Stuart Meyer relishes a good story. The documentarian can’t resist something with heart and a hook. His latest work has both. Oh, and pizza.
A week ago marked the premiere of “NY Pizza Dreams II: How Not to Build Your Dream Restaurant,” the sequel to a documentary Meyer released in 2019 that told the story behind Naperville’s Little Pops NY Pizzeria.
While the first film followed the restaurant’s unlikely launch — an operation born after a New York-turned-Naperville couple sought a fresh start when their lives took a turn for the worse — the sequel follows the venture as it charts a newer and bigger path forward coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a story that reinforces our own sense of goals and determination,” Meyer said. “And lessons that we can learn along the way.”
After years of production, NY Pizza Dreams II debuted at the Cinemark Seven Bridges Theater in Woodridge on Oct. 20. The one-night-only premiere was the precursor to a future online release of the movie in coming months. The plan, according to Meyer, is to eventually have the film on YouTube, as the original NY Pizza Dreams is now.
At the heart of both films is Mike and Vicki Nelson, who started Little Pops in 2014. The first “NY Pizza Dreams” details the road to opening.
Originally from Dutchess County, New York — about 85 miles north of New York City — the couple first moved to Naperville in 2009. A different business venture prompted the change.
The Nelsons had been operating their own construction and snow removal business in New York but sold the company to a person in Naperville. They relocated to the city to work with the buyer. However, eight months into the joint operation, the buyer went out of business. The Nelsons were left income-less in a city they didn’t know.
They spent years trying to figure out different jobs to get back on their feet. That is until, on a whim, they decided to get back to their entrepreneurial roots and try their hand at launching a New York-style pizzeria in Naperville.
“Was it scary? Yes and no,” Mike Nelson said. “I mean, I’ve always been in my own business since I was 20 years old. When we started (Little Pops), it would have been my 27th year as an entrepreneur. And we always liked food.”
It was a success from the get-go, the Nelsons say. But that doesn’t mean it’s been smooth sailing since. They’ve had their share of growing pains. That’s the focus of “NY Pizza Dreams II.”
The sequel spans a three-year period from June 2020 through December 2023. While the first film covered Little Pops’ inception, the second is a story of expansion.
In August 2020, the Nelsons opened a second location in Aurora. By November 2023, they had launched a third — their biggest location yet — in Lisle. “NY Pizza Dreams II” captures what it took to evolve the venture, particularly at a time when businesses were faltering, not flourishing, under the constraints of the pandemic.
“I think if people want to ask us what it takes to build out a restaurant and open your own restaurant, that’s where this film will take you,” Mike said.
It especially highlights the “trials and tribulations that we had when we were building out the Lisle restaurant,” Vicki said. “It was a long few years. It was a bit rough.”
From behind the camera, Meyer said for him “the crux of it all was that they’d lost it all, then they found their salvation for their family, their kids and their livelihood and created a New York-style pizzeria that has become a sensation.”
Last year, The Washington Post dubbed Little Pops the best pizzeria for New York-style pizza in Illinois.
“They didn’t have to (expand),” Meyer said. “They would have been perfectly fine. But they decided to double down and put it all on the line because … they wanted to go big.”
Meyer, who has known the Nelsons for years, admitted that when he heard about their expansion plans, he thought it was “an audacious goal” but that “if they were going to do this, we needed to capture it because we didn’t know how it was going to end.”
Now living in Florida, Meyer is a documentary filmmaker who for 21 years lived and worked in Naperville. He met the Nelsons in 2014, just about the time they were starting Little Pops. Even before he brought the couple’s story to the screen, Meyer — a self-proclaimed “huge pizza nerd” — had been a regular customer of Little Pops and an avid supporter of the Nelson family.
“It started off as a really great friendship,” Meyer said. “Then Mike learned about what I did, and I learned more about their story. And I was like, we have to do a documentary about this. That gave rise to the first (film).”
Following the Nelsons as both a friend and a filmmaker for a decade now has been “ridiculously fulfilling,” Meyer said.
“I want to do things that align with my purpose and my passions and really help people tell their stories,” he said. “That’s what this has all been about, and this was just a terrific opportunity.”
When he finished the first “NY Pizza Dreams,” Meyer would have never imagined he’d do a second, he said. But a follow-up was ultimately inevitable.
“I think it was necessary because we can all relate to going through a very dark time and rebounding from that, but (the experience leaving) us a little more conservative,” Meyer said. “Like we were at the brink and we were able to move away so now we can live happily ever after.
“But with this (sequel), it’s the notion of getting away from the brink … (and still), there’s more.”
