How Square Pie Guys Turned a Love for Pizza into a Bay Area Favorite
Square Pie Guys pizza is a Bay Area favorite for good reason. Their mouth-watering flavor combinations and cheesy crust sing a siren song with every deliciously crunchy bite. This summer, Square Pie Guys (SPG) is celebrating a major milestone- 5 years in business! Successfully navigating both the pandemic and the challenges of being a small business in The Bay.
Square Pie Guys Chef/Owner, Marc Schechter celebrates 5 years in business – photo by Marcell Turner @marcellturner
When I decided to interview Marc Schechter, Chef Owner of Square Pie Guys, I thought I’d come out learning a lot about pizza dough and which pizza is Marc’s favorite. Instead, I learned about their unique origin story, their love for the pizza community in The Bay, fun facts about some of their pizzas and more. I honestly didn’t expect to leave the interview an even bigger fan of their pizza than I was before. It may now be my favorite pizza in The Bay, truly.
So, let’s dive in and meet Marc and learn more about what makes Square Pie Guys so special:
For The Life-Long Love of Pizza:
Marc has a true love for pizza and has from a very early age. I think it’s probably engrained in anyone that grew up in New York like he did. He didn’t always make pizza but I think learning about how he fell in love with pizza helps you understand how Square Pie Guys really got started.
Marc tells us, “From a very young age. It’s very cliche in the pizza world to say, “I’m from NY, so I know pizza,” but there is some truth. If you look up the number of pizzerias per capita where I grew up on Long Island, NY, the number is pretty crazy. There are plenty of not-great pizza shops, but among the many options, I was lucky to have a few genuinely fantastic places nearby. Eddie’s Pizza in New Hyde Park and Umberto’s stand out; Umberto’s was doing cupping pepperoni 20 years before it became popular nationwide. Eddie’s has been doing bar-style pizza since 1941, and just now, the thin and crispy bar/tavern style is becoming a national craze. So that’s where I grew up, and pizza was a natural meal for us kids from Long Island. My Dad played a part too. He went to school in New England and always took us to New Haven on road trips to eat Frank Pepe’s pizza. A long story short, I was exposed to great pizza from a young age and fell in love. Whenever I went to college in Florida or moved to Seattle and then the Bay, I tried my hardest to find my new pizza place; it felt natural to pursue good pizza well before I even made it.”
Marc Schechter of Square Pie Guys – photo by Marcell Turner @marcellturner
The Epic Saga That is The Square Pie Guys Origin Story
SPG’s origin story could truly be the plot of the cutest romcom about a guy who moves out of New York for love and finds his love for pizza instead. But really, it’s about a guy who really wanted to shift his life and head in a new direction.
It takes a TON of guts to start your own business in The Bay Area and in this case, Marc was pretty humble when he first got started. He didn’t start out wanting to build a pizza company, he started out just wanting to learn more about something he really loved and a pizza company was born out of his genuine curiosity.
Marc Schechter of Square Pie Guys – photo by Marcell Turner @marcellturner
Marc journey towards starting Square Pie Guys is a winding road with a really happy (and delicious ending):
“The whole story is a bit of a saga; it started with love, moving out west from NY with a girl, getting engaged, and then having an awful breakup. That breakup was the best thing that ever happened to me, though. I’d been working as a software salesperson ever since college (which I was good at but didn’t enjoy doing), and the breakup gave me the space to reflect on what I was doing and wanted to do. Around this time, I was helping my old friend from NY move into an apartment in Montclair in the hills. He’s an incredibly talented chef with a storied and successful career. As I was helping him unpack his monumental collection of food-related cookbooks, I noticed “My Pizza” By Jim Lahey. I asked him if I could borrow the book, and he said yes, and I should take his pizza peel and pizza stone because “you can’t make good pizza at home.” That was the comment and the moment that started it all. I became obsessed with pizza, spent hours online DM’ing pizza shop owners, reading forums, and making dough. Then, I’d host dinner parties for friends, making pizza after pizza.
Marc Schechter of Square Pie Guys at The Old Oakland Farmer’s Market – photo by Marcell Turner @marcellturner
My breakup happened, and all I had left was my passion for pizza, so I went for it. I kept my sales job during the day but spent all my free time making dough, researching how to do pop-ups, and putting everything in my soul into the pursuit of pizza. I applied for night jobs at pizza shops and put myself on Feastly, a private chef platform. Before I knew it, I had a job at Pizzahacker in Bernal Heights, and I was selling tickets to a private pizza dinner via Feastly. Fast forward six months, I took over a pop-up at Vinyl Wine Bar in the Lower Haight and realized that SF didn’t have anyone specializing in Pan Pizza; I grabbed the Instagram handle, Square Pie Guys, and the rest is history!”
What Marc doesn’t mention is that he started to really take his love for making pizza seriously in 2017 starting out with cheese (which he says is much harder than you would think to perfect) and also focusing a lot on the dough. I learned when I interviewed Jake of TGI Pie Days back in June that the Bay Area pizza community is really supportive of fellow pizza makers. Marc confirmed this when he told me that he got a lot of support and help from other pizza makers who were also working to perfect their own recipes.
How Thinking About Future Helped Square Pie Guys Thrive
As the story goes on, it was Marc’s friend that lent him those cookbooks that gave him the best business advice that he still thinks of today. He was told that if he wanted to make his love for pizza into a business then he should “make it scalable”. And he’s done just that with now 3 SPG locations in The Bay: Old Oakland, Fisherman’s Wharf in SF and SF’s SOMA District.
Marc explains more about how he got some momentum but also some about his strategic business model: “Initially, I wanted to be able to do it for a living. I wanted to quit my software sales job and get a successful enough business to make pizza for a living. When the pop-up started to get momentum, my friend, the chef who gave me the pizza stone and the cookbook, kept putting this bug in my ear that it made the most sense to launch a “scalable concept.” Essentially, it is a restaurant that could grow, built with a model and a product that could be replicated. That stuck with me, and that’s how the business plan was built.”
Marc Schechter of Square Pie Guys – photo by Marcell Turner @marcellturner
What’s advice you’d give someone who wanted to start their own restaurant?
“Restaurants are super expensive and cash-intensive. Avoid putting your entire financial livelihood on the line to get it off the ground. The best thing I ever did was hold onto my sales job as long as possible before I had to rely on SPG to pay me. That gave me a ton of reassurance and the ability to make decisions about the business without feeling so much stress or desperation. If you can do that, you can likely be pretty successful.”
Fun Facts about SPG Pizza You Probably Didn’t Know:
While the growth of the business was strategic, it’s the pizza that really shines at SPG, of course. My stomach is growling as I write this and I’m going to have to pause mid-story to get myself some pizza if I’m going to talk about the pizza itself.
“THE PEPPERONI (6×8)” by Square Pie Guys – photo by Marcell Turner @marcellturner
Their #1 pizza is a bit of a twist on a classic pepperoni. Their pizzas are all 8” x 10” and fit in a rectangular pan. Their pepperoni has 48 slices of pepperoni laid out in 8 rows of 6. So, in short, the entire pizza is completely covered in pepperoni slices. No one will miss out on the crunchy goodness that is the edge of a pepperoni with this classic pizza. My favorite? I always go for the same pizza every time, The Big Von – white sauce, italian sausage, pepperoni, mike’s hot honey on top for the ultimate salty and sweet combination. The origin story of this pizza is a pretty fun one. Big Von, we know him as one of the best Bay Area DJs on KMEL, would come in and customize a Broccoli and Sausage pizza by swapping out the broccoli for pepperoni. On one occasion, he brought his entire team to sample his unique creation. Eventually, SPGs decided to make it a permanent menu item, naming it The Big Von. Today, The Big Von pizza ranks as the second best-selling pizza at SPG.
What’s Marc’s favorite pizza on the menu? His answer might surprise you, “I always make myself an off-menu pizza. It’s basically a plain cheese pizza with vodka sauce as a base sauce and some pepperoncini. I love the spice and acid combo. When we opened in 2019, we launched with an Elote-inspired corn pizza. I know our guests loved it because we get requests for it all the time. I dream about bringing that one back—maybe we will!”
Marc Schechter of Square Pie Guys is a bit of a goof and we love that about him – photo by Marcell Turner @marcellturner
The People Make The Business
Through my years of talking with Bay Area chefs, I’ve learned that they all have one thing in common. Their team is like family, and companies that focus on giving back to their community often find success in their efforts to do so.
Marc’s view on the importance of his team: “Find the right people, treat them amazingly, and it’ll pay dividends. Feel free to drop the folks who bring the company down and affect your culture; it could be fatal.”
Marc really believes in his team and what they bring to the business but also he makes sure to work with Bay Area community members to create seasonal flavor combinations which give back to charity. Right now he’s working with Samin Nosrat (Chef and Author best known for New York Times Bestselling cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat). Their collaboration on a summer pizza includes a community give-back feature, with 5% of the sales from this pizza being donated to Oakland International High School.
Marc Schechter at the Old Oakland Square Pie Guys Location – photo by Marcell Turner @marcellturner
A Pizza Expert’s Guide To Eating Well in The Bay:
Honestly, y’all…sometimes I just daydream about pizza being a major food group. Imagine a world where I could eat pizza for every meal? So, I of course had to ask Marc where we should all go for a slice.
Marc Recommends: “State Flour Pizza by my house is my “go-to” local spot. I also go to Flour and Water Pizzeria in SF, Pizzahacker, and Outta Sight. I also go to Rose Pizzeria in Berkeley; that place is excellent. We’re lucky to have many great pizza places in the Bay Area today. North, south, and east of SF, all over, we have great pizza. If anyone says the Bay doesn’t have great pizza, they live under a rock.”
Thankfully, he also gave us some other food groups to try (pizza is now a food group in my humble opinion):
“I don’t eat out often but have my “go-tos.” Juanita and Maude in Albany are somewhere my fiance and I go for special occasions, and we’ve been there many times over the years. I’m a big fan of Lovley’s burgers in Oakland. We order a lot of Souvla for lunch at SPG; believe it or not, our store teams LOVE Panda Express lol. Orange Chicken is tough to beat. I love supporting pop-ups and seeing who’s coming up with what in your area. Go check out a pop-up, people!”
Marc Schechter’s journey from a New York pizza enthusiast to a celebrated Bay Area chef highlights the power of following one’s dreams and staying committed to quality and community. With exceptional flavor combinations and collaborations with renowned Bay Area chefs, Square Pie Guys has crafted a winning formula for success beyond their first five years. After getting to know Marc in this interview, it’s clear he is a determined, intelligent, and talented chef whose curiosity has driven Square Pie Guys to thrive and that combination of skills will continue to help them continue to thrive for years to come.
Where can folks find you online?
Facebook: Squarepieguys
IG: @Squarepieguys and @pizzaman_420
Website: www.squarepieguys.com
Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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