ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A restaurant owner in Rochester is diving into the retail business, and is now selling fresh pasta and sauces in the city’s east side.

When it comes to pasta, some of Donna DiMarzo’s earliest memories are of her grandparents.

“My grandpa Piceri, Charlie, was always making the ravioli, the gnocchi with his wife Nikolina,” DiMarzo said.

And after years making pasta for two pizza restaurants — she opened Merchants Wood Fired Pizza and Bistro in Rochester’s east side — she’s decided to get into retail.

“There’s no preservatives, there’s real eggs, salt, flour, best flour we could get,” DiMarzo said. “It takes time, but it’s worth the end result.”

She opened The Pasta Shoppe on Winton Road in January. Not only was she able to open in the middle of a pandemic, she said the pandemic actually gave her the time and resources to do so.

“If they can’t come in, they’ll buy it here. They’ll take it to-go from here,” DiMarzo said. “The sauce will be made, they can pick up their sauce, the pasta, some bread…”

And she’s brought over some help from Merchants too, like head chef Joe Palmeteer.

“You can’t go wrong making pasta and sauce every day as a cook. This is a cool job,” Palmeteer said.

Her new shop is just around the corner from Merchants, because she said staying in the neighborhood was important for the people.

“I love it. They’ve been really good to us, so I try to return it and be good to them when they come in,” DiMarzo said.

The Pasta Shoppe is open noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.