346: Pizza Week with Noam Grossman of Upside Pizza

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0:31You know, there was a portion where, like, we didn't have countertops yet, but we were, like, building pizzas on wood peels, like, on metal frames for where the counter was going to go. And, like, we were hand mixing because the batches were so small that we couldn't use the big mixer. And it was just this evolution. It was an amazing process.

0:54This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Noam Grossman is the founder of Upside Pizza, an NYC slice shop that breaks all the rules in the best possible way. The pizza is extremely legit, and it's made with 100 % naturally leavened dough with a sourdough starter that has risen for 72 hours. This is all to say this is not your typical slice joint. On this episode, we hear about Grossman's journey to pizza and how he's bringing personality and voice to the sometimes planned world of the NYC slice. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:40No, I'm Grossman. Welcome to This is Taste. How are you doing, buddy? I'm good. How are you? I'm really good. Kind of craving upside pie right now. You dropped some merch on the table when you came in, and I'm like, oh, shit, I don't have pizza now. I know. It's an issue. But it is 11 a.m. Yeah, exactly. It's a little early. All right. We've got to show a little bit of restraint. Exactly. We've got to start afternoon. So this is during pizza week, and we have some of our favorite pizza iolos and pizza guys in this week and girls and all. I love Upside. I love your pie. Thank you. I appreciate that.

2:14You're welcome. It's legit. and I get it when I'm about to board a bus home at the Port Authority. I've been to that one. That's the OG. There's nothing else without that start. It's such a good spot. That's where it all came to. You have three locations in New York now. We have four. Okay, what's the fourth? Greenpoint. Yeah, I got that one. Nolita. Oh, that's the one I don't know. Midtown West and Midtown East. Oh, sorry. I know Spring Street. It is Nolita. You're right. Yeah. Midtown East, Midtown West. Okay. So first question. what's your describe your pizza process like what does upside stand for and then it's a it's a broad question but i know you can answer it yeah so the process i think has always been defined by trying to create you know this elevated slice that still um can be reached and accessed by anybody so price point wise but the process itself you know we use this natural uh leavening agent it's an all-natural sourdough starter, which we've been using for the past five years.

3:15It came to me, you know, probably at three years old. So the starter is like eight years old, probably. But I think we're defined really by what we do to get that slice of pizza onto your plate. So from the natural leavening to the sourdough aspect, to the proofing periods, to, you know, how we're basically creating this like flavor bomb sauce that we add to another tomato product to create the final sauce. We're stretching fresh mozzarella in-house every day. We're doing a lot of things behind the scenes that actually people probably don't know about when they're just walking to Upside. We do need to do a little bit better job messaging that over, but, you know, it was kind of doing everything possible behind the scenes to create the best slice of pizza.

4:07You know, I, uh, I'm glad you say, uh, there's a lot behind the scenes. Cause I think all the, the, the pizza folks are talking to you this week say the same thing because, you know, you're still selling pizza and there's like a pretty straightforward interaction with your diner, but are you doing like a 72 hour? What's how long is it? Yeah. So, well, it's a funny question. So when we opened in 2019, we were doing 48 hours on the regular dough and 72 hours on the Sicilians. Then things blew up. You know, we got super, super busy in a super busy area. And those things kind of go out the window when you need pizza to sell.

4:48We're not like a sellout concept, you know? Like selling out to us is not a good thing. It means like you weren't prepared and you didn't have enough product on hand. So there's some 12 hours in there. No, there aren't 12 hours, but the regular dough has gone down to probably 36 to 42. Fair enough. And the Sicilians are at—the Sicilians, we've changed, so they're probably at a 24 to 48. So, listener, just to contextualize, if you're not familiar with these numbers, we're basically saying you've got to plan ahead 72 hours. You want your dough to rise and set and just chill and develop flavor over time.

5:26Of course, we know when you run out of dough, you can't just create 72 hours. so we're talking about making up for the gap so you're saying 48 but you're not that concept like you know some of that dude down in philly who does like you know 30 pies a night like no you know i agree with you fully that's my i think i think you should just serve your customers and not create a hundred percent exactly i we'll get into that later but but yeah exactly okay what excites you about pizza i want to ask you because you know your background you're not like that's you're not like a third generation pizza guy you've had lots of jobs in the industry you you You are a seasoned professional.

6:00And I don't want to really get into like too much of your past because I want to talk about upside and what you're doing now. But what excites you about pizza? The thing that I liked about pizza was one, you know, I thought I could really go out and engineer and bring in the right tools and people to create the best slice of pizza in New York City. Which is no small feat. Definitely not. And I think argument can be made that we've done so. I think if you poll people, you'll find upside in those answers. But the exciting thing to Pizza Belt me and what I really love is, you know, it can be accessed by the everyman.

6:41It's the everyman's food, right? Like there's no cheaper, more affordable meal in New York besides a water dog, you know, from the cart for a buck than pizza. and the mix of people that it brings into Upside and has brought into Upside over the years, people I've befriended and have real relationships with, range from big hedge fund guys to construction workers to MTA workers to even a homeless guy who's panhandling outside and can raise four bucks and experience the elevated product that we have to offer. It's cool. That's exciting to me, to be able to reach anybody and everybody and it's like part of the hospitality thing that I think I was born with.

7:28But yeah, that's exciting to me. You really hit it on the head with the hospitality being the focus and the$4 slice being worth the$4. Yeah, exactly. I mean, money's tight for a lot of folks. And$4 to many, there's a dollar slice in New York. $1.50 now. Oh, there's no more dollar slices? The one down here on Broadway in 56 still does a buck. Still a buck. Still does a buck. Wow. Pat, back me up. What do you think? Is that one downstairs still a buck? It's still 99 cents. Wow. Literally. They might be the only remaining. They're still 99 cents. Wow. It's still, but they're at like a 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 slice a day.

8:08A day. I know. So with these, yeah. You know, my partners are the two bros guys. So I know the economics of how these things work. They need to move a lot, a lot of slices. Okay, let's get into that. It's really interesting. Of course, you founded Upside with the two brothers of Two Bros Pizza, and they kind of pioneered the dollar slice. You're doing the$4 slice. In general, what's the difference between the two slices? Because you can speak freely because he's your business partner. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess it's just process, you know. And, you know, I'm going out and spending$14 a pound to bring in Parmigiano Reggiano.

8:44It's DOP certified that comes in a full wheel that we have to break down in-house. That's not in their wildest dreams. But they use a great cheese. Their sauce is from the same company that we use. They're using a Stanislaus product. Man, Modesto, California, shouts. Modesto. Shout out Modesto. I want to go out there next year for the harvest. It would be fun. But they're just using a cheaper available product. It's all still high end stuff I crave a two bro slice I think two bro's is delicious It's delicious For a buck fifty I don't know what else you're eating in New York For sure That's that good And I'm not saying that because they're my partners Sometimes I legitimately crave A two bro slice I don't want to have upside today I grew up on Little Caesars And Little Caesars in Michigan Is like two bro's and like the place downstairs.

9:43I like putting like, you know, some chili crisp, put some olive oil on it. Yeah, yeah. Jazz it up a little bit. Jazz it, man. You know, but the base is there. You talk about the slice being four bucks and using good products. We've talked a little bit about dough rise, but let's get into the sauce because to me, I love Upside. It's definitely on my, it's on my podium for New York. I think L &B is up there for me as well. Your face tells me that you're like, holy shit. No, I love L &B. You don't have to. I do. I do. I think it's an incredible – and there's – you know, it like toes that line with the dough where it's like – Yeah.

10:23It has that chew, but it also has a bite. And I'm a very big sauce guy. And then the sauce there plays a big role. And that's kind of why I wanted to lead to this conversation because I love upside because of the sauce. And I really am a sauce guy as well with pie. I think like ratio is important too. Crust is probably third for me. But it's not about me. It's about you. Let's talk about your sauce. You said you use a tomato product and tomato sauce. What's this? Yeah. I will give away the secret. I know you won't. No, no, no. But basically, we use two different tomato products. And one of them is a whole tomato that we basically confit with garlic and herbs in an extra virgin olive oil for as long as it needs to go.

11:05and then that gets cooled and then zipped down with an immersion blender and it becomes like this, you know, for lack of better words, a flavor bomb. Yeah. And that gets added by percentage of weight to another tomato product that comes out of a can, which everything comes out of a can. You're using Stanislavs, you said, and of course that comes out of a can. Exactly. Exactly. So it's basically, it's a tomato, like you could technically, and I'm sure other pizzerias do, you just take the sauce out of the can, throw it on the pie. Yeah. And it can be, it's a sauce. I've seen that. You literally walk into Indian people.

11:49Exactly. You see the cans just like laying right next to the bin. Exactly. So we take that flavor bomb. I don't know why, but it's taken on the name Dashi with my guys. That's cool. It's not inherently like Adashi definitionally. Do you use kombu in it? Are you using seaweed? No, no, no. I was like, that's cool. That would be crazy. I mean, it would be amazing. Yeah, yeah. So we add that by percentage of weight to the full weight of the sauce, which is obviously this huge 22-quart bucket, which we make 10 of every day. And then you just get this crazy tomato sauce. Yeah, and my note is that while L &B is sweet and I like it for that, yours is not.

12:34There's no sweetness. It's great. It's such a good, I mean, we love sweet sauces. I think we like fast food pizza, Pizza Hut, because that stuff's sugar all the way. 100%. I definitely also like a sweet sauce on my pasta. Sure. But I was never a sweet sauce pizza guy. Let's go back when you started Upside. You worked with Anthony Falco. Big shouts. Yo, definitely. And I'd like to get a sense of what Anthony brought to the table. This is like the pizza doctor. Everything. Oh, really? Like, I, you know, I came in green. Yeah. I think the saying is green behind the ears or something. Wet behind the ears.

13:13Wet behind the ears. Green. But you worked at, you know, speaking of green, you worked at a dig. I worked at dig, yeah, but I'm saying with pizza. Yeah, no, of course. I'm just saying. With dough, with baking, with everything. You worked in like. I know food. Food, yeah. I know food, but pizza and dough specifically, it was like this whole new world. The first pie of pizza that I ever made, I flew out to meet Anthony in Seattle. He was doing an event at Sur La Table corporate headquarters. And I flew out to like, you know, I was like, let me just be around this guy even before we start the project and see what's going on.

13:50come back to New York and we basically spent about two weeks in the basement kitchen of Upside testing you know 10 different flours five to six different cheeses different cheese blends different weights of dough different proof periods A to Z so I learned everything I know from Anthony so you book out time with him he's a consultant you basically book out time I mean he famously started the pizza program at Roberta's three got a bunch of his acclaim exactly yeah we had him you know um we've had him on we had him on retainer for like two or three years but also for launching the project there was like a you know a two to four week period where he was we were together every day and just making pizzas and it was just us two and it's kind of a romantic scene in the sense of new york pizza you know it was just me and him like figuring out and building what we thought was going to be the best slice, what we think is the best slice of pizza in New York City.

14:55Yeah. And it was, you know, there was a portion where, like, we didn't have countertops yet, but we were, like, building pizzas on wood peels, like, on metal frames for where the counter was going to go. And, like, we were hand mixing because the batches were so small that we couldn't use the big mixer. And it was just this evolution that, you know, I rarely actually look back on. I don't really have moments like this when I'm like thinking about the start of it. But it was an amazing process, you know, when we figured it out together. It's changed since then. Sorry to cut you off. No, no. That's how the brain works.

15:30But, you know, it's changed a lot since then because you're testing like one pizza at a time. Well, yeah. Once you hit scale, everything changes. Exactly. Because else your cost of goods in the last 18 months has gone insane. Yeah. So you got to change everything. Well, cost of goods, I've never let sway me from changing the product. That's men. You know? That's it. Because I was like, I was never going to let money come in the way of creating the best product possible. And then you just adjust accordingly. Did you start at$4 or did you start at$3? We started at, I think we started at$3.25. Yeah.

16:05And then when cogs went up, you know, we didn't have a choice. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, like four dollars for producing is still undervalued. I mean, definitely when you're going to most sandwich shops or salad bar restaurants and it's like 18, 19, 20, you're getting like a slice and a soda for under 10 bucks. Yeah. You know, listen, and some knots. Let's not forget about the knots. Don't forget about the knots. I love the knots there. It's interesting when I went back and started looking at your history, you know, Julia Moskett wrote this like insane. insanely nice piece and i gotta think that shout out to julia yeah she's great i love julia and she's certainly there's no swaying julia mosk she's gonna write what she wants i gotta think there's no coincidence that you literally opened up across the new york times like in their office that you're like doing good pizza literally across when they've been there for 10 years and literally there was no good pizza strategic it didn't hurt it was not strategic but it did not hurt you know Now, as soon as Sam Sifton became a customer, he was just like, what is going on here?

17:15And then he found out also that my partners were the two bros who have a shop on the opposite catty corner to the south. And he was like, what is going on here? This is like the evolution of two brothers. Yeah, yeah, no. And Sifton obviously knows a good story. Yeah. I got to write this story. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, all right, I'm sending someone in. I was like, uh. Okay. You know, we're ready. Yeah, it was crazy. It was like, I think we opened January 9th, 2019. And if my memory serves me correctly, I think the full page in the food section dropped on there's two dates in my mind, the February 16th or February 22nd.

17:57It was like almost immediate. it that's how the new york times works they find a good story and they run with it i love that shit and they obviously had a good story in that piece there's this little little nugget about you basically leaving the shop at 1 a.m and watching the dough on closed circuit do you like that's funny those were crazy days so you watch the dough from home to make sure it was yeah because we were having you know like or we're still in the early phases of this this pizza shop that was getting all this attention all of a sudden. And we had like Adam Kubin showing up and different food people and Phil Rosenthal.

18:34And like, I needed to deliver, you know, these people needed to try the product that I had designed, not, you know, the product that I designed, but, uh, you know, the, the dough didn't write, like there was no option B, right it was like serve what i needed to serve and so yeah we had some proofing problems like a couple nights and so i started leaving the dough in front of the camera so that i can actually i would wake up every like two three hours on an alarm and i could visually you can visually see it right like you see if it's rising you see if it's expanding and yeah that went on for a little bit.

19:13I was working on dough time at that point until I like kind of reverse engineered the thing to work for me where I didn't have to wake up at 5 a.m. and go feed a starter. Yeah. You know, to make dough like at 8 a.m. Man. But yeah, those were crazy times. I was like sleeping on bags of flour in the back of the shop. Like it was nuts. I was like taking naps on a folded out pizza box. You knew that if you failed even a day in those first six months. It wasn't an option. You've lost the plot. I mean, it's pizza. If it sucks, no one's coming back. You know what's crazy thing about that is that I don't think 99.9 % of people would have realized that there was anything wrong with the pizza.

20:05If there had been a little hiccup with like the dough proofing, for example. But to me, it was like 100 % or zero. Agree. Daniel Holtzman, who's later on this week at Danny Boys in L.A., had the same sentiment when he launched in L.A. Same deal. Yeah. It's like Soignet, which is a dated term, but you've got to be Soignet from day one. So let me ask you about the expansion because you start at this location across in Port Authority, which still I go to the most, and I love your service. I told you this earlier. I love the service there. You guys have some nice guys working there. really really special they care um how do you think about expansion how do you get to spring street how do you get to like what's what's when you did your three other locations and like how many more are you going to do um you know i i look in in areas that i would like to that i spend time in myself and also areas that i know are busy enough to support uh an upside and you know create enough buzz for the brand also to help, you know, fuel expansion.

21:13So I think about neighborhoods I want to be in, busy neighborhoods, neighborhoods that are lacking like a premium slice. And yeah, we're at four now. We're hopefully going to be opening up a fifth in the next five months or so. You have keys to the shop yet? No keys yet, so I can't tell you where it is. Right, right. But, you know, we're waiting on the lease, which is exciting. And then I don't know. I mean, I'd like to test a second market pretty soon. Interesting. I was going to ask that. Yeah. Wow. So I'm having a couple conversations around that. What's the city? It's going to be somewhere where I can drive.

21:54Okay. New York City. We'll see. Right now I'm thinking about Boston. I was going to say it's got to be Philly, Boston. Yeah. Like I didn't go to BU, but I had best friend who went to BU, so I would go up a bunch and like I know it's a good city. Yeah, it's a good city. They like the pies there. Yeah. But, you know, I don't think expansion has a limitation in terms of numbers of stores. I think the idea is to just keep building the brand and keep opening stores and keep doing what we're doing. And like your model, it's like counter service. You're not doing restaurants. You're not dine in. No. And I don't know, you know, maybe in three years, if we open in a different market and it calls for a little bit of a twist on the actual model, we do that.

22:43But for now, it's just counter service, quick slice, you're in, you're out. If the line's out the door, you're still leaving in six minutes. It's NY Slice. That's what you do and what people love. And it would be great to see them like, you know, Palm Springs or somewhere out. It doesn't have that. And part of your expansion, I'm thinking, is your link with Blackbird. And I want to ask you about this because Blackbird, we've had Ben Leventhal. I'm the founder of Blackbird. It's an interesting model that is really tapping into loyalty. And it's smart. It's trying to really engage with customers who they're often.

23:16and you have something that I think is pretty unique on the platform. You have a pizza club. We have a pizza club. It's$199 a year, which gives you a slice a day. You get 365 slices. It's crazy. Yeah, economically, it's an insane deal. Yeah, doing the math. I mean, it pays for itself in like two and a half months. It's crazy. Pretty much. Yeah. No, I'm dumb at math. Yeah, we have four months. Yeah. Yeah. If anyone's actually taking advantage of the everyday slice, which there are people, like I see them, I know them, you know, they know me. It's a great deal. So for$199 a year, you're getting more than just a slice a day because I think that's part of the whole Blackbird model is that you're engaging with customers, you're giving them more.

24:04So what are you giving them? What's your mindset going in? Yeah, so we really formed this club around a concert series that we did last summer that was private access. Cool. We actually emptied out the shop that we met in in Olita, all the tables and everything. And we brought in some pretty big name performers to perform for about 60 to 80 people. Yeah. All who had purchased the Upside Pizza member club. Who played? So we had guys like Joey Badass. Yep. From New York. Yep. Bakar. Yeah. This kid Reggie, who's going to be huge. Yeah. And it was nuts. Like we were stuffing people behind the pizza counter, you know, to watch.

24:46Like it was, yeah, it was insane. It's real fun, man. Like Reggie, like Bakar was by far the biggest performer we had. And there were probably like 300, 400 people outside the shop. And I don't know if you noticed, but the doors all fold open. So we opened up all the doors. It was crazy. Sounds like a cool model where you get this invite into a concert. You get special slice drops. Exactly. Love that. Yeah. Is it working? How many members do you have? Member count, I got to hit up Ben for that number, but I should know. Yeah, whatever. You have people coming in every day, and obviously you're not just getting the slice.

25:25You're getting something else. Yeah. I think it's also we're going to work on what the V2 version is. Yeah. because we want to give more than just the free slice a day, which is kind of what it is at this point. Yeah. Well, I mean, Blackbird is going to become more and more part of our lexicon. I'm very bullish on this, on what they're doing there. Yeah. It's cool that you're early. You're early in. Yeah. You and Nick Morgan started and a few other folks are early. Yeah. I always, you know, I tell people it's not time to start betting against Ben. Never. Yeah. Well, well established on the show that we like Ben Levinthal's work is very much the case.

25:58But what also I think is cool about Upside is you pivot to other ideas in the space, especially in your Nolita location. You have Softside, which is an ice cream concept that operates out of there. And more recently, we're recording this in December. It's going to go on for a little bit into the winter. Soupside. Soupside. How fun is that? Tell me about those two concepts. I love that. So Softside, we kind of, when we took over the space, we built out, we were able to build out a storefront on Spring Street. Yeah. which used to be the bathroom of the old pizza shop that was there. So it was like this massive waste of potential.

26:35And, you know, I went back and forth about what we were going to do out of there, whether I wanted to be involved in it, whether I was going to let my partners just deal with it. And after I realized that it was going to be my headache either way, I decided to, I was like, I want to do a complimentary product. There's no good soft serve in New York City. Like you can go to the truck, but like to go and get soft serve somewhere, I can't even think like at the moment where you would go. So SoftSide was born and we took the same approach, you know, best possible products in, best product out. I brought in, you know, another consultant.

27:15She had worked around the industry for a long time in pastry. And it's tough, soft serve, because the machines are super finicky. Oh, my goodness. That's the number one thing is never buy a soft serve machine as a restaurateur. Exactly. Never, ever, ever. But, you know, we figured it out, you know, and I still learn every day. So do you operate those in the summer then? Yes. That's cool. So now you're doing soup side. Yeah. I loved it. I loved it. I tried the gumbo. I tried the chicken and rice. I tried, there was a really good, I believe it was like a squash. The butternut with the jalapeno? Yeah, man.

27:50Yeah, yeah. Tell us, and you're working, you're collabing on that a little bit too Yeah, well, so my best friend Lely Who I met at Dig And, you know, who's like an ops ninja Kind of came to me I closed Softside last year Yeah For the winter And it was, it's tough because I had to hire I had to retrain, you know I had to do all the stuff to reopen the store And, you know, I didn't like letting go of the employees But it got to the point where like You can't really sell soft serve in the winter when you don't have a store for someone to come and sit in. You know, it's a counter on the street, right?