The Mincios, both 26, opened St. Joe’s Café in downtown Hillsdale in October 2024 after years of preparation. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner, as well as Saturday morning coffee-and-pastry hours, and serves up wood-fired pizza made with fresh ingredients — often with a liturgical twist. 

The Mincios say they are striving to cultivate hospitality in an industry that often prioritizes speed or money-making. 

“Hospitality means that every customer is Christ,” Josh says, even if that person isn’t able to pay or doesn’t treat the waitstaff well. 

“We’re learning what hospitality really means,” Hannah says. “It doesn’t mean just hanging out with your friends who you really like. It means when someone walks in and is really grumpy —  it means loving that person. You have no idea what they’ve been through, and that person is Jesus Christ.”

The Mincios met in Oklahoma in 2019, where Josh was running a microbakery near Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, where Hannah often attended retreats. The two were introduced, began dating, and Hannah’s plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Thomistic metaphysics were eventually disrupted by that call Josh received on the Camino. 

“I thought, ‘OK, God, I know this is your will, so I’m going to follow it,’” Hannah says. “It was one of those beautiful stories where God knows what I need so much better than I know what I need.”

Josh moved to Hillsdale with his mom and siblings in January 2020 and began taking classes at Hillsdale College while also working for a construction company. He slowly developed plans for the pizzeria. Before coming to Michigan, he worked in wood-fired pizzerias around the country, learning everything from how to make dough to how to build the fire to what kind of wood to use in the oven. 

The Mincios were married in 2023 and had their first child, Prosper Joseph, not long before the restaurant opened. On opening weekend, Hannah could be seen working the hostess station with baby Prosper snug in a carrier on her chest. 

Since then, the couple has welcomed a daughter, Pia. The children are used to being in the restaurant, Hannah says, and raising a family in a pizzeria is as exciting and challenging as it sounds. 

“It’s really fun and dynamic,” she says. “This is so much more beautiful than I thought motherhood would be, and it has molded my heart really well to motherhood. We always have our children with us in the context of our community.”

The restaurant takes its name from several places — most notably a longstanding devotion to St. Joseph on the part of Josh and Hannah, as well as the fact that the St. Joseph River, which winds across southern Michigan to the west, begins in Hillsdale. 

St. Joe’s Café offers thick, Detroit- or Roma-style pizza by the slice during lunch hours and thin, round Neapolitan-style pizza at dinner, as well as a rotating menu of salads and appetizers. 

Unique among many restaurants, the pizzeria also offers liturgically themed specials for church feast days, like saffron buns for St. Lucy’s day and herbed pizza on the Feast of the Assumption.

The liturgical year can be integrated into the life of a restaurant business, the Mincios say. The staff eats a meal together after dinner service is finished each night, beginning with the prayer before meals.

“Having a sacramental worldview really means you can elevate all aspects of creation to the divine life, and for us that means leaning into having a liturgical menu,” Hannah says. 

Growing up, Josh says, he thought that to serve the Church meant choosing from a few vocations, like the priesthood or as an employee at the parish. Now he says he can see that working for the Church can mean serving his family, staff, and customers in a godly manner.

“We’ve had a lot of influence in our lives from Benedictine monasticism,” Hannah says. “They’re such integrated human beings — they live the church’s year in a balanced manner. Living liturgically takes a lot of weight off our back. You don’t have to be so original; you can lean on what the church has done forever.”

The Mincios say one virtue continues to be a fruit of their work: perseverance. 

“It’s really hard in a small town to do something that’s outward facing,” Hannah says. “It’s a gamble. People are going to like it or not like it. Whether or not people like it, you have to keep showing up and being hospitable and doing the work.”