Countless pizza places in Dallas have either withered or thrived while attempting to replicate the gold standard of Dallas pizza that is Campisi’s.

Meanwhile, one branch of the Campisi  family tree has blossomed into a 21-location favorite of pizza-loving households: i Fratelli. 

Literally translated from Italian as “the brothers,” the business was launched in 1987 as a 16-seat, full-service restaurant in Irving by the four Cole brothers, cousins to the Campisi’s family. Now, more than 30 years later, i Fratelli has 21 pizza delivery locations in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and Houston.

All four of the Cole brothers worked at Campisi’s as young men during summers, late nights or as a first post-high-school job.

“Two days after graduating from MacArthur High School I started driving to Campisi’s [near Preston Hollow] to work,” David Cole says.

After a few years working and learning at the iconic East Dallas staple, David and his brothers opened the original full-service i Fratelli restaurant, retaining the iconic oval shape of the original Campisi’s pie.

“Campisi’s brought pizza to Dallas, and for whatever reason that was the shape that they rolled it with a rolling pin, so in 1980 I learned to roll the pizza that way, so we didn’t change the shape because that’s what we knew and that’s what people knew,” David says. 

Operating under the slogan “Never trust a round pie,” i Fratelli’s pizzas reflect Campisi’s influence while using new ingredients to create a distinct product. After David and his brother Mike earned associate degrees from El Centro College’s culinary and hospitality program, they were able to use a more scientific approach to choose tomatoes, flour and cheese.

“We didn’t use all the same products that Campisi’s did, because with our experience in the culinary program, we learned different ways to do things and different flavors,” David says.

 “Our cheese has always been different from their cheese, we thought that we found something that the people of Irving liked, then Dallas and now Austin and Houston.”

Although it may sound like they were smooth sailing, being a family-run business means, well, working with your family. When disagreements broke out between brothers, their father — who originally fronted the money for the business and controlled a fifth stake in the company — would step in.

David recalls once when two brothers weren’t getting along, their father called a meeting at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. “At the time we were working every shift, every night … and after that meeting, we looked at each other and said, ‘We’re not going to do this again,’” David says.

The first takeout and delivery-only i Fratelli opened in 1992. The brothers tried to exploit a lack of competition in the DFW pizza-delivery market. Thirty years later, i Fratelli sold the full-service restaurant and made the delivery-centric model their bread-and-butter. Another major milestone for the business came in 2012 when the first franchise location opened in Keller. 

The brothers had to transition from a family and corporate-owned model to working with franchise partners. They had to give franchisees the tools to deliver the quality and consistency the brand is known for, while being careful not to overshare. They put recipes and instructions into franchise operations manuals. 

“So now, not only did we have to come up with everything and put it into verbiage, but we also had to find a way to not [publicize] our pizza dough recipe, our pizza sauce recipe.”

Today 12 of the 21 i Fratelli locations are franchised. The Preston Hollow franchise opened its doors in 2016.

In the age of UberEATS, Grubhub and countless other delivery services, i Fratelli remains a holdout, choosing to solely rely on timed deliveries by staff. “The brothers believe this is one thing that sets his their company apart from the competition.

With the i Fratelli app, “you’re going to have a trained employee deliver your food,” David says. 

Whether it be a formulaic approach to a locally beloved style of pie, dynamic partnerships with franchise partners or an insistence on in-house delivery service, David believes i Fratelli’s success boils down to two deceptively simple factors: “The consistency of the product and the consistency of the service.”

i Fratelli, 4235 W. Northwest Highway, 214.377.7270