Pre-Order Online for Takeout Pizza Only from Pepp’s Pizzeria

For Michael Hanstad, Owner of Pepp’s Pizzeria in Grimes, serving up the best pizza possible is the goal. Pepp’s Pizzeria’s staff handmakes 10 pizzas every 15 minutes to ensure fresh, quality pizza for the Greater Des Moines (DSM) area.

Read more about Pepp’s Pizzeria below:

Pepp’s Pizzeria Q+A

What is Pepp’s Pizzeria?

Michael Hanstad: Pepp's Pizzeria is a New York-style pizzeria with a little Midwest twist. We do things a little differently … what’s called an upside-down pizza, and that means we do cheese, we hand toss the dough, then the cheese, then the sauce, then the toppings. So it's a little backwards for a New York style. Also, everything's fresh. We don't even have a freezer at our location. It's all fridges. Everything's made fresh by hand. We hand slice all our mozzarella. We make everything in-house that we can, and all the dough is fermented for 24 hours. We put a lot of effort into our pizza. And then we use our deck oven with brick stone, so Guy gets that brick oven cook.

 

Where did that idea for Pepp’s come from?

MH: I've been in the business for a little bit with Charlotte's Kitchen, and I had a good friend — we call him Pep — who had this amazing pizza recipe. He's a guy that you don't want working in the kitchen, but you want the recipe from because he's a perfectionist. If he was in the kitchen, nothing would ever go out because he'd want everything perfect. We'd go to his house, and we'd have his pizza. And I told him if anything ever pops up that makes sense, we're opening a pizzeria. Other people have got to have this pizza! This location opened up, giving us the opportunity, and we spent a couple months getting his recipes ready for the commercial side. From there, we started perfecting the sauces and the toppings along with his already great and amazing dough.

Is Pep still pretty involved with the process? What does look like now?

MH: No. He's involved for the specials and how the pizzas come together, and he pops in once the blue moon to make sure we're still doing well … he's basically the food quality assurance guy. But I do most of the day-to-day managing operations. I mean, we have a general manager who rocks it — that’s Connor. He does an amazing job. But I help oversee any problems.

You guys have a teacher pizza party program. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

MH: Yeah! We were thinking how we could give back in a unique way, and thought it’d be really cool if we gave back to teachers in the form of a teacher pizza party for their students. The students and parents submit or nominate their teacher telling us who they are and why they want to nominate them. And then we just do a random drawing to pick 'em. Then we show up on a random day of their choosing, and we bring 10 pizzas, plates and napkins, and we go into the classroom, and we throw 'em a pizza party for them and their students. It's just our little way to give back to the teachers because they’ve got a tough job. They have a really tough job.

Really, every once in a while, they go underappreciated. So we thought, let's not only highlight them, let’s support these people and do something for ourselves a little bit as well.

When did that start? Is this a recent thing or how long have you been doing that?

MH: We opened at the end of March and didn't start until the second to last week of the school year. We quickly posted, we got a bunch of nominations, and then we picked three teachers, and we did three teachers in one week to cover June, July and August (the summer months).

Have you started this year?

MH: Yes. We picked a teacher for this month: Susan Thatcher so we're going to go throw her a party.

What’s one piece of advice that you would give to other entrepreneurs?

MH: If someone has an idea to start a restaurant, I always say first, make sure the product you have is great. The worst word you can hear in this industry is ‘good’ because in Iowa, everyone's very passive. They don't want to tell you their true thoughts. They don't want to hurt your feelings. What I tell people is, all right, let's say you have the best Philly cheesesteak. When you're giving out these free samples and having people try your food, ask for their feedback and then follow up with, “How can we make this better?”

So start with making sure you have a great product. You will not survive with a good product — it has to be great.

The second thing is to start small. Don't go into a 3,000 square-foot brand-new building with expensive rent and then buy expensive equipment and do an expensive buildout for the dine-in ambiance. It's going to be too much overhead; it's going to be too much stress. Start small. With Charlotte's Kitchen, we started with the food truck. Then we went into a used location in Johnston and bought used equipment. Then as we proved the concept and started upgrading our equipment and our interior / exterior.

With Pepp’s, we're operating out of a 700 square-foot building. It’s very small and low overhead, but it’s a way for us to prove our concept, prove that this is something that people want, and then from there, we can expand. So, start small. Don't go too crazy. Rent's way too expensive right now, equipment's way too expensive and the cost of goods right now is too. It's really hard to start a restaurant when you have all three of these factors weighing you down. That can crush a restaurant, even if they do have a great product. If you have too much overhead, it causes you to have stress and then your quality will go down because you’re not as focused about the food. You’re worrying instead about how you're going to pay the light bill.

Lastly, you’ve got to have a good attitude. If you want great staff, it starts with you, the leader. So just stay positive, have fun with them and make sure they understand the expectations.

What’s new or what’s next for Pepp’s?

MH: We're loving our specials. We're really, really excited about the weekly specials we're going to be putting out here in the next month or two. (Just announced? We’re doing pickle pizzas full-time, including the Garlick Pickle Ranch and the Spicy Pickle Ranch!) We’re stoked about continuing to expand that brand and continuing to show our appreciation to teachers and do more teacher pizza parties overall as a company. We're excited. I’ve also got another Charlotte's Kitchen opening up here in Altoona shortly and plan to expand that brand across the Greater Des Moines (DSM) as well.

Check out Pepp’s Pizzeria at peppspizzeria.com and follow on Facebook and Instagram to keep up with the latest pizzeria updates.

The Greater Des Moines Partnership celebrates the Greater Des Moines (DSM) entrepreneur community and helps small businesses succeed with one-of-a-kind resources and opportunities for networking. Find out how other entrepreneurs have found success by reading their stories and attending local small business events in the region.