and the heart behind everything we do because she is right in the middle of it.
It is a huge part of the business that most people never see, but it is also something we are really proud of. Our brand was not created by an agency—it has grown organically alongside our restaurants, our family, and our story.
Pricing:
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Contact Info:
- Website: www.vecchiabirmingham.com AND www.vecchiagelatocafe.com
- Instagram: @vecchiabham AND @vecchiagelatocafe
- Facebook: @vecchiabirmingham AND @vecchiagelatocafe
- Youtube: @vecchiabham
- Other: TikTok – @vecchiabham
