The Iconic $1 Pizza Slice of NYC | Street Food Icons

if you want good pizza come to st. marks it's the best pizza I be any barrel I always come to st. Mark's I know about super O's so they love me in there I'll shop every day there I got two slides today keep the doctor away my guy one thing a lot of people tell us is that when you walk into tuberoses like a microcosm of New York in general you can see homeless people the Wall Street bankers on the same line waiting for that same pizza it's something that everyone can rely on at any time of their life whatever the situation is my name is Ellie Holly I'm one of the borough's Warren Holly I'm one of the pros we're at the two boroughs our pizza is by far the best quality pizza if you get especially for a dollar a lot of plain cheese slices and then we do some hoppin slices the pizza tuberose is made from scratch every single day and cost you get it served hot and you get it served in a matter of seconds people are very busy they come outside for lunch they have five minutes to figure out what they want to do here's a place where I'm getting a fresh hot slice within nine seconds and it's one dollar that's our skill is getting the people in and out and that's what we're good at and it's really it's a science it's something that we worked on for the last ten years perfecting we wanted to create a buzz when we opened and we put this one dollar special to start the business those are marketing and PR everything we just said we're not gonna spend the money on PR and stuff we'll just give it away like this when we started we put a sandwich board up and we took a chalk marker and we put Pizza $1 it didn't really create anything no one was really walking in no one really cared five weeks into it I would say we came up with the idea of let's create like a dollar sign that we print and big bright red and the next day from when we put that sign up everything changed like it was always busy you know is to see the same people five six times a week and then we realized that the numbers were gonna be able to work as long as we sold a certain amount of pizza and we were like you know people now understand that this name is really connected to this dollar thing because it's real it's us you know - we are were two brothers best friends that love pizza [Music] I could you get one cheese slice can't get a well-done one yeah that's perfect thanks so much I'm Scott Weiner and I'm a professional pizza enthusiast still too hot 181 it's an infrared thermometer so if it's over 170 that's where it it'll burn your mouth so I just got the the cheese slice the dollar slice I mean it's a taste like dollar pizza it tastes like you know roller rink little league softball game Pizza on the side you know it's not neat to as a focus it's like you go in here when you're hungry and you need something fast dollar slices as a price point it's not a new thing obviously Pizza has been $1 and the last time it was a dollar was probably in the late 80s Pizza has a resurging force as a dollar food that really came on the rise right around the recession in 2008 99 cents fresh pizza was the one that I always go to at the Port Authority and then suddenly I saw shoe Bros was opening up and then 99-cent fresh opened up more and then now there's got to be 80 or $90 slice places around the city the recession was really important for the dollar slice because you had a lot of people's careers changed around that time and some of these dollars nice places come from that fall out when we started to Bros I was 24 and my brother was 23 babies we're not pizza men by trade and we never were we grew up in Brooklyn in the neighborhood called nobasin we both went to school in New York and we'd always be eating late in their food and somehow way to always be drawn to pizza when a space became available we started negotiating with the landlord you know we would Google like the type of things we would need to ask for all our savings whatever money we had saved up we put into it once we got our school we open the first place at st. Mark's towards the end of 2007 two bros and the other dollar slice places they make money because that low price point brings in the volume and so as long as they're doing volume and they can stay in business the restaurant business is in New York is as tough as it gets the issue with our business is that if you don't sell a certain amount than you then you're dying and the number it really really depends on you know what your occupancy cost and what will in ended that being said that range is around 45 to 50 cents over the actual cost of the slice yeah but that's before labor but I get it more the cost of the make a slice another misconception with dollars license general is like yeah the pizzas fake that those frozen that they're buying from someone the cheese is like a fake cheese we're really using the highest and ingredients on our pizzas a big part of it is our buying power we buy almost everything direct from the manufacturer we don't have any middlemen huge quantities yeah trailers of cheese you know trailers a flower a trailers of cans of soda everything in huge volume when your margins are razor thin you know every dollar counts the speed of which a person gets in and out determines how much pizza we can sell that's something that that we train our pizza guys more than anything else the employees they come into work at 7:00 a.m. the first thing they do is they start making a fresh dough for either the day or the next day and then they make fresh sauce and they'll be doing that for 3-4 hours before we have been open for lunch they know they got to just keep making them as the people are coming so they know when they're gonna get hit at lunch they know when they're gonna get the after-work crowd they know this stuff and our people do a great job you know they really do it but always giving people a fresh on slice would we consider it a tubers street food well most of our stores have completely open doors and they're like pretty much part of the street most people are taking that slice without a bag and just continuing to walk this is quick it's like Chinese food I come here every day it's kind of bad well this is I'm coming back from a church it's good it's cheesy at the right amount of sauce that it's never like hard it's always doing the crust and it's even salary can't be done I think dollar pizzas on the way out as the 10-year leases that started in 2008 as they run out I think we're gonna see the dollar slice turn into dollar 25 slice a dollar 50 slice I really think we'll look back at this time fondly because this is a time period where pizza should not cost the dollar special moment I lived in New York City I could buy a slice of pizza for just a buck how cool is that it's getting more and more expensive to operate businesses especially in New York but the foreseeable future tada you know it's important to us we were very torn and a lot of conversations about raising the price and as long as we're able to sell it for a dollar we'll continue to do that we don't know what's gonna to morrow is gonna bring every day the world changes [Music]

Channel: Munchies

Views: 9,721,408

Rating: 4.9090691 out of 5

Keywords: street food icons, street food, MUNCHIES, PIZZA, food, NYC, Chef, dollar pizza, dollar slice, cheap eats, best pizza, world's best pizza, cheapest pizza, one dollar pizza, casey neistat dollar pizza, cheap lunch, 2 bros pizza, pizza pie, Great Recession, quick lunch, scott wiener, pizza review, nyc pizza, pizza, best pizza nyc, pizza near me, cheap eats near me, top pizza slices nyc, top pizza restaurants nyc, nyc dollar slice, where to find cheap pizza

Id: IugcIAAZJ2M

Length: 7min 50sec (470 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/bklyn1977]

are they implying 2 bros invented the dollar slice?

[u/caveman_chubs]

Is it the best slice in the city? Absolutely not. But it sure fits a need and I've never been unhappy with my 2 Bros. Keep slicing Bros

[u/jesuschin]

I think iconic is the wrong word

[u/makefriedrice]

I had the misfortune of being in Scarr’s in the LES when that Pizza Tour dude rolled in with 30 tourists, ordered them all chardonnay and started hopping around with his thermometer yelling about how the pizza was going to “BuRn YoUr MouTh!!!!!!11”. 0/10 would file restraining order if I could.

[u/faustkenny]

A thing of beauty

[u/popeyeschicken]

there was a tiny pizza shop on the corner of broadway and canal st that closed down about 15 years ago. that was the best pepperoni slice in the whole city. anyone know what it was called?