From our family kitchen
Pita love
In our family, when we do things, we do them big. From big families—our grandparents had 11 children—to big dreams, our motto has always been to “keep on climbing.”
Long before Pita Gourmet, there was our grandmother’s pita bread. The journey started in the 1970s when our grandparents emigrated from Lebanon to call Buffalo home. Our grandmother spoke little English. She expressed her love through food, notably her pita bread—and Grandma’s table never ran out of seats.
It was no secret when Teta Lulu was making her pita bread. The scent filled the streets and the neighbors followed the smell right to her door. Rave reviews from family and neighbors eventually turned that bread into a business. Our grandmother has since passed, but her legacy lives on through family-run Cedars Bakery in Buffalo. Her pita bread is still made with the same amount of love, now by her grandchildren. That pita bread became the catalyst for our first restaurant.
Keep on climbing
In 2004, our mom, Samira Mahfouz, approached a food court vendor in the Niagara Falls Outlet Mall about using the family’s pita bread. The vendor turned down her offer. The restaurant was closing permanently.
What seemed like bad timing was not at all. Our mom had a love for creating her own Mediterranean-American dishes, her family made pita bread and now there was about to be a vacant restaurant. It was a trifecta. Why not take over the restaurant? She pitched her idea to her children—Farrah, Monique, Joseph, and Mark. We were on board. In 2005, Pita Gourmet was born.
The success of our first location prompted our Williamsville location in 2013. In 2019, we proudly opened our third location in East Amherst, in December of 2020 we opened our fourth location in Orchard Park, and in January of 2023 we opened our fifth location in Amherst.
