Three women who I never heard speak put the swagger in Sarnia.

The Three Sisters of Pizza were shrouded both in flour and mystery.

For three decades they towered over the culinary landscape in my hometown of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.

One sister at each pizzeria: Enzos, Firenzes and Cosmos.

Cosmos had booths. I proposed to my wife there. She still shudders on the rare times we have occasion to drive by.

As near as we could tell, none of the sisters spoke English. I didn’t know their names, didn’t know anyone who knew their names.

We knew only that they were sisters, there were three of them and in their flour-caked hands lived the magic of the perfect pizza.

A mouthful of pizza that carried their baked-in DNA inspired big thoughts, grand thoughts.

How could a place that considered itself a real city, say Toronto or Paris, France, offer its inhabitants such pitiful excuses for pizza?

Chicago pizza?

New York pizza?

Deep dish pizza?

Were these people savages?

Yes, the Three Sisters, low housing prices and a great beach were staples of life in Sarnia, which, to be fair, struggles to compete against the sights, tastes, opportunities and experiences a person is liable to encounter when they leave Lambton County.

But time passes for everyone, even elderly Italian ladies, and one by one, they disappeared from the back of the counters.

First came the sister at Enzos, then Cosmos, and finally, Firenzes.

Maybe they retired. Maybe they died. Whatever the reason, Sarnia’s Golden Age of Pizza was over.

That the exact same ingredients slid into the exact same overs always came back, to our taste, wanting, says nothing about the quality of the pizza but much about the hunger for story.

Story works because it speaks to the self-interest of the customer. We bought because their pizza made us feel special.

The Four Lessons of Three Sisters of Pizza would benefit any business.

1.  The product has to make the buyer feel special, advantaged. The product is the product. The magic is the story. For three decades, the people of my tribe picked up their university-aged kids at the train station with steaming hot pizza, just a waiting in the backseat of the car.

2.  That advantage grows with every great pizza and dies with one bad one.

3.  It took the Three Sisters thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of pizzas to reach the status of celebrity hometown chefs. Now, with social media, you can accomplish the same thing in far fewer offerings, over far less time.

4.  A great story can raise a great product into legend. It doesn’t matter if you have two pizza places or 200,000, no one wants the second best pizza in town.