Good Morning Roma Family!

My name is Alyssa and I have been an employee with The ORIGINAL Roma for 2.5 years.

Since we closed our doors on December 30th, the staff and I have moved on to find new jobs. Sadly, those jobs don’t compare to Roma. We miss our teammates, our regulars who had become like family, all the students and families, and the alumni coming back for visits. Celebrating your birthdays, graduations, awards, and anniversaries. The FOOD!!! I have been craving a Nutty Idea for WEEKS!!

We miss the community and all that came with Roma.

So… after talking and begging with the owners, they have agreed to let us try to reopen - with the possibility of my family and I purchasing it down the road.

With that being said, we, and most importantly The Original Roma, need your help!!

I’m sure you all realized the last year or so that food wasn’t coming out of the oven right. It was either perfect, burnt, raw; or sometimes both. ‍♀️

We had to completely stop using the bottom oven in 2024, as the plates cracked, causing us to no longer be able to cook anything on them.

The top oven also had extreme temperature issues.

We had multiple businesses out to work on it throughout 2025 and neither could fix it. In November, the top oven completely stopped working. We had to have someone come in and take the leftover parts from the bottom to fix the top to get us through the last month we were open. How it made it until the end, I don’t know, but as of today, it is toast. We can’t get it to turn back on. That’s $40,000.

The dough roller also broke that last month we were open. We bought a cheap one off Amazon to get us through to the end, yet it also broke. That’s another $5,000.

Last year, the Fire Department told us we could no longer use the oven we had been using for 10+ years. So, for a quick cheap fix, they bought camping burners. Those don’t heat fast enough to cook our noodles and sauce. That’s $400+.

And lastly, the cold prep table has been out for over a year. If you saw the kitchen getting in and out of the front fridge or running to the back often, it was because all our ingredients were stored all around the restaurant to keep them cool and at the correct temperature. Yet another additional $4-6,000.

The owners unfortunately couldn’t justify continuing to put money into it, as just keeping the lights on and the doors open - and us paid - was coming out of their pocket.

So please understand that if anything wasn’t up to the usual standards, it was because equipment was failing us left and right and we were working with what we had.

With that being said, I am here to ask, BEG for the wonderful community’s help. We want to open! We all want to come back home. Believe us, we know times are rough right now, but any and everything helps.

We want to hit that 40-year mark. We want to continue making memories with all of you. We want to be a part of the downtown community.

Please donate if you can and let’s bring The Original Roma back to all its glory for all to have a fun, safe, and WELCOMING HOME FOR EVERYONE!