Joseph Ghafouri Wehrly and Kevin Gist both love making pizza; their passion started off as a way to help pay for the bills.
They never imagined that love would turn into a flourishing business.
“I fell in love with pizza from watching 'Ninja Turtles 2,' that very first scene when it opens and it’s a packed place and people are scarfing the big slices... As I worked at pizza shops, I said 'I want to open a shop like that,'” Wehrly says.
But it would take years to make that dream a reality.
In 2020, when the pandemic first hit and the world stood still, Gist started to meander around his kitchen, looking for innovative pizza-making methods.
He made odd pies for a couple of friends, but once the positive feedback came flooding in, he wanted to expand and brought in his friend Wehrly.
“We spent so much of our time making the one style of pizza — we thought we knew everything about it," Wehrly says. "But the more you educate yourself, you realize what you don’t know.”
Before you know it, they were participating in different pop-up shops, and then the right opportunity came together and TnT Pizza was born in the East Village.
“It was bittersweet at the time because, you know, all of this real estate was available, equipment was available for cheap — restaurants were going out of business. The flip side of this: We were able to get in here with a working class kind of budget,” Gist says.
As the duo is growing their business and menu, they’re also looking to get involved in their community by participating in events like this weekend’s Oktoberfest.
"We definitely feel this was a way for us to support the community that we’re a part of," Wehrly says.
