Pizza Is My Life
Feb. 17, 2020

2. Making New York Pizza in CA, learning from tony gemignani, and wall of shames with Kirk Vartan from A Slice of New York

2. Making New York Pizza in CA, learning from tony gemignani, and wall of shames with Kirk Vartan from A Slice of New York
The player is loading ...

ASONY

IG

Learn more about Co-Ops here

See a throwback of Kirk with Tony Gemignani

This is the first interview with Kirk and its a good one. In my opinion, our conversation clicked. He clearly has a deep knowledge of pizza and business and that is something I aspire to reach. I look up to Kirk a lot and I think it definitely shows in this episode. He is also the ideal person to take something like New York pizza and bring it to the Bay Area. I believe that because of his background and his way of analyzing a problem and bringing forth a solution, he was able to start an amazing business that has over 2000 Yelp reviews!

Learn what its like to quit a GREAT job and work for yourself. Learn what it takes to start a business and be an expert in your field. Learn about his Wall of Shame and why you should avoid it, and if you're on it, how you can potentially get yourself off!

Full Transcript Here

Eidref: What's happening, what's good though? It's your boy Eidref. Thank you very much for tuning in to another episode of the What's Good Dough podcast. If this is your first one, welcome. Don't worry, you haven't missed too much. But before listening to this one, I do recommend that you listen to the first episode it gives a little bit of background as to how I know the interview “he” that we are talking to today. His name is Kirk. He is the co-founder of a slice of New York now turned Co Op. but you know, Kirk and I go way back to last year when I tried to work with him. It was his wife Marguerite, who actually reached out to me when I was looking for a new way to get into pizza. And I was introduced to Kirk through her and we decided to talk about the position. Ultimately it did not fit, but as you can see that would not be the last time we talked. And fortunately, he agreed to come on this podcast. And I think after getting to know him a little bit more, he and his wife do great things for the community. And the mission that they are trying to pursue with this Co Op is amazing, which you will hear about in part two of the interview. And, they make amazing New York style pizza. Like you're not only going to get a product representative of New York, you're gonna get a bomb pizza that does it justice. Thank you very much for tuning in and please enjoy the show. So it kind of sounds like you are a solutions engineer.

Kirk: That's what I do. My card says just problem solver. That's what I do, you know. Whether it's at the shop level, whether it's day to day, real time or long term, that's just kind of what I like to get involved in, stuff that's uncharted territory. The kind of nebulous stuff. If it's uncharted territory is that means you don't have boundaries. You don't have limits, preconceived limits of what you can and can't do. And you can determine what you need to do based on what your requirements are and what you want to do and what you think is right.