Driftwood Oven Eight Year Anniversary Blow Out
I sat down with Neil Blazin, owner of Driftwood Oven, to understand what he's been doing with his life the past eight years, the ethos of Driftwood Oven and what the future holds for the business.
Hi there!
I sat down with Neil Blazin of Driftwood Oven to talk all things Driftwood Oven. You can listen to that on the podcast feed here. They are celebrating their eight years of business with a huge, free, blowout in Lawrenceville this Saturday, August 5th. More details on that event here.
Warning: I’m recording it in the pizza shop while music is playing and there’s a lot of background noise. I messed with the sound as much as I could and it does get way more listenable after the first five minutes. It’s a great listen, highly recommend.
Check out the Pizza Talk With Me podcast below, Spotify, or wherever you get podcast.
Excerpts From Our Interview
For those that don’t want to listen, here’s some excerpts from my interview with Neil.
Getting Started with Pizza Dojo
Dan Tallarico (DT): So, eight years.
Neil Blazin (NB): I know - it’s flown by. But I do remember you tweeting at us about pizza battles and pizza dojo back in 2015.
DT: The Pizza Dojos,
DT: I met you in Greenfield, well I met Justin then, you were busy making pizzas. I was looking at that photo of you two the other day and your baby status. Muppet baby pizza status.
But, let’s talk about the Pizza Dojo. That’s a lost piece of pizza history and for me was a turning point in good pizza in Pittsburgh.
NB: I feel like the Dojo was fun. We started making pizza a few months prior, and the budding Spirit, those dudes wanted to do a battle. And we saw that we were following in tradition in the spirit of Bread and Salt doing those. And we were way nervous, little babies in the ring.
DT: You’re driving your truck around
NB: We were trying to make it, trying to be cool, trying to make good pizza. It felt like we impressed at the first one.
Crowdfunding Campaigns, Building a Community & Chrissy Teigen
DT: It’s been eight years, and what I’m interested about today is what has happened in the past 8 years that you’re proud of and how do you feel about your mark on the city. What is your legacy in Pittsburgh, and what do you want it to be. Pittsburgh is a loyal town and people love what they love so much.
NB: And that’s cool I think that, people love what they love plays into how successful Driftwood is, it’s hard to see that impact sometimes. The reality is that when we ask the community for money to get us into the building from being a Foodtruck they came out in droves. We had 480 people donate to our Kickstarter to the tune of 45,000. That was a huge milestone, people really liked what we were doing.
DT: That Kickstarter was the deal of the century. It’s basically free pizza.
NB: Yeah, you were buying your future pizza. It worked for us, it was a smash. it was cool, lots of fun. I still have the pen and paper reward book.
DT: Oh I remember that, you’d come up to the counter, someone would pull out a tome and you’d give them your name and they’d say you have one pizza left.
NB: It was pretty cool. We did this larger project and was cool to see it come together and work. We were super nervous to launch this campaign and we were smashed with supporters.
DT: That’s something else I wanted to ask about too - you did the Kickstarter and you did the Honeycomb Credit for the new fridge and tap system and other stuff -
NB: And the pastry remodel.
DT: You got backing -
NB - Very quickly. We used Honeycomb Credit. We asked for $150,000 and they said at the time but it was the fastest anyone has ever raised $150,000. It was pretty wild, when it was closed people were clamoring to invest.
It was another one of those moments where it takes you out of the trees to see the forest. You can really see that there is a lot happening around us.
DT: Why do you think that is? Why are people so willing to support you?
NB: I think it’s a couple of reasons - 1 is the pizza is obviously good.
DT: Yeah that’s obvious.
NB: The other thing is our ethos. The way we’re doing things is really intriguing to people. We pay higher wages than other restaurants in town. We pay 100% of people’s healthcare. And we work our ass off to work with local purveyors and other businesses that are trying to take care of the environment in that capalaistic grind of everything. We try to align ourselves with ochre businesses with the same ethos and because of that there is a community that formed around that.
Another thing is word of mouth. We’ve been lucky enough to have people preach the gospel of Driftwood. You know how many times I’ve had to hear a New Yorker say to me, “Hey I’m from New York and Holy Shit this is amazing” and that’s awesome and I appreciate that.
We are making our mark here in Pittsburgh and internationally.
DT: Chrissy Tiegen is a huge fan of the salad.
NB: She tweeted at the wrong name, someone corrected her, it all worked out.
The Driftwood Legacy
NB: Back to the legacy question - two things, I’d like to be here for a long time. As long as I could stand it. I love being in a restaurant, I love being around people eating food. This makes me feel good. It was my passion to make pizza but this industry spoke to me and all the people in the businesses around the restaurant industry, the service industry, barbers coffee shops, these are my people. This is what I love.
And the legacy part two is if I can make it a long time and create employment opportunities for a long time and have people continue to grow. Keep that positive energy, maintain that fair balance work environment, that to me is one of the biggest things.
DT: Do you see this as an incubator of sorts? People come here, they learn from some of the best in the city. Would you be upset if people went on to do their own spin, is that the idea here - you want to empower the next generation of bakers.
NB: I think that’d be really cool. There is someone who left here, his name is Matt he owns Pittsburgh Taco Boys. He worked here for a long time, him and I worked at Legume together. He didn’t go off and do pizza, but he’s doing tacos. I’m happy he used the space for that. When I was at Butterjoint and Legume the chef let me use the basement on the weekends to practice making bread and selling at farmer’s markets.
Transitioning Into a Pizza Shop During COVID
DT: You came in, this space was a regular restaurant. Then the pandemic happened. And I don’t know if it was because of the pandemic or you got really into the pastry side of things, but the idea of it being a sit-down place where people would sit here for 90 minutes and sit at the bar. Versus being a takeout place that is pretty casual. It took me a while, but I came around. What was the thinking behind that.
NB: The thinking was, multifaceted.
During the pandemic my partner and I split. That was a big part of it. He was the service end of that stuff. I was too, but I never got out of the kitchen. Two things were happening And we switched to to-go. When we originally moved in I did not want to full-service dining. We tried hard to do counter service, but we didn’t have money for the infrastructure to make it happen. And Justin and I knew had to run service so we just ran service. we knew how to wait tables and we trained everyone and we did it.
Then the pandemic happened and we were in conversations previous to the pandemic about splitting. Justin wanted to go on and do his thing, this is my life I have kids here so I’m not going anywhere. For ease and for growth opportunities, so I can remodel I can go back to that service model and push the pastry stuff.
So there was a big adjustment like you had where people were upset they couldn’t come in and dine like they used to and that hurt my heart to hear. You can’t make everyone happy, so I was trying to make myself as happy as possible while navigating the pandemic. We were never able to open for lunch because of the kitchen space anyways, but now we can be open all day.
And the transition was tough, but now we’re in a spot where our transition has made this business easier to sustain. it’s much more regular where we have this wholesale side of the business and it’s not just dinner sales. At this point we are much more able to any sort of economic downswing, upswing or whatever. We also added delivery which we didn’t have right away. We’ve kind of made it a broader business with different revenue streams so we can pay the higher wages and the health insurance which is going up 18% in September. It’s cool.
Okay that seems like enough! The interview is really long and thorough. We talk about every aspect of Driftwood Oven. If you’re into the pizza business check it out.
And if you enjoyed this please consider sharing! I think it’s pretty cool.
Pizza ya later!
Dan Tallarico, Pizza Journalist
As always if you enjoyed this newsletter consider sharing! It’s the only way this grows, so we’re all counting on you. Pizza ya later!
Good interview!