Pizza: the universally pleasing, go-to meal option for office parties, a group hangout or a relaxed family dinner. At Zalat Pizza, it’s about more than just making a pie. Slices are life, and the company offers a high-end product at an affordable price.
Founder and CEO Khanh Nguyen serendipitously stumbled into his passion for cooking. Before founding Zalat, he practiced law for 12 years and worked in the tech start-up industry.
“I call myself an accidental restaurateur,” he said. “My kids were young and I was staying home for a while, and I started making dinners—really cooking. Next thing I know, I’m getting up every morning and cooking 4-5 course meals every day.”
Nguyen, who is originally from Vietnam, opened his first restaurant, a pho place, in 2012 because it was his favorite thing to eat. The restaurant was open until 2 a.m. each night to cater to night owls like himself.
Two years later in 2014, a pizza restaurant opened across the street.
“When they tapped out, I took over the lease and decided to go into the pizza business, even though I had never made pizza before,” he said. “I spent six months developing recipes and learning all the ins and outs of crust and sauces. We just took our time and didn't open until we had gotten everything right.”
In 2015, Nguyen opened Zalat Pizza and never looked back. The model uses 1,500 square feet to make pizzas for third-party delivery, but instead of using a conveyor belt like big chains, each pizza at Zalat is handmade. The company is set to open its 26th store in the first quarter of 2023.
Zalat is different because the brand makes its own dough and sauces, and each pizza is baked in a traditional stone oven. Nguyen also makes sure to source the highest quality, best-tasting products.
“I didn't want us to be the weird pizza company,” he said, “I said, ‘Let's go toe-to-toe [with anybody] on basic pizzas.' We tried every cheese and every pepperoni we could get our hands on, and we ended up making a couple of decisions that were really impactful. We figured out that beef pepperoni just tasted so much better than pork pepperoni.”
The pepperoni pizza has become Zalat’s best-seller, and Nguyen said he did not realize why other pizza companies did not use the clearly superior product.
“I finally figured out why nobody else uses it: it's super expensive,” he said. “Potentially five times more expensive. But since we inadvertently didn't know any better, we just did what we thought was right and chose beef pepperoni, and it's an amazing product. And since we built our model around it you know, it's just part of our business.”
The best-seller is called the Pepperoni Masterclass and features black pepper, minced garlic and a layer of all-beef pepperoni. Nguyen said the pie is the “mic drop” of pepperoni pizzas.
After ensuring the basics were knocked out of the park, Nguyen said it was time to experiment with some more creative flavor combinations. But his crazy pizza philosophy differs from the big chains.
“The marketing departments come up with cool ads, basically what they think people will buy [at big pizza chains],” he said. “And it's driven by marketing purposes and then the marketing departments actually design their pizzas. But marketing should not be coming up with design. My philosophy is to take the time to build it and make it spectacular, because each one of them needs to be a winner.”
“That’s on purpose,” he said. “That’s what you’re paying us for: the months spent building, designing and taste-testing.”
The restaurant offers unique options like the Nashville hot chicken with sweet pickles, an elote pizza which features corn and lemon pepper, and Nguyen’s favorite: The sweet revenge.
“It's our number one pizza,” he said. “It’s a little spicy, a little sweet and a little savory. There’s bacon-onion marmalade, hot honey and basil, but we also give you a container of fresh basil that goes in the box so it’s fresh when you eat.”
For those looking to turn up the heat and raise the stakes, Zalat also offers the Reaper Roulette option: one slice of pizza in the box is spicy due to Zalat’s signature hot sauce—but the slice is unmarked.
“It’s great for parties because you can get your friends together and see who gets ‘blown up’ by the Reaper Sauce,” Nguyen said.
Because the product is so special, Nguyen said he wants his employees to be special as well. Zalat does not employ minimum-wage workers. Instead, the company pays wages as high as possible, offers full benefits and 401K matching. In addition, all employees have a stake in the company.
“Here, we recognize the work they put in,” Nguyen said, “and in exchange for that hard work and dedication, we want them to have a seat on the rocket. If we make it, our mission is to bring everyone with us if we do well. Nothing would make me happier after we go public than for all the people who have been there since the beginning to become millionaires, which is a real possibility.”
Nguyen said in 2021 Zalat was chosen as one of the top 100 restaurants by the Dallas Observer. Of those restaurants, 96 were single-location restaurants, and Zalat was the only chain business.
“Getting that kind of recognition says something special about our model,” Nguyen said.
A slice of Zalat pizza has been handmade and taste-tested, plus each pizza is delivered with a “pizza-gram”: a little token of appreciation and connection for the customer. For more information about Zalat Pizza, including menu options and locations, visit the website here.
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