A pair of St. Petersburg entrepreneurs best known for scooping ice cream are about to start slinging pizza out of a converted 1963 gas station. Kitty's House of Pizza, the first savory concept from Bright Ice Scoop Shop founders Steven Garrahan and Kurt Drake, plans to open in October 2026 in the city's Central Oak Park neighborhood.
The new spot is a pizza restaurant from the duo, who built Bright Ice into a five-location Florida dairy brand. The restaurant sits at 4059 5th Avenue North, a building that has lived several lives since it was built in 1963 as a Shell gas station, later operating as a convenience store and then a gym, according to Business Debut.
A Name Rooted in Family, a Design Rooted in the 1960s
Garrahan named the pizzeria after his daughter's cat, Kitty, and the pair leaned into the building's midcentury bones rather than fighting them, outfitting the interior with a midcentury modern aesthetic designed to match the structure's 1963 architecture, per the same Business Debut account. Kitty's House of Pizza, LLC is the business's name.
On the food side, the menu centers on a hybrid New York-Neapolitan dough that's fermented in-house for three days before it goes into a brick oven, the outlet reports. The space itself is built for speed rather than lingering, structured primarily for takeout and delivery with a small dining area designed to seat guests in the mid-20s range.
A Dual-Purpose Build With Ice Cream in Mind
The project isn't purely about pizza. The new venue will allow Bright Ice to more than double its freezer capacity, according to St Pete Rising, easing supply constraints that have followed Bright Ice's growth across its five regional scoop shops. St Pete Rising also notes the pizzeria sits just four blocks west of Bright Ice's original flagship St. Petersburg ice cream location, reinforcing just how concentrated the founders' investment has become in this stretch of the city.
Bright Ice is a small-batch ice cream brand that makes its ice cream in-house and uses locally sourced ingredients when possible, with shops in St. Petersburg, Tampa, Pinellas Park, Venice, and Lakeland.
Financing the Corridor's Latest Reuse Project
The buildout isn't cheap. Co-owners Garrahan and Drake expect the total investment for Kitty's House of Pizza, including property acquisition and construction, to run just over $2 million, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reports.
