Paulie and Mary Ann Gee

Paulie and Mary Ann Gee take a Seat at the Table with Saverio and Emily. 

This episode features Paulie Gee and Mary Ann Gee of Paulie Gee's Slice Shop in a powerful conversation about entrepreneurship, small business success, leadership, resilience, and what it really takes to build something from the ground up.

In this episode, Paulie Gee, Mary Ann Gee, Saverio, and Emily share real stories about the journey to success, the challenges of being a small business owner, overcoming setbacks, and the importance of believing in yourself when building a business and chasing a dream. If you're an entrepreneur, business owner, creator, or anyone looking for motivation and real-world business insight, this episode delivers honest lessons on growth, mindset, and perseverance.

Like, comment, and subscribe for more episodes of A Seat at the Table with Saverio and Emily.

Saverio's Authentic Pizza Napoletana

929 N Broadway, North Massapequa, NY 11758

(516) 799-0091

www.saveriospizza.com

Podcast produced by RJ Media www.rjmediastudios.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hi everybody and welcome to a seat at the table with Savario and Emily. And tonight we have our dear friends, Paulie and Marianne G from Pauly G's in Green Point, Brooklyn. So thank you guys. Welcome and thank you. We're so honored. We're thrilled also. We really are thrilled to have you guys. And I know you just got home from Vegas from the pizza expo, so that'll give us a nice little thing to talk about later on, too. But thank you for taking the trip. I know you guys must be tired. So thank you for coming out. Of course. Um, yeah, tonight we're going to be talking about pizza, of course, running a family business, and um Marianne and Paulie's debut cookbook, Pizza from the Heart. I hope you guys enjoy this book as much as I do and buy yourself a coffee. Lots of great recipes. I think it's over a hundred recipes for price, pasta, salads, and more. Great book, great pictures, too. So great job. Very well done. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. All right, guys. So, welcome to Long Island. Long Islands. Long Island. And Massapequa, home of a lot of pizza. So we're happy to have you guys in a little pizza shop. Um, so tell me, guys, how did you guys originally meet? Because I like to get the backstory of everybody's love story. So I do love watching. Wally does post a lot of pictures of like the early days of you guys. So it's nice to see the pictures of you guys as youngins. But tell us a story about how you guys meet.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Oh, Bird, I'll tell that.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Okay. I might edit.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

We both used to take the same subway train to work, the RR. It's now the R used to be the RR. And I used to see her on the train all the time. And uh, you know, quite as high. I wasn't gonna talk to her on the train. But um one night we were out, we went out to a uh what's now called was now eventually called the disco in Bay Ridge, where it was the place to go, you know, listen to good music and dance in the early 70s. It w at that point it was 1976.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

What place was that?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

It was at the time it was called Jasmine's.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Sure, I heard of that.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

It was something called Bojangles, and then eventually it became TJ Belly's, right? And uh I I was out with my friends, it was a Friday night because you'd go out, you know, on a Friday night, Saturday nights, and um I walked in with my friends and I was walking past the bar to go towards the back, and uh there were these three girls standing there, and there she was. And I just thought I said, Fate, I know you. You don't know me. I said, Sure you do. You take the RR to work. And then it went from there. As I always say, I ignored her. I talked to her other friends uh all night. I think I asked her to dance once or twice and uh you know, and just paid more attention to her friends than I did to her. She played hard to get. And then uh on the way home, somehow, I don't know how this happened, but somebody bamboozled me, I guess. The bar was here. I lived here in like Kenzie they call it Kensington now. It's like Flop Bush. And they lived over here. But somehow I took them home in car service. I didn't have a car at the time, right? But s somehow I went up there and um and then I had to go home. And when they got out of the car, uh say goodnight, and her friend passed me her phone number. Uh see I didn't ask for the phone, right? So a friend Mary Ann Mary Ann passed the number. And to this day, she says she's responsible for us. I love that. I said nonsense. I said, you don't think that if I saw her next time I saw her on the train, I wasn't gonna say something to her, but she wants to feel like she put it in.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Yes, the matchmaker.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

You want to add something? You want to add it something?

SPEAKER_02 3:51

I agree with most of the story, but basically, I do not recall s ever seeing him on the train. Uh I didn't say you did. I know, but I'm just saying, I don't recall ever seeing him. And uh when he did approach me at the bar, as I say, it was probably likely story that he saw me or whatever, but um he pursued. So, you know, I'm not sure why my girlfriend gave him the number though, because I never said to her, now that I even think back on it, that I was like interested in him. I'm not sure. She knew I she knew it was a start. Perfect match. But I always say, my dear friend Mary Ann, who's been there since day one, including in our business as an investor, and her husband is our business manager and accountant, have been there from from day one for uh for us. And I always say if it wasn't for her, none of this would have happened. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

God bless.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

That is that's we're very fortunate. And you have two boys. I know you have very grandchildren. Our youngest son is now running our Philadelphia Sly Shop. He was our original pizza maker in Brooklyn when he was 18. He's gonna be 35 this year, and he opened the shop down there about four years ago. But after the first year, he kind of had a little bit of a meltdown, left the business, was this the original shop. It's not an easy thing to do because he was with family in Green Point. He lived in Brooklyn for that year, and it was rough the first year for us to get started, and um I think it was very hard on him. He took a lot on his shoulders. And basically he had had it after a year, and he came home, and I said, Well, you're either gonna go to work or you're gonna go back to school. What is his name? Derek.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Derek.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

And he basically went back to school, discovered psychology, and then he ended up going to community college and then TCNJ and moved on to get his master's in psychology from Drexel. And he ended up working in a field where he was dealing with veterans at the hospital in Philly, uh, recruiting them into studies with heroin addiction. And I think he was starting to burn out from that, and I think he also saw sort of the life we were living, um, traveling and enjoying things.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

And his brother, his brother was doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

And so um, you know, then he came to my husband, I don't know, five or six years ago, because he'll be open four years in uh June. In Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, and he's doing great. I'll clean this up in a second. That's good. And basically, he came to us and said, you know, he wanted to open a shop in Philly, he's ready. And I said, here we go.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

And sometimes the kids just need a little bit more time. But we always gave him the space.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

What what happened was we I I thought Philly was a great opportunity, but I never found anybody to do it with. I you know, I started this franchise company after like in 2014 or whatever. I never found anybody to do it with in Philly, and I kept on asking him. He was living there, he was going to school there, whatever. I'm not interested, Dad. Please don't talk to me about it. I'm not interested, I'm not interested. And uh, you know, and I kept asking, no, Dad, leave me alone, leave me alone. And then eventually we went out one day uh for breakfast in a coffee shop. It was like a little uh milk crate, it was called, i in North Philly, which was like a an area sort of like Green Point. And um in there, you know, it had a music theme, and next door they had a vinyl shop. And you know, he said, you know, maybe, you know, maybe I'd do this at a pla if it was a bar and we serve pizza, uh, you know, maybe something like that. Maybe we had a little vinyl shop, and it slowly crept in because he knew he saw the money that that we were making, and you know, and he knew that for him to do that he'd have to get a doctorate, and I don't think he was crazy about c continuing on that way. And you know, and it was again he was doing stuff working with heroin addicts, so break your heart. Yeah, that's sad. It's a rough thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah. Not easy.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

How many locations do you have altogether? Well, I don't know. I I stopped counting, but they come and go. They come and go. Well, we have right now I have our wood fireplace which we started, which is now a licensed place. Uh I opened up a slice shop in Green Point. And we're kind of focusing on the slice shops these days. Very nice. And um we have a slice shop in Philly that that we own. Uh Derek really owns it. Out of the goodness of our heart, he owns it. Okay. Yes. Yes, I'm sure. Uh and then we have a uh wood fire place in Columbus, Ohio. And we have uh one in Chicago and a slice shop in Chicago. It's amazing. However, very nice. We're opening up two more slice shops, one in Brooklyn and Gawanis.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Oh, awesome!

SPEAKER_00 8:34

And another one in the East Village. Lots of guys. Right on the canal, Union and Nevin.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Union and Nevin.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

The old neighborhood. Let me tell you something. You go there now, you would not recognize weeds there. There are weeds all around the canal, and each one of those weeds have about 40 stories worth of condos. It's incredible. It's crazy what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

It's amazing with the transformation of downtown Brooklyn, right? I mean, we well Sam grew up there, but we went there visiting. I went there a lot with his grandparents. I loved them to death, and it was it was like so nice to be in Brooklyn again. And it was like old Brooklyn then. And then it went kind of downhill for a while, but now the the now the the the way it is now. Oh my god, when we go back downtown, oh we love it. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

My grandfather sold that house for five hundred and thirty five thousand dollars out of brownstone. Now it's a big one. Brown stone. That was it was immaculate. Beautiful house. Every other year, me and my other cousins, a couple of my cousins, would paint that building from the fifth floor down to the base to the bottom. Two-toned, light brown and dark brown. We did it as a family. And my grandfather saw the house five hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. And that house is worth seven million dollars today. Five stories. Five story brown story. It's a rental. It's amazing. Beautiful house. We go visit it. We go. I still go. Yeah, say man.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

I look in the window like we're gonna get arrested. We're gonna get arrested. Stop!

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_03 10:05

It's amazing what they've done down there. So I wish we still had a design. That's really awesome.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

That's a that's a licensed place, uh as is the one in uh in A's village. That's great. What we do now, and and really from the get-go, I was looking, I did not want to uh like have this big conglomerate of places and try to wrap my arms around it, control it, get other people to have our vision, and and it was like, I'm gonna help other people do that.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

And that's what I think. Good for you.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

That's great. So now let's talk about your Hellboy pizza, because I know that was an award-winning pie, right? Yep, absolutely. All right, so how'd you come up with that idea and and using it has the hot honey on it, right? From it.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Mike's hot, not just any honey.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Not Mike's hot honey.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, right, you're right. What what happened was um we had open and you know, I was looking to manage costs, and I realized that there are people who are interested in what we did, and so um I realized that I could bring people in, teach them what we're doing, and they work for free just to be able to learn that. Now, I I I have come since then to find out I probably was doing something illegal, but I changed that, and I everybody would get paid. But I had them come in, teach them how to make pizza, and one night uh I would go and walk around and talk to the guests, and I went to this one table and talking with them, and and this guy says to me, I'd like to learn how to you know, I've been making pizza at home. I'd like to, you know, learn he had heard that was bringing out apprentices. I said, Okay, come in Wednesday, talk to my son, his name is Derek, come in at four o'clock, we'll get you started by teaching you how to stretch. Uh I was about to walk away from the table and said, Oh, by the way, I'm gonna bring my condiment with me. And I said, Condiment? Lord's kind of said, Don't worry, you'll see. So he came in with a little bottle of this stuff and I wanted to help people local artists. I learned from my pizza yoda that and and the way that happened was uh my pizza yoda's name is Chris Bianco. He has pizza he has pizzeria's in uh Phoenix, Arizona, and Los Angeles. And um I went to visit um I somebody helped arrange a visit me and my son on the way. We were flying to Las Vegas after he to go meet Chris. Yeah, what happened was there were all about 15 of us went out uh to his graduation from the Air Force Academy, my son Michael. And um we said, you know, I wanted to go to Phoenix to meet this guy, Chris, but I wasn't gonna fly to Phoenix just to go have some pizza with him, right? So I realized, well, everybody was going to Vegas afterwards. We decided, hey, let's go to Vegas and celebrate. Right. And I realized, oh, I could get a flight in the morning, stop there, go get a pizza pizzeria bianco and and move on. So what we did, he arranged for us to come and and meet with him beforehand. And one of the questions I asked him was, uh, I was I was trying to figure out should I make my own freshman cedell or should I let somebody else make it for me? And I knew that he made his own fresh mozzadell. So I asked him, I said, Chris, you know, what what do you think I should do? He said, Paulie, I make my own fresh mozzadell because you can't find anybody out here making good fresh mozzadel. But if I were you, you're in New York, there's a hundred guys who who are making great fresh mozzadel, they're local, you support them. You know, they're gonna support you. So I had that idea in my head, and I did that whenever I could, and that's why I want to do that with Mike.

SPEAKER_03 13:29

So and um What an opportunity though for him as a young boy that just took a chance. I mean he was right, but a younger man, like he wasn't an older man, a younger man. He was still young, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:43

A lot of a lot of people that started with us, like Mike and Scott from Scott's Pizza Team, we've known him since like 2007. Yeah he came to our house for a pizza ticket. 2009. But like I look at them now and we're still traveling in the same circles with them. That's what we're supposed to say. When we go to the expo, like whatever, and we see them all the time because a lot of them are in New York. Like they were like maybe 27 when we met them. Right. And now, like Scott's like 43 and he's a father.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

It's just like they kind of like grew up with using. But what an opportunity. Like, when you stop thinking and you look back at that first initial moment when you guys met, and he's like, I'm gonna bring a condiment to you guys. And now just look at what he's done. God bless him that he had this vision to create something so unique and that people differ very different. It's a unique product, and you know what? For everyone, there's pizza is all over the world, let's face it. So to be able to offer this ingredient to change the dynamic or the taste of a pizza, it's just magic. You know, a lot of it was that opportunity, which is so great. It I really admired it.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

It was an opportunity for us because people started coming, you know, just just for that, and and we really we grew up together with that. It's so great. And you know, what happened was um I knew that I wanted to put it on the pizza, but I also knew that the health department you know is not gonna let you serve something that's made in some you know, some random kitchen. Exactly. So I said you have to come and make that here, and then we could do this. That's how it all started in our kitchen.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

That's so great. I don't think anybody really knows the back end of that story. Do people really know that? Yeah, a lot of people. Yeah, we've took amazing. That's so great.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

But he he was coming in on a Monday and we got so busy we had to open on Mondays, we had to enclose. So then he had to make it in the middle of the night. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

But where there's a will, there's a way, and an opportunity is that's great. That's great. It is fabulous. It really is. It is all over. Everyone loved it too.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

On the pizza pier that day, it was all over the pizza piece. Yeah, it's good. And I love I love when people ask me, so you got a piece of that company? I'd love to say no. I just wanted to help Mike.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

That's so great though. It really is. So now I I know it's uh it's like a ta a question that we get asked very often. How is it working together as a husband and wife team? I love it. Good.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

She does everything I don't want to do.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

That's awesome. Somebody's gotta do it cook.

unknown 16:16

It's okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

They keep me out of a customer. You like cooking, I see the videos. You made what'd you make, chocolate chip cookies? Well, that was at Christmas time. I saw that. I saw the chocolate chip, because they look good.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

That's my that's my well-done toll house cookie. They look really good. Emily said, You guys can't. Um, these look good. They are good. I have to give them credit for that. So what you if you like nice soft chocolate chip cookies, blah blah blah, but they're kind of crunchy.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

They're crispy, yeah. I could junk them in my coffee or my milk. That's good. So if you had it, remember on like one like did you ever have like one hot topic where you guys were like really going at it to the point where you like you had to come to a compromise or yeah, like do you always Or you had to walk out, otherwise you're gonna go to jail.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

I I don't remember any. But I just put it out of my mind because I always win. You always win.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Sounds sounds like we have the same personalities. Let's face it, I'll chime in on this. I mean, it's obviously challenging to be in a business with any family member. We never had that before. It might be different for you, but we didn't grow up with any type of small business. We had force, you know, corporate and uh our families never had any type of shops. It was very, very different for us. Um, but I think you know, the impetus for everything was he was in the corporate world and just hated it so much and always loved to cook. We always entertained at home. Uh, you know, it was nothing for us to have 50 people for a Christmas party every year. Love that. Where he would do all the trays of food and everybody, the what party would be over, they'd say, When are you having it next year? You know, that's so we we always entertained, so we knew hospitality, and he knew how to cook really well.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

So did you learn from your parents or grandparents?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

A little bit. I learned from my mother. My mother was a great Jewish Italian cook, okay. She was she was an Ashkenazi Jew who uh learned to cook from my my father's favorite. And she was great and you know, but more important than that, okay, back, you know, when I was growing up, Italian American men they were great at the grill. Men didn't cook. Now you now some of the greatest chefs in the world, most of the greatest chefs in the world up until recently, were men. But I didn't see that. I just saw the Italian American community we lived in and and men grilled. And the women cooked, you'd come home and uh you know, uh I want I want dinner. Dinner on the table. However my father, now my father was forty seven when I was born. Okay. So he was a little older, he was working and and it got to be rough for him and he was tired. But my mother was h had to work. And my mother said to me, says, I'm not gonna work all day and come home and cook. So you gotta learn to cook. So I used to see my father cooking and that green lighted me. That's good. Even though other, you know, other people in our community didn't see that. Right, right. Uh, you know, that allowed me and then it was bad. I I I'd go and uh they go away for months at a time. You know, they started going, I guess I guess my mother retired too. They'd go down to Florida and I got to cook more. I could cook whatever I want, whatever I want. Right? And uh I remember I always loved ravioli and meat sauce. Fresh cheese ravioli. It used to be silver star when they had a factory. Sure. I remember Silver Star Ravioli. And and you know, when I eat that, and you know, I remember one night I ate it, you know, that'll make you tired when you eat that, especially in the floor. Oh, the parks. So there was a boxing match on Muhammad Ali and Leon Sphinx. Oh, nice. Remember that fight. I watched that fight. Well yeah, Mohammed Ali is gonna win that fight. So I I but I fell asleep and I wake up but ding ding ding ding ding. And this has been one of the greatest, you know, nights in the history. I missed the whole thing because the ravioli put me to sleep. But in any case, so that that's when I started cooking. And you know, I I always cooked what I loved. And I enjoyed that. Right? I just you know uh sometimes I cook what she loved. You know, in when I first started working here in 1983, I never cooked at all at home. My mom did everything.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

My mom was uh like a great she cooked, cleaned, had no friends, she just worried about her kids and her house. That's how it was. And I never cooked nothing. So when I first started working here in 1983, my father-in-law was a big cook. He liked to cook Emily's dad.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And we would he would tell me, you know, to go in the back to make some some lunch for the boys. So he says to me, Go in the back and put the pasta up to make for lunch. So I was embarrassed to tell him I don't know how to make pasta. So I go in the back and I put the pasta in the pot and I'm adding the water to the pot. That's a true story. And my father-in-law walks in the back and he's like, just close my eyes and hear it. And I'm not gonna curse because he cursed to me that day, but he looks at me and he goes, Ma, what the hell do you do? And I said to him, I'm making pasta. He says to me, You gotta boil the water first and then put the pasta in. I said, I have no how to make pasta or anything. But he's come a long way. So I'm doing not knowing how to make pasta, I have a full array of food here that they're all my recipes. Yeah, he's he's come along with all my stuff, but I have no idea what to do to cook. You knew how to cook. I had zero I I just I just learned on my own. I tried to figure out I used to I wish I had books New York Times cookbook. I got a lot of recipes out of there, but I just figured out what I wanted to have.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

And you were good to go. So now another question I had, I was thinking of um at the shop in Greenpoint. Who is your favorite guest that ever came in? Anybody like that really we have a lot besides that?

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Well, you didn't come until we were business 10 years. Yes. And our lovely, lovely front friend Jerry, who's now gone, um, introduced us. So uh, you know, shout out to Jerry, whatever you are, because quite frankly, I don't think we would have ever known you guys if it wasn't for Jerry. He brought you into the shop when we celebrated our 10-year anniversary. And since then, luckily, we've gotten friendly.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

Yeah. Yeah, thank God for Jerry.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Can you get this on camera? Is it possible for you to get this on camera?

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Zoom in. That's my favorite guest, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Let's see who that is.

unknown 22:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 22:59

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

John Voyage.

SPEAKER_03 23:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Of course. Okay. Um, one night, some guy comes in. Um, you know, executive producer, they were filming one of my favorite TV shows of all time, Ray Donovan. They filmed it right around the corner. And um, this guy was bragging about who he was. Nice guy, but he was bragging about who he was. And there was there was like five of them, and there was this woman there. And um when he told me he was doing Ray Donovan, I said, listen, I love that show. I love Lev Schriber, he's a great actor, but I want to meet Mickey. His name was the characters, Mickey on the show, because he was just such a great character. Iconic actor, right? So uh, and I told the woman, and you know, I I I wasn't paying too much attention after that. And uh I don't know how she got my number, but this woman calls me, like, I don't know if it was that night or the probably the next night. I'm coming in with John tonight. Wow. Well, turns out her job was to find him an apartment in in North Brooklyn somewhere while they were filming the show, and she brought him in. That's awesome. Now another another another celebrity story that I love. One night, I look and it was in the corner, but Paul Giamatti. It was back, it was back to the room, you know, somebody like that, they you know, they want to hide whatever. And I I gave him Lemoncello. I I usually if somebody comes in and and they're a celebrity, I'll make like I don't know who they are, or I just privacy, which is this, yeah. So I did that with him, I brought him Lemoncello and uh and and that was it. Um and then maybe two weeks later, maybe less, I don't know. I walk in and and out on a big table, like with five people, there he is again. I said, Okay, I gotta say something this time. Right? So what's his name? Oh Giamatti, right?

unknown 24:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

So I said, let me ask you something. Uh uh excuse me for interrupting. Uh I apologize, but I just gotta ask you this question. He said, You were just in here a couple of weeks ago, and you're back already? I said, Was it the pizza? Or is it the name of the Ah, that's great. And he laughed, he chuckled, and he said, Oh, it's definitely the name of the pizza.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

That's good.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

That is good.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Those are my favorite two celebrity stories. We got more though, but That's so good.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Well, I just wanted to chime in there. Unfortunately, for the first eight years, I was still working a full-time job in New Jersey. So I wasn't in the shop a lot, like during the week. I would come on the weekends and what have you. So so many times he would call me up later and say, you know, business, and this person was in, and I never really got to see anybody. The only person that I ever saw, I think, was Lou Reed. And they probably don't even know who that is.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Super Bowl Sunday came in, they didn't even want we had a TV set, never have TVs in a place, but it was the Giants. So he came in, he was out of it. He was reading the menu upside down. So she got to see him as a but uh well the one thing um James Brolin's daughter used to come in all the time. They lived in the neighborhood. So uh her brother's uh half brother or whatever, um the other Brolin. The son Josh Josh Brolin. He came in one night with her and yada yada yada. Actually, I thought that I thought that she was his daughter until I looked into it a little further. And but James Rowland had come in more than once, and of course she, you know, she swooned over him and you know, so and she was never there for that.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

So we were we were in a great spot that we opens in Greenpoint because there was so much going on there at the time. I mean, there still is, but there's a lot of filming done in that neighborhood. Like every time you go out, there's signs up and so you know, like I I was walking on the street one day, and who was it? One of the Culkin, Kiernan Culkin, like was walking past me, like in Greenpoint.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

So it's a really good spot.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

So like a lot of people like live in that area, but they also do a lot of filming there. Yeah. So that's how we had a lot of people come in.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

I saw Kerry Culkin in the grocery store. I walked by, I said, You know who I am? He says, No. I said, Oh, I saw a police, oh, my wife loves your pants. I said, Well, what about you? That's too funny.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

So now what are you guys up to now? You're traveling more? You're just enjoying the grandchildren, you're stepping out of work a little bit, you're to try and try and take it easy a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Well, I mean, you know, we still have our hands in things. We still have two shops that are ours. And uh we have the franchise company. So, you know, we give advice and counsel for that. That's great. Um, the the two new shop owners in New York, since they're New York based, I've been able to sit with them and help them a little bit more to negotiate all the different laws in New York City and New York State and you know, talk about navigate H you know HR stuff and all the things that you have to do to be in compliance. Right. Because I mean New York State in general is rough, but but New York City is it's not easy. Entity unto itself, and it's a very challenging place to have a business, especially in the food business. Um so anyway, that's what we're kind of doing. More more consulting along those lines, but we still have the two shops that are ours. And uh fortunately, you know, we've been able to have some good managers in both places now.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

Find that it's hard to find like good, reliable employees, because that's a lot of the struggles that we find. Like we have our core employees here are just wonderful. They're great kids, they've grown with the business, they're wonderful. But when they need time off and you have young kids, that's where we're like, oh boy. And you know, like every season, like we're trying to bring new people in because then the older girls get like they graduate college like their real profession, which is wonderful, and we're happy for them, but then we hate to see them leave. And they end up working on the weekends or night shifts with us, and it's great, we're blessed to have them. But it is that's the biggest struggle I find as a small business owner, is finding the right help the right help.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

I don't want people to stay forever. I want them to come and go. I don't you know, first of all, if people stay forever, you wind up having to pay them through the roof, right? They're reliable, but I like to rotate people I and I I like when I can to find people who want to open up their own shop. Right. And in in this case, you know, we have to How do you handle it though when they don't have like how do you handle it when they don't have the money to come up and open up their own shop? I didn't have any money. No, I I understand that. I teach them what I did. I teach them how you could I um we raised the money. At first I went to people in our town. We lived in a very affluent town, a lot of trophy homes. Uh but I knew these people through our son's sporting activities and I I built this loving at home and had this dream of doing this and I put together a business plan. I went around to them and they kept on asking me, Well, that's fine, but what about you? You got any skin in the game? Yeah, you know, I'm asking them to invest. I don't have anything. Right. I have bills. Right. So um I you know, eventually we we took out a home equity line. I went to her and I said, We've got to do something, and she said, Thank God she did. She says, You know what? If you don't do this now, when are you gonna get it? Right. But uh but I went back to those those people who aren't interested. But when other people saw how serious I was, people who came to our home and had our pizza, all friends and family, they they shipped in ten thousand ten thousand there. And but I I learned from another pizzeria owner, you're here at Motorino in Brooklyn, the owner, he lives out in Hamptons now actually, uh Matthew Columbino, he told me about this structure and he called it a flip where you um you raise the money, you sell a percentage. I I was selling one percent of the business for ten thousand dollars and um but when you start paying out profits, they get the lion's share of the profits. And then once once they've gotten an equivalent of what they contributed, then it flips, right? Uh so I can show people how uh they can um they can put up twenty five we put up twenty-five percent of the capital and and my friends and family put up seventy-five percent and today we own eighty percent of the business, they own twenty. And I show them, I said, Look, you know, you just have to believe in yourself. I've I've been I so much wanted to open up this place in Los Angeles. I just I love this street. It's probably the best street in all of Los Angeles for Pizzeria and it was available, and I never had anybody out there who people would come to me and say, Listen, if you ever want to open up in LA, I wanna I want to help you. Right. But when it came down to it, they didn't believe they could get the money. Yeah, right. And I missed out on those opportunities. But I you know, I you have to explain to people that what uh we did and how they could do that, and then you know, and plus they have uh now they have our name to to use for that. You you've built yourself a brand. Yeah, you saw you know, I I'd I'd like you to invest in in this pizzeria. I went open, I'm opening up with this guy, uh Pauly G, and um, you know, they you know, they have a great reputation, they have uh they won awards, 50 Top Pizza Award, uh the Hellboy was the Pizza of the Year. And our pizza served in Madison Square Garden. Now they can go to an invest you know, somebody who and and they'll have more confidence that this person will be successful.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

We've had people that want to open up, but they have nothing to offer.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

And I can't you know I find it difficult to just say, okay, open up a place and you have nothing involved with it, then you know you're not gonna care. And I have people like that that really want to open up. Real estate real estate people call you all the time and say, I got this spot. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, but oh who do you have? Open up a place in Manhattan. But you know who's coming up with the money? But but the beauty, if you try to do that yourself, now you have to you have to find somebody who's gonna have your vision or you have to instill your vision in them. And and you know what, they're gonna be gone. They're gonna be gone. They're not gonna stay there forever. So but if you you do what I want to do, what I've been doing, you know, whoever opens that is the owner of the business. And as the owner of the business, who who operates this business, treats this business better than you? Right. Anybody? No, no, no. So in this case, they will do it the same way. So that's the approach we take.

SPEAKER_03 33:41

Oh, that's a great plan. It works for you guys. I'm so happy that that worked for you.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

Well, I wanted to just insignize that I think also, you know, we always look for people that have a passion for it. Right. Especially in the pizza business, because it's such a niche market. But that's the world we revolve in, is like pizza crazy people, you know? Right. And basically, um, if you want to go into this type of business, you really have to love that. Right. Like Scott. Like look at what he could more than anything. And he always, you know, and I did too growing up in Brooklyn. I mean, that's what we ate. I mean, I was telling somebody that I was on a podcast the other day, and I was saying that, you know, when I grew up, we would be able to go out of school at lunchtime. And on 15th Avenue and like 73rd Street, there was a bakery. And you could go in there and get really for like 15 cents a slice. Yeah. But that's what I remember. And um, when I grew up on 77th Street, there was a pizzerie around the corner. And still there. Yeah, it's still there. And on Friday nights, um, we would order pizza every Friday night from Crispy Pizza, which was a small place at the time, and now they're very, very popular. They have like five uh different locations across New York and New Jersey. So I think that you have to, whatever it is, whatever the business is, I think you really have to, that's the key. You have to have the passion for it, because if you don't, you'll run away as soon as it gets rough. And you're right, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

And you're also, I'm sorry. But very important, you have to believe you could do it. Right. I mean, I went around and I saw the people who did this and that put the belief in me. Because if I didn't believe that I could be successful at doing this, when I ran into problems, invariably as you do that, you might just like she said, walk away. Right. You know, we opened up her her and I we opened up when I first started opened up the pizzeria here, I also had the fork store. Don't forget, that was my main business was my fork store. I was here at 7 30 in the morning every morning. I'd work her and I until 9 30, 10 o'clock every night. For a year and a half we did that. We would come I would come in the morning here at 7 30, do what I have to do over here, then go next door. And then I'll start start the pizza day. And then her and I will make do what I have to do for the pizza, finish here at 9 o'clock, 9 30, 10 o'clock, go home, I would go to sleep with the flour on my body, so I don't I don't have enough strength to take a shower and come back to work the next day at 7 30 in the morning and do all over again. It was a long we did this for a year and a half. Stretch before we got into like a rhythm where we'd at and I'm not just saying this. I couldn't go to the bathroom. I couldn't leave that pizza bench to go to the bathroom because wine was out there. It was only me. But we did it. Well, you said being all you, you know that you know that you can make it work. You looked at a guy like me who didn't know nothing. You grew up in this whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

No, I really didn't. We were i we were like I said to Mary and I might have said to someone else, we were always food people. Like we always had food and sold food and were in the food market, but we never were pizza people. It's different.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Before I came here, I used to drive a I I drive a high level. I was a forklift driver in Manhattan in the in the uh the New York Coliseum. I was a teamster before I came here. Yeah. I knew nothing about food. I told you before I couldn't. Yeah, no, you've come a very long way. Boiled pasta. Very long way. But I had a vision that I wanted to make pizza.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

I wanted to do it. And what gave you that vision?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

What gave us that vision was when we I I said it up and the last time was we went to we went to Whoops. You good? We went we went to Italy, my wife and Your resume updated? We went to Italy, my wife and I, and we went to uh Naples, it was their theater district in in Naples, Italy.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

And we had pizza there, my wife. It was delicious.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

It was delicious pizza. It was so good. And I said to my wife after we had dinner, it was my Emily's cousins took us there. And we went there, said, and we're gonna try to do this at home. And that's how I got a spark. When you said home, you mean home home or on here?

SPEAKER_03 38:12

Here. On here. But he always made pizza at home for the kids when they were growing up. I mean in the fireplace.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

I had a guy make me an insert for my fireplace. So you always do it.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Yeah, and I'd make pizza kitchen count. And we used to have it for the kids. They loved it. They would sit around the fireplace and we'd watch the pizzas cook in the open fire, and it was great, and they loved it. And that was how I mean, that was really the beginning, was those first pizzas in the in the fireplace. But I came here to make pizza.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Now I'm making pizza for ten years, and why do my kids do it? They buy me a pizza uni oven in my yard. I said, I'm done making pizza. Whoever inherits that oven, we were just at Pizza Expo. I I met the guy, the uni owner, and they make this turntable with pizza. Ah, so it doesn't burn.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

You don't have to turn it.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I have it in my oven in my garage with the cover on it still. Never use. Not used. Whoever inherits it, like I said, don't look into that.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

So how is the transition? That's a go-off topic, but how is the transition from going to like the whole pizza restaurant like we have here with the whole pies to the slice shop? How is that transition?

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Like it's a different It revitalized us in a way. Yeah, we were successful and uh we had people waiting and and now we had to have this new challenge. I had to try I never made New York style pizza. I didn't know what to do. I had to look for people to do it. I had a guy that worked for me, uh Andrew Brown, he was very helpful. He wanted to do this, but we you know, we had to learn what to do. Fortunately, we had a lot of people who were willing to share information with us, help us, and you know, and do that. What the heck was going on back then? Bang, bang boom in the kitchen. That makes it seem authentic. Don't worry about it. You know, it makes it makes it you think that you're not really on some stage here.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

Seriously. But you know, and that's funny because people say, How do you find time to do all this? And I go, we do it and we want people to see that this is like really us. Like this is we you you get what you get with us.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Here we go. Well, we're at the spot now that my wife and I that we want to, like I told you earlier, we were dabbling with the uh the American style pizza I was telling you earlier. And uh that's where we're at now, too. We're thinking about doing something it's gonna be my own doll. It ain't gonna be like uh an American pizza. It's gonna be Severio's American pizza or Emily's American pizza, it's gonna be. We're gonna do it our way. I like that. We're gonna make this like half Italian, half American, and make it our way.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

You know.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

And it will it will invigorate. It will when you do that. It really will. I feel that something we look forward to trying it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:02

So also I noticed the happiness.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Let's just don't call it the Hellboy when you do.

SPEAKER_03 41:06

No, never happen. That's all I think. Well, I do.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

I want to say No, no, you still got a lawyer up. I had a guy. You have a guy. Somebody told me, hey, um, there's a guy in Charlottesville, Virginia, who's calling their pizza the Hellboy, right? Okay. So and I had this happen a couple of times before. I said, listen, now have this trademark, you can't do that. And everybody so far everything was fine. So I talked to the guy and you know, he understood. Next thing you know, uh, he sends me his menu, I guess. And he you know what he named the pie? Paulie G said, I can't call this the Hellboy. That's how us. We have our Detroit pizza that we make a deep deep stuff. We have we trademarked the piqua. Oh, yeah. So half Detroit, half massive. The Piqua. So we we trade that. We trademarked that. So this is nice also. The hats. How many hats, Paulie? Please don't sell them. Well, I have a lot, but I have an account, Pauly J's Pizza Hat Project, just for the pizza-related hats, uh 460 right now. Wow. 460. And I have I have about 20 more on deck. I went to Pizza Expo and came over. I'm shaking with a whole bunch of hats. So, you know, I just I post those and uh but I have a whole bunch. Like, after a while, I have this chest I keep them in, and it's not, you know, it's not big enough for all of them, so I get a hat, I have to retire. Fortunately, I have a short hat. And that's where your hat is. That's why I I didn't have your hat to wear here tonight. That's we're in the actual in the process of getting all new merchandise made. We have to do that. We're working on that too. Getting that done now. I just met an um a guy that we're gonna switch over probably a little bit. And uh we're gonna have all new hats made, all new stuff. So you have many hats. I'll give you one in each house. All right. Sounds good.

SPEAKER_03 42:57

There you go. Now let's talk about this lovely cookbook. Okay. All right, Mary Ann, what was the inspiration? Why did you want to put a cookbook out?

SPEAKER_02 43:05

Well, uh, it's a long story, okay like everything else, but it had always been in my brain pretty much from the uh time that we started. Um for a long time, when people came in and would speak to us or Paulie, um I suppose Paulie, they would always be asking the same questions. And I think that they were enamored with the story because we were a little bit older, let's face it, when we started, we had never been in hospitality or the pizza or food business. So I think it was just very interesting to people. So they kept asking a lot of questions and they would always say, you know, oh, it's so inspiring, you know, what you've done, and whatever. And he would always turn t tables on people and say, So, what did I inspire you to do? But in any event, I had been thinking about it forever, and it would just never seem to be the right time. But in the beginning, the first couple of years, I did a lot of journaling because I had a friend of mine, Laurie, who said from the beginning, oh, you need to write these stories down. Because some of them were just crazy. I had an employee who thought, you know, he saw a ghost in the basement, so he didn't want to come to work. I mean, there's always crazy stories in hospitality. And so I did write a lot of those things down. But after a couple of years, I stopped doing that. And I don't know, it was just always like a seed that was planted in my mind. I just felt like more than just the recipes, because I don't really look at it as a recipe book, even though there are a lot of very good recipes in there. Only a couple of mine. I mean, most of them are his. But really, I wanted to get it out there just to inspire people to step out of their comfort zone and go for something if you have a passion for it. But to also realize, you know, in order to do that, you have to make changes. You know, if you keep the status quo, that's what you're gonna get.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

Right. Keep doing what you're doing, you're gonna keep getting what you get.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

But in any event, I just it was always in my mind. Like it it just kept festering there for like 10 years, you know. And I had a friend of mine in New Jersey, Colleen, who um we met on a pizza tour, and she was a a writer and a freelancer, and she said, I'll help you with the proposal. I think it's a great story. And that was probably in 2019. So it's been a while. And then the pandemic happens, and that kind of got put on the back burner, and um it just wasn't really happening. I just I couldn't focus on that during the pandemic. And then we eventually ended up moving back to Brooklyn full-time, like in 20, the end of 2020, or you know, around 2020. And I happened to be in the restaurant one night, and that's how all the stories happened here. No, literally, it was always somebody we happened to just meet and put us in touch with somebody else. And this lovely lady said, Oh, you know, you really should write a book. I had so many people say that to me over the years. And she said, Oh, I have a friend that's uh with an agency in Brooklyn, the David Black Agency, and she said, I'll have her give you a call. And that's how it started. That's great. But I didn't use my friend Colleen to do the proposal because then I was, you know, back in Brooklyn and she was in New Jersey, so I had to change some things, and then we seriously, you know, had to work on a real proposal once I got an offer, and you know, luckily I had like three calls uh with big publishers. One of them was Simon and Schuster. Um we had three offers, and you know, I took the higher offer only because I really liked the company better. You know, it was Union Square Publishing. I like their vision, I like the phone call, I do a lot on vibes and instinct. We always have. Sometimes the numbers don't line up, and we can drive people like crazy with that because we're really not business people. When I say that, people look at us like, you know, really, but we're people people. We do a lot on instincts. If we feel it's right, sometimes the numbers, like I say, don't line up, or we don't even look at the numbers because like even in the beginning, like when we were starting, I don't think we were really seriously focusing on numbers. I mean, we were just trying to do something different.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

I just knew that other people did it and were successful, and I just did that. And you know, I didn't follow blueprint. Right. Um I did things that made me comfortable. I worked in the corporate world for thirty years and I just wanted to do if if I was gonna be uncomfortable doing it, I didn't want to do it. You don't want to do it. You know, I mean if it's gonna put me out of business, you know, I'd have to, you know, grind it out. But I always chose ways to do it that I was most comfortable. Comfortable on So what's your favorite recipe in the book?

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Oh, well, there's so many. I mean, obviously most of them are his. You wouldn't want mine because there's only a couple in there. And there's a few people that are just always so sweet to me because they know I'm not the cook, but Scott will always say, you know, Scott's pizza, because he had our salad at home, you know, he came to our original pizza tastings, and he would always say, Oh, you make the best salad, Mary and you know, so that recipe is in there. I can't wait to cry. But I mean, I really everything he always cooked was was delicious and good. So they're all home recipes.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

They're all home recipes. Yeah, and I I said I'd follow cookbooks and stuff, but sometimes I would just wing it. Sure. Right, and it comes out good. You know, and and in that book, you know, we mentioned the publisher, they they did pick out, we picked out a great photographer. They gave us some choice. Yeah, the pictures are really nice. They did a great job on pictures. The other connection that I love about this book is one of the the the person who made those pizzas, they had worked um in our wood fireplace and in a slice shop. He'd worked some days in the in the wood fireplace, some days in a slice shop. So good. All of those pizzas in that book were made by the guy who's opened up the iguana shop with his brother. Oh, that's awesome. Logan. Yeah, Logan Jones.

SPEAKER_02 49:01

Yeah, we we have like there's so many stories in the book. I mean, I could probably do another volume because that was the hardest part for us because I I always felt that we would not have done well unless we had a really great community of supporters and collaborators. I mean, there's just no way because we're not that great at anything. We're really not. Uh no, I mean, which we're not business people, we're really people people, and I think that's what drew people to us. And then people came to us that had different products like Mike and Van Lewen was the first we were the first people that sold ice cream in the shop, and I'm still friendly with with the owner, and they have like 300 locations, and it's great. She was wonderful. When I wrote to her, she gave me their vanilla ice cream recipe for the book. That's so I mean, like there were just so many stories, and that was my my the hardest thing for me was to sit and put put a lot of this together, but also to not like leave anybody out because there were so many people in the story. And at the end, I have the pizza hit list, which they call it. These are all people we know all across the country and in other parts of the world that have pizzeria's that have either worked for us, we've visited, we've been friends with, and that was the hardest thing, like to sit and put that on paper and and feel like we didn't forget somebody. Like that was torture for me, like that whole process of it. But we ended up having that in the book. But it's just been such a gift. I mean, I didn't even care if I made a dollar from the book, and I still don't. Right. It was just a matter of trying to inspire people to step out of their comforts in there to writing and to do something different.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

And help other people. And help other people. Yeah, uh our the guy who has the two pizzeria's in Chicago, we go he he wasn't even there this year. He couldn't make it because there he's opened up on his own, he's opened up a bar. I forget the name of it, but uh go to the expo and you know he likes to work he he purchases a lot of Galbani cheese. Go to the expo. There's a guy that I helped get started, we helped get started. They they had this tower at the Galbani booth, you know, like twenty feet high, and there's this big picture of him, you know, on there. This is something that I helped get started with. It really does. It really does.

SPEAKER_02 51:23

You know what I think really feels the best? I mean, not even what we've accomplished, that's fine. But it's just helping everybody else that we've met in some small way. Like I have we have a woman that made pizza with us and she moved out to LA and opens up her own shop. That's awesome. And she s just sent me her t-shirt with this beautiful card saying, you know, I would have never have learned to make pizza if it wasn't for you. And so like just the stories of just being a little piece of somebody else's life and help and helping them along the way. Absolutely. That's what it's all about, huh?

SPEAKER_00 52:01

It really, really is sometimes you can't help everybody though. I had this one guy called him Billy Martin. If you know anything about baseball and Billy Martin. Billy Martin got fired five times. I we really love this guy, but you know, they just did things that you know if we didn't fire him, we'd be setting a bad example, right? Yeah, right. Five times. And we just you know, he he was uh um he aged out of a foster child program. But you know, but we just you know want to give people the opportunity, they you know they help us, we help them.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

Exactly. That's what we do here a lot too. We we try. We try to set that example to be a good role model for the young people that work with us, and God willing we'll be able to help some of the ones that we have with us. That's our goal, is to um, you know, set the boys up in a s in a space of their own, um, with the Severio's name. So I admire you guys for what you've done and I'm hoping that we could sort of do the same with our brands. You can, you absolutely can. Yeah, I mean, God willing, that's the next step for us because you know, we ain't getting any younger. And it's uh it's I think it's time for us to at least he has hair. Oh yeah, he's got a great head of hair. But that was in the prenup. He had to keep his hair. 'Cause there was no money in the prenup.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

They wanted two prenups now. I was talking about a long time ago. Maybe in the future if you wouldn't mind you could give us an idea of how you did it and we could try to hopefully use things down. I'd love to do that. Absolutely. I think I think I gave you a lot of examples already. You did. You definitely did. But the mo the most important thing you always gotta believe you could do it.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

That's one thing we do. We believe in ourselves. Yeah, we did it. So you mentioned you mentioned where you grew up in in Carroll Gardens South Brooklyn. What one of the greatest examples for me was Mark Ayakano with Lucale.

SPEAKER_01 53:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

Okay. I I looked at him. I was never I didn't go to culinary school, I didn't do nothing. I cooked at home and that was it. I looked at him. He was a marble countertop fabricator. It's so hard to say that. But and he had a pizzeria, and you can listen to a story. There's there's another podcast, Growing Up Italian, and he was on a couple of weeks ago. He'll tell you uh how he went through the whole thing, but he never made pizza in his life. And he gave me the belief. Okay. I saw that somebody who didn't have that kind of background could do it. And once I had that belief, I pushed forward. Yeah. No. You just gotta believe you can do it. Look, you got an example in me, and that you know, I was able to form a company that did that, and you know, we're s we're still doing it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

So love to any any time.

SPEAKER_03 54:39

God willing, that'll be the next direction, next steps we take. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:43

Love to help.

SPEAKER_03 54:43

God willing. But it's been a real pleasure speaking with that guy.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_02 54:47

It's an honor.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

I hate sign-offs. I just hate sign-offs.

SPEAKER_03 54:50

We really love you guys so much. We hate saying goodbye. Yeah, but we don't say goodbye. We can get a lot. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

But it's like I hey when the podcast ends.

SPEAKER_03 55:01

So, guys, one more question. Where can everyone follow you guys on Instagram and where are your locations? And Marion, where can the people buy your book?

SPEAKER_02 55:09

Well, the book is available. Um, you could find it on our website, PaulyG.com. There's a link on there. It's also sold on in Amazon and uh bookshop.com. So there are links on the website or on our Instagram page. It's uh the real Mary Ann G. That's my new Instagram name, at the advice of somebody that's a little younger than me. Because there were a couple of Mary Ann G's out there. And I initially, when I signed on, I wanted to just be Mary and G E E, but somebody else had that, so I had to put one at the end. And then somebody recently said to me, Oh, I think you should change that and do this. So I just did that.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

And then Pauly G, you know, it's just P-A U-L-I-E-G-E. Then we have Pauly G's underscore slice shop. We have Pauly G's Logan Square, we have Pauly G's Short North, we have Pauly G's Wicker Park, we have Pauly G's Gowanas coming up, Pauly G's East Village Slice Shop. I can't wait to come to the Gowanas one. Yeah, we can't wait to come.

SPEAKER_03 56:13

We can go.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

One more, let's not forget. I don't want to forget anything. Pauly G's Soul City Slash Shop in Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_03 56:20

Philly. Your son. Welcome to Gowanas for sure.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Please. It's a great. It's it's it's a it's as I like to say, it's next level. It's next level because they got two levels. Oh nice. They got a second story, they could have uh they could have private events up there because we don't I don't like to, you know, I give I give, you know, my licensees autonomy because it's very important. People gotta feel like they really own the place. If I'm dictating everything they do, they're not gonna feel like the owner, but you know, people do things that I I don't recommend sometimes, but but one thing uh I don't do uh knockwood, I send ever except maybe God forbid my funeral one day is close for private events. I know what it feels like to walk up to a door and see that sign when you think you know you go there. So but in this case they could have a private event upstairs downstairs. We do that when we can in a slice shop. Our slice shop in the front is is pretty small, but it allows us to still enable people to come and get pizza. So but this place, second story, has a roof deck outside. Yeah, it's gonna be really nice.

SPEAKER_03 57:24

That's gonna be amazing. That's so good. All right, so again, thank you guys so much for coming out tonight. We appreciate having you. We love talking with you guys. You have a great story, uh, very inspiring that you're inspiring so many people and lots of people. It's helping many people. Helping a lot of people. That's that's that's important.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

It is important.

SPEAKER_03 57:46

There you go. All right, guys. Well, this is a Severio's podcast. So thank you for listening. And uh, we look forward to having a lot more uh guests in the upcoming weeks ahead. And um, as always, we love you guys. We'll see you soon.