Pizza Today - May 2019 - 46

Brandon to push that entrepreneurial
drive they share into the direction of
a neighborhood pizzeria. "We had
an e-mail chain going on a Word
document and I would be trying
different dough formulations, different
pans, different cheeses," Zane says.
After some experimenting, they had a
viable product.
With some convincing, Brandon
followed Zane to Austin in 2010. The
two began to develop their restaurant,
diving into a full business plan and
continuing to develop their pizza
recipes.
Everyone who tried the pizza told
them to go for it and open a restaurant.
Zane admits they lacked confidence
and capital in the beginning and
pursued a food truck instead. Zane
and Brandon both had day jobs. But as
fortune or fate would have it, Brandon
was fired from a local restaurant. "We
had the recipes," Brandon says. "We
had the idea. That was the kick in the
ass we needed."
The two pulled the trigger on a
downtown trailer, Via 313. The mobile
unit needed to generate at least $200 a
day to be able to pay Brandon a modest
salary. "We did $218," Brandon says of
its first-day sales. "It felt like every day
we'd do $220, then $240 then $280,
everyday it kept going up. The business
plan was just to have the two us for the
first year and about four months in we
had to hire our first employee. We were
doing $1,000 a day."
Within the first year, the brothers
also opened a second downtown
trailer. They reached out to Big Dave
Ostrander and Tony Gemignani for
guidance on the leap to a restaurant.
"These are titans to us and these guys
are telling us, "You gotta do this. Go
ahead. Hurry up,'" Zane says.
Brandon and Zane made their first
brick-and-mortar location a reality
two and half years after opening the
original trailer, but not in the area of
the city most were thinking. Instead of
tourist-hopping downtown, they opted
for the southwest suburban district
of Oak Hill. "We saw it as it made
perfect sense because it gets us back
4 6 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / M AY 2 0 1 9

to our original goal, anyway, which is to be a
neighborhood pizza place," Zane says.
A North Campus location followed in
2016 and a restaurant in East Austin in 2018.
The trailers still focuses on pizza, while the
restaurants offer a full menu and bar.
THE MENU IS STRAIGHT FORWARD.
DETROIT-STYLE PIZZA, BAR-STYLE PIES AND
A FEW APPS, SALADS AND DESSERTS. Zane

says the menu used to be a lot larger, but some
items' sales figures just weren't worth the prep.
"Everything has been streamlined. Tiramisu's
gone, cheese plate's gone," Brandon says. "It's
like ice cream, pizza, salads, go."

The Detroit-style pizza, Zane says, isn't an
exact replica of their childhood pie - but it's
close. While sourcing regional cheeses has
gotten easier, you couldn't find brick cheese
outside of Detroit when the brothers opened,
so they went with a white cheddar.
On the Detroit-style menu, The Detroiter
has smoked pepperoni under the cheese
and natural casing pepperoni on top. The
menu even pays tribute to Gemignani with
The Cadillac topped with gorgonzola, fig
preserves, Prosciutto di Parma, Parmesan and
a balsamic glaze.
Doing such a unique pizza almost 1,400
miles from where it's commonplace, they knew
http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pizza Today - May 2019
