Patrick Fitzsimmons is serving up two things — pizza and pride.

“You have to have pride in what you’re producing,” said the owner of Tia’s Pizza & Subs at 3280 Lund Ave. “I think we make a good pizza. I want our employees to have that pride when they go out there.”

And that pride stems from the other side of the country.

Tia’s, which opened in June, has an East Coast twist — Fitzsimmons, 46, hails from New Jersey, where, he said, every kid used to work in a pizza joint.

“Everyone learns how to sling pizza and how to make it,” he said.

Fitzsimmons first came to the area in the 1980s while working in the Bremerton Naval Shipyard, and then managed a Dominos in Silverdale.

He moved back last year after his wife, Mariela, who is a native of South America, wanted to get away from the snow in Northern Idaho.

“Ten years ago, we talked about doing the pizza thing,” he said, but they owned Northwest Chemical at the time.

After selling it, they bought a credit-card processing company, and then a POS cash-register company.

His ties to the local Pizza Time — his company processed its credit for the last four owners — resulted in him buying the business shortly after his return to the area.

But aside from serving pizza, Fitzsimmons said, the similarities are few.

“Pizza Time was a discount pizza chain,” he said. “Quality was not job one.”

At Tia’s, they make their dough twice a day.

“There’s always fresh dough,” Fitzsimmons said. “I will not use bad dough.”

He said that a lot of places just use flour, water, sugar and some salt to make dough. But at Tia’s, they fuse seasonings into oil, and then put the oil into the dough.

“When you taste this crust, you’re going to taste the difference,” he said. “Let’s face it, the dough is the basis of your pizza.”

Because of little details like that, Fitzsimmons said, “I think this is the same quality you would get if you went in to sit down at a decent pizza place, but you can get it delivered to your door.”

In addition to such specialty pizzas as the Club (chicken, ham, tomatoes, onions and bacon) and the Meats (pepperoni, sausage, ham, beef and bacon), Tia’s also makes sandwiches — with bread coming straight out of its own oven.

And Fitzsimmons has a special process for making them, too.

“We put eight one-ounce meatballs on it,” he said of his 8-inch meatball sandwich, a hot seller.

“Some of our competitors put four three-quarter ounce meatballs on a foot-long,” he said.

“If you want peppers and onions,” Fitzsimmons said, “I’ll sauté them and put them along the bottom. That’s the way I like mine. Then it gets sauce on it and provolone. Then it goes back into the oven and we melt that down.”

He said a customer has been encouraging him to sell Capri cola by the pound because it’s hard to find, and he also plans to add an Italian beef sandwich, which comes with thinly sliced beef marinated in gravy.

“Sandwiches are a big deal back east,” he said. “It’s a meal.”

Fitzsimmons said the restaurant’s name originated from his nieces and nephews always calling Mariela “Tia,” which means aunt in Spanish.

“It’s a really familiar name to us,” he said.