HIP SQUARE TO BE

The

socially conscious founders of Square Pie Guys, San Francisco’s red-hot Detroit-style pizza company, believe that with great pizza making power comes great responsibility.

BY RICK HYNUM | PHOTOS BY MELATI CITRAWIREJA

How did two Jewish guys—one from Long Island, the other from Seattle—become famous in San Francisco for making Detroit-style pizzas? Danny Stoller, co-founder of Square Pie Guys (SPG), is surely one of the few American pizzaioli who could have been a rabbi (his own rabbi suggested that career at Stoller’s bar mitzvah). His business partner, Marc Schechter, started out making pies and giving them away for free to his friends—and to homeless people. They are, to borrow a homey expression, “good people.” And their shared values—a firm conviction that with great pizza making power comes great responsibility—inform and shape the culture at Square Pie Guys, with three locations in San Francisco and Oakland.

Brought together by God or happenstance—depending on your perspective—Stoller and Schechter have become media darlings and ambassadors for a pizza style that barely existed outside of Detroit when they were kids. Thanks in part to some masterful marketing, every location they open makes headlines in the local press. And every location makes a difference in the lives of people in need. Because the founders aren’t just partners in a pizzeria but collaborators with a network of community nonprofits that receive a portion of Square Pie Guys’ sales.

“Look, no one starts a business because they aren’t trying to build a better life for themselves,” Stoller explains. “And, as we were talking about the type of company we wanted to run, we knew community was such an important part of what we were striving for. We’ve been so lucky to have a voice, to get the interest from the press. Being able to repay a bit of that goodwill is just the natural evolution of trying to do things the right way.”

Crossing Pizza Paths

When he was growing up on Long Island, Schechter says, “It was a pretty normal thing to only eat great pizza. When I went to summer camp, I was shocked by the terrible frozen pizzas they’d serve us because I was so spoiled by what we had back home. Ever since then, I went out of my way to try and find the best pizza wherever I was.”

That quest continued when he moved to Berkeley, California. He was working in software sales, but what he loved was