Buildout Update: From Empty Shell to Open Doors

We signed the lease at 3236 E Indian School in October 2024. We opened in March 2026. Seventeen months. Here’s what happened in between.

Months 1-3: Design and permits

We spent the first three months not building anything. We had to design a kitchen layout around the two pizza ovens we’d already bought, work with the City of Phoenix on plan review, and finalize the electrical and ventilation drawings. Permitting was slower than we wanted. It usually is.

Months 4-8: Demo and infrastructure

The space had been a coffee shop. We had to demo the existing kitchen, run new gas line for the ovens (200,000 BTU each), upgrade the electrical panel, and build the exhaust hood. The hood alone took six weeks of coordination — there’s an art to making a pizza-oven hood that works without sounding like a jet engine.

Months 9-12: Finishes

This was the fun part. We laid the terracotta-tone floor, painted the walls in our cream-and-tomato color story, built the long communal table from reclaimed wood out of a barn near Prescott, and installed the wall mural by a Phoenix-based artist. We picked light fixtures from a local glassblower.

Months 13-16: Equipment, dough trials, soft open

Once the ovens were in and we had a functioning kitchen, Joe spent two months calibrating dough recipes against our specific oven temperatures and Phoenix’s specific humidity. We hired and trained a small team. We did three rounds of friends-and-family dinners — about 200 people total — to stress-test the menu and the flow.

Month 17: Open

March 14, 2026. Saturday. Doors at 11 a.m. We sold out of Detroit pies by 7 p.m.

What surprised us

• Permitting time. Always more than you think.

• The cost of the right pans. Real blue-steel Detroit pans, properly seasoned, are not cheap. We don’t regret a dollar.

• How much the neighborhood showed up. Half of the first month’s regulars were people from our block who’d been watching the buildout for a year and were excited.

Thanks to everyone who waited. We’re glad we’re here. Come visit.