Here’s a slice of Austin history — Home Slice Pizza will celebrate 20 years in business this week.
The New York-style pizza joint has practically been an Austin rite of passage since it opened in November 2005. The product of Joseph Strickland, Jen Scoville Strickland, and Terri Hannifin Buis, Home Slice was born out of the desire to bring the pizza from Jen and Terri’s college days at NYU to ATX.
In celebration of the iconic parlor’s vicennial year, ATXtoday chatted with Joseph to talk about the early days of Home Slice and how Jen — his wife and business partner— became the “Queen of Pies.”
Rental home pizza oven
After moving out to Austin in the ‘90s, Joseph said Jen began missing the pies of her youth. There weren’t many restaurants in town that offered the New York-style pizza she craved, so Jen started making it herself in a makeshift oven made with Home Depot tile at their rental home.
“It was immediately better than anything we could get out, we felt, and we started having friends over and testing them on it,” Joseph said. “Then pretty quickly [...] she started talking about wanting to open a pizza shop.”
Jen — who comes from a long line of small business owners — began designing branding with the ad agency she worked for at the time, Joseph began taking business classes at UT, and the couple recruited Terri — a longtime restaurant professional — to move to Austin and come aboard.
Becoming the “Queen of Pies”
While working on their business story and perfecting their recipes, the couple took frequent trips to New York pizzerias in search of places that would let Jen observe and learn the ropes.
“They all kind of scoffed at her, like, ‘Nah, you’re a woman, we’re not going to teach you,’” Joseph said. “No one took it seriously.”
That is, until they visited Angelo’s in Flemington, New Jersey, which was about an hour from New York City. There, Angelo himself spent a week training the pair, and awarded Jen a faux mustache to represent her achievement. That’s why Home Slice’s “Queen of Pies” mascot wears a mustache.
“The mustache represents her street cred,” Joseph said.
Tarantino movie cameos
The couple lived near South Congress Avenue when it came time to open their shop, so when the building along the famous strip came on the rental market, it was kismet.
“We raised the money and we got open, and just immediately (it was filled) with people who felt like we felt,” Joseph said. “This is what the city needed: New York-style pizza.”
Joseph said the early years were a “whirlwind” of excitement, especially when Home Slice ended up on the Big Screen in movies like “Death Proof” and “Chef.”
“All of a sudden we were in a Tarantino movie,” Joseph said. “Then, we started winning awards from Yelp, like ‘Top Pizzeria in Texas’ (and) ‘Top 10 Pizzerias in the Country.’”
Joseph said they were trying to become an institution — something that would last for generations — from the beginning. Soon, they expanded to More Home Slice (next door to the original location) in 2010 to keep up with demand, then opened a new shop on North Loop in 2018, and finally opened a shop in Houston in 2022.
“We’re just trying to follow in the footsteps of Chuy’s, Uchi, other places that have come before us, Tacodeli, Torchy’s, JuiceLand,” Joseph said.
Carnival O’ Pizza
To say thanks for two decades of love from the Austin community, the Home Slice family is bringing back the Carnival O’ Pizza this Saturday, Nov. 15.
The carnival was an annual tradition and charity fundraiser from 2006 to 2016 and will return with a pizza-eating contest, a box-folding contest, live music, dance performances, a reunion of original employees, and plenty of fun for all ages.
“We’re just saying thank you to Austin for 20 years of support and trying to have a good time,” Joseph said. “We want to be around for 20, 40, 60 more years.”
This year’s Carnival O’ Pizza charity of choice is Foundation Communities — RSVP for the free celebration.
