Slicing Through Challenges: How Home Slice Pizza Built a Pizza Empire on Hospitality | Restaurants & Franchises Series

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Terri Hannafin-Yuas. She is the co-owner of Home slice Pizza, a neighborhood pizza joint with three locations in Austin and now one in Houston, serving authentic New York style pizza by the slice or by the pie.

Founded in 2005, Home slice Pizza prides itself on its welcoming atmosphere, fresh ingredients, and genuine hospitality. Terri brings a remarkable background to this role. She successfully operated a curbside donut shop as a third grader. She was the supervisor of a frozen yogurt shop as a teenager, had a lawn mowing business with her best friend in high school, and later gained fine dining experience, leaving countless satisfied customers. At Homeslice, she mentors employees and stays focused on quality and community, guiding the restaurant to local acclaim. Over the years, her hands-on approach and entrepreneurial spirit have helped Homeslice become one of Austin’s favorite pizza destinations.

Today, Terri continues to nurture talent and support the rapidly growing brand. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company, and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. All right, now back to our guest today, co-founder of Homeslice Pizza, Terri. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today. Thank you.

I’m honored. Okay, so Terri, most people that I’ve talked to anyways, get their start in the food industry, like as a high school or a college student, looking to make some extra money on the side. For you, it started a lot younger than that. How old were you exactly when you started this curbside donut shop, and how did this come about?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well, eight years old, and it came about a week. My family got a donut, a little donut maker for probably for Christmas, and I loved donuts. I mean, probably my favorite food, which I’m sure many people can relate to, but I thought to myself, my classmates are going to really want these donuts, and they’re really fun to make.

I’m going to take pre-orders for donuts, and then I’m going to make donuts for my classmates and make money for this, because I had three other siblings at the time, and we would always have to share everything. I wanted my own Pringles, for example. I wanted my own Bubble Yum, for example. I wanted to have my own thing. So I was like, I’m going to make some money and make people happy. So I took a bunch of pre-orders, and super ambitious thinking, yeah, that’s going to be great. Then when I realized how many pre-orders I had made, I thought, okay, I’m going to have to make a lot of donuts.

Luckily, my older brother helped me, and so we made these donuts all different kinds and sold them to my classmates and took more orders. It was awesome. It was just awesome. I was making people happy and making money and enjoying the whole process as it went. So it was like, wow, I love this. This is great.

Anthony Codispoti: And so what were you saying as you went up to your classmates? Hey, buy a donut for a nickel or a dime, and they were just like, okay.

Terri Hannifin Buis: Yeah, they were like, yeah, and I would say, what kind do you want? I can make chocolate. I do chocolate sprinkles. I do rainbow sprinkles, and just would ask them what kind they would want, and I would just write it down on my list and bring it home and make it for them. I want to say it was 25 cents, but it was a long time ago.

Anthony Codispoti: Were your parents buying the raw materials for you, or is that something that they were having you buy on your own?

Terri Hannifin Buis: They did buy the raw materials for me, which I realized at the time, it was a great realization actually, because I started out with just what we had in the pantry and then realized like, oh, I need more.

And so we would go get more. And anyhow, it was one of those things where it was such a great learning lesson for a third grade student of, all right, it’s, you know, when you’re eight years old, you don’t, you don’t have that concept of, you know, everything is just kind of either there or, or whatever.

Anthony Codispoti: So anyhow, it was lost of goods or no, no, no. So it was, it was great. It was just great. It was my first taste of that. And my father was an entrepreneur, his father was an entrepreneur.

Terri Hannifin Buis: And so I also didn’t realize at that point, I just had that in me.

Anthony Codispoti: Anyways, so how long did the donut stand go on?

Terri Hannifin Buis: I retired in third grade. It was great.

Anthony Codispoti: It was a lot of work. It was a lot. Yes, it was a lot of work. It was super satisfying. But that was it. But you knew you had this entrepreneurial bug, even if maybe you couldn’t pronounce entrepreneurial when you were in third grade. And so what were some of the other things that came from that we talked about the lawn mowing business that you had with your best friend?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well, you know, childhood things like I would start carnivals where would create booths with my friends and we would charge for tickets and people would come. And then in high school, my high school boyfriend at the time had challenged my best friend and I and said, I dare you guys can’t have a lawn mowing business. We were both women and and so we did it and we had it for three years and it was amazing. And at the same time, I had had an opportunity to get a job at a hamburger joint when I was 15 years old. And I took it. I was like, what?

Yes, of course. So I took the job. It was just a summer job.

And I couldn’t believe my luck. I got to work at the French fry station. And of course, as a 15 year old, you’re just like, yes, or I get to do the French fry station. And I also got to be a cashier. And but really, the the most amazing thing about that job, it was in an area of Denver called five points. It was not not a super safe neighborhood.

But that didn’t matter to me. This cook who worked the grill, he had to be he had to be in his 80s. But I was blown away by how clean his grill was. It was like, no burgers had ever been made on this. And this place was called Big D’s burgers. And they had Big D burger, double D triple D burgers. And so there was a lot of grilling going on. And it was so clean. And I asked him, how do you do that?

Like, how do you keep it so clean? And he said, you know, Terry, he said, I’ve worked here for a lot of years, probably 30 years. And it took me a long time to be able to work the grill. And he said, the person who worked there before me, he told me he said, how important it is that every burger I make is the same for every customer. And that the consistency is so important. And he said, I want to make sure for the next person who works the grill after me that the grill is pristine for them.

I don’t want them to have to worry about cleaning anything. I want to just make sure that it’s great for the next person to and I was blown away. At 15, I just didn’t fully understand all the levels of the restaurant business. I was so focused on myself and making really good french fries.

And but when he said that, I thought, this is the greatest business in the world. You get to make guests happy. You get to make your teammates happy.

And and you get the satisfaction. You could see it in this man’s face. He had he was the proudest person I had ever made. He was the most humble and proud person I had ever met. And it was one of those things where I got this is what I want to for the rest of my life.

Anthony Codispoti: So this gentleman, and do you remember his name?

Terri Hannifin Buis: I wish I did.

Anthony Codispoti: I wish I did. This gentleman had a big impact on you because of the way that he approached his work. Yeah. Yeah. But you you already came in being super excited about the job. I mean, I see you jumping out of your chair talking about I scored.

I’m on fries. I get to be the cashier. You know, for not everybody feels that way. Some people it’s like, uh, you know, literally, I got to make the donuts. I got to make the donuts, right? But not not you.

Like you there was joy within you that you know, the first time that you stepped in there. Okay. Oh, yeah, for sure. And and so what we’re so in that moment, you’re like, this is what I want to do. This is this is where, you know, I want to be in this business forever. So did you continue to seek out more jobs in hospitality and food service?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Oh, yeah. Um, definitely. I went from there to the next summer, I worked at this great sandwich ice cream shop called all a mode also got a job at this great Jewish deli called Shlomo’s. I was a busser at Shlomo’s I was making the sandwiches and and well, I was doing all the prep and then also serving ice cream at the other shop. Well, at the same time, I had a long line business with my best friend and I, you know, I don’t know how you feel about this, but as an entrepreneur, I loved the independence that I had. And so I guess I was addicted to that the independence and and just getting to work with so many different types of people getting to make people happy. I mean, it just couldn’t be better.

It just was great. And then then went on to get a job at a frozen yogurt place. And that was wonderful because frozen yogurt was all the rage at that time and was able to be made supervisor, which gave me access to the inner workings of a business. I had the responsibility of reconciling the money. I got had that I had access to all the data from their other businesses and that business there I got to see and was in charge of making sure to write down what the business we did that day compared to what we did the week before compared to what we did the month before and the year before. I had special training, you know, to to learn how to manage people and how to keep people motivated. And, you know, every opportunity I had going forward from there just taught me so much.

And, you know, I just I just went from from there in college. I got to work at this in New York City. I went to NYU and had many jobs there as well. But one of my restaurant jobs there was at this beloved burger joint right near Washington Square Park and learned so much there about business and then um coincidentally at NYU my college roommate Jen Strickland is my business partner now. She’s she was the original one who wanted to do a pizza joint. So anyhow, and just went on. I mean, I could go on and on forever about all my different restaurant jobs and what they gave me and um

Anthony Codispoti: so I’m curious to hear you know you mentioned some of your earlier jobs you learned how to manage people and keep them motivated. What were some of those important lessons that you learned early on?

Terri Hannifin Buis: The real the big lesson that I learned there are a few big ones that I learned was one you need to challenge first you need to hire the right people um that are that want to do it that get turned on by making people happy and that aren’t afraid of hard work and that actually think hard work is fun and then you need to keep them challenged.

You need to give them clear goals um and you need to push them in a in a good way not in a critical way but in a way that’s like we can do this okay this is what we want to reach and this is what I’m gonna ask you to do and I know you’re gonna think this is too much to ask but it’s not I’m gonna ask you to do it and we’re gonna do it together and we’re gonna get this done and and then um one thing that I learned is that you have to really you ask them to do something you do it and then you go back and you see if they did it right and if they didn’t you do it together you show them together how you want it and it’s really important to get into the corners and to to say no this is how it’s done and to push them even if you yourself um you know that wouldn’t be the thing you would do find something to push them to do it further and that people love to feel proud at the end of the day and they need guidance sometimes to push themselves beyond what they think they can do.

Anthony Codispoti: So um we were talking a little bit before we went live here and you mentioned you got two seven year olds right? Uh-huh. I got that right. I’ve got two boys that are eight and ten and you know as I hear you talking about how to motivate people you know I keep them challenged you know of course I think about you know my my own business world and my employees but I also think about my kids and how to teach those same kinds of lessons to my kids. Does that thought process enter your mind? How can I take what you know I’ve learned? Okay so how do you introduce this to kids that age? That’s what’s going through my mind right now. How can I teach some of these same things to seven, eight, nine, ten year olds?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well you know it’s funny that you say that because um so our kids are you know we’re having them set the table um for dinner every night and and you know showing them the proper way to set the table it may seem you know unnecessary you know just get the silverware the napkins the glassware but um I take the opportunity to say like okay here’s how you do it I teach them how you do it properly and then they do it and they you know things aren’t lined up right and does it matter at our house? Absolutely not however I go and say okay let’s go look let’s go see how we did okay all right guys let’s get your fingernails let’s put the let’s align the fork right to the fingernail edge of the table and okay the glass needs to be right over here and um and do it in a way that’s fun and and so is it necessary at our house? No but is it do they like it? It’s an opportunity to

Anthony Codispoti: teach them a life lesson about if you’re going to do something do it correctly pay attention to the details the details matter

Terri Hannifin Buis: yes yes and you know that’s fun so

Anthony Codispoti: so you mentioned you know the first step is uh you got to find the right employees and roughly how many folks do you employ?

Terri Hannifin Buis: We have uh right now we have about 380 employees

Anthony Codispoti: 380 employees across four locations that’s that’s impressive so how what is your process for kind of identifying those people that you think are going to be a good fit you know with that kind of a staff uh Terry can’t be involved in every single interview every single hire what is it that you’ve learned that you’ve now you know taught to your team to hey here’s the questions we ask or here’s what we look for how do you find how do you find those folks?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Um well so it’s important in our opinion you you need to look at their resume or the application we ask them we ask them questions that are some are kind of trick questions like uh we’ll say what what did you like or what didn’t you like about your business um and if the what you didn’t like about your last employment is filled filled up with feedback that’s we’re not going to hire that person um so we but if the other side is filled up what did you like um we’re like okay now we’re really intrigued and we also look for longevity if if somebody is uh moving from job to job to job that’s just a risk that that is hard to take because we’re looking for teammates who are going to be with us for a while we’re looking for people who love the industry we’re looking for people um who uh who want to stay and of course we realize that sometimes you take a job that you shouldn’t stay at and it’s good it’s good for people to make their decisions like I don’t want to stay here um however just for us you know it’s a big deal finding a partner finding a teammate and so we want to find people that in general like to stay at a place for a long time and um you know we also try to find people who are forward-looking people um who so we ask them questions like what do you like in your life what do you love to do and um you know you can tell if someone starts talking about talking passionately about something that they do in their life that’s that’s something that we want to do too if they uh that we want to work with we want to work with people who are interesting and fun and positive um and so you know you ask about them but mostly you listen a lot um to who they are and and if they’re the kind of person that you really want to work with you want to get to know more hire them

Anthony Codispoti: so okay that’s that’s a pretty good process I can see you know you call them trick questions but you know you’re just you’re looking for certain patterns and it makes a lot of sense so you’ve got somebody they come in uh they’re working out they’re a good team member you want to make sure you hold on to them what kind of strategies do you have on the retention side of things

Terri Hannifin Buis: well um so we want to make to us our employees are the most important thing because they make the business so we want to make sure that they feel supported we want them to feel empowered we want them to feel cared for and like I said before we want to challenge them um so that at the end of the day they feel like they’ve gotten something they’ve gotten value from their job um we also uh one of the things that we’ve done um that really has paid off not only for I think our employees but also for us um as founding owners is we’ve taken our team to New York we’re a New York style pizzeria so we’re an old school New York style pizzeria so we our pizza is simple we you know it’s big pizzas it’s um pizza for the people you know you utilitarian come get a slice and that can be your meal and so we we decided earlier on we want to bring our team to New York to see where our inspiration was and and we’re you know in Texas now and uh in Texas there’s not a whole lot of Italian culture and so you know you can get a taco on any corner or several tacos on each corner but um you getting a slice of pizza when we opened it was rare so so we want to show them what it’s like what the Italian culture is like in New York City where it’s like you know you get fed and there’s a serious pride in New York about your pizza and it’s a career and so um early on we shut down the restaurants to bring our team and then as we’ve grown we’ve had to um you know decide okay we bring people who work for us full time we bring people who have you know uh never been on probation and you know you make certain criteria but oh my gosh it has paid off so much um it’s it’s taught our team that there’s a serious pride to what they do and it’s uh and it’s amazing you know people come in the restaurants in Texas and they say oh you’re New York style I’m from I grew up in Brooklyn and and for our team to be able to say oh yeah I’ve been to Ellen B Spamone oh yeah DeFara absolutely I’ve been there and the

Anthony Codispoti: colleagues so you take them to New York City and you take them on a little tour of some of the the pizza hot spots

Terri Hannifin Buis: yes yes so we taste pizza and all the burrows we go out for Italian food for long dinners and um wow that’s fun it’s really fun

Anthony Codispoti: that’s a lot of fun okay we got some good background now how did the idea to start this company come about you mentioned you know your business partner you met in college it was actually her initial idea to start a pizza business

Terri Hannifin Buis: so her she was a writer she’s an amazing writer and she moved to New York in 1990 with her boyfriend at the time who was going to who was going to UT for graduate school and she was horrified by the pizza in Austin Texas at that time um and she loves to cook and so I had I’d been in the restaurant business as you know since I was young and um and she would she taught herself how to make really good New York style pizza in her oven she had put quarry tiles on the base of her oven and really work about that and we would talk and um at the time I was working in fine dining I was running a restaurant um called the fourth story in Denver at the time and um I had already been developing my own theories on the restaurant business I was a workaholic you know I was working 80 hours a week and um and uh I guess I didn’t want to be a workaholic anymore so I had been developing theories in my head of how how I can stay in the restaurant business without it eating me up and um ways to make a successful business where you can also have weekends and you can also have relationships outside the restaurant business and um so I had been developing my theory while she was making these pizzas and we were talking and I was saying Jen I want you to write your movie um and she’s like you know Terry I don’t want to do I don’t want to write for a living it won’t be fun to me and um and she said what about what about a pizzeria and and said well you know absolutely um you can do that and have that be how you make your living but you have to do it um in a certain way you have to do it simply and I and I we just started batting back and forth about my theories of how um how you could do it in a way that would make it so that you can follow your passion um and we she and her husband are my two partners and we were talking and we were aligned you know as an entrepreneur there are many ways to start a business but you really need to know in the beginning what is your goal and for example if your goal is to be a billionaire well you’re going to model your business in a certain way to achieve that goal but luckily for uh Jen and Joseph and I we all shared the same goal we wanted quality of life um we wanted to have fun every day we wanted to be challenged every day we wanted to work with forward thinking positive people every day we wanted to make a difference we wanted to make people’s lives better in fact we wanted to make the world better um and we knew you could do it by you know one person at a time making their day better and we all shared that and um and none of us ever wanted to have to worry about money but it never was money was never the first thing on our mind so so we talked about it and we that’s how we built our business um we wanted to let’s keep it simple we’re not going to be something for everybody um and let’s make it make a place where people want to come to work and let’s make it fun for us and because we believe that if we hire people that love taking care of people we can make the world a better place and oh my gosh the journey has just been amazing we’ve had the most incredible people who really just care and they put it into our food they they they have the the most incredible connections it’s it’s just great

Anthony Codispoti: so the idea is hatched you talk about what the the long-term goals are money is somewhere further down the list it’s more about quality of life we want to have fun we want to challenge ourselves we want to make the world a better place what does it actually look like to open that first location where does the money come from how did you pick the spot what were the bumps in the road kind of in those early days to get the doors open and the first customers um so

Terri Hannifin Buis: in in austin i don’t know if you’ve ever been to austin but it’s such a great town there’s a an area called south congress that had at that time had a lot of grit um and it had two really great neighborhoods on either side um uh families artists um and it was a mile from the capital of texas so uh just a really special spot and jennon joseph at the time i was living in colorado running a restaurant in colorado and they are i think i was director of operations of a in one of these neighborhoods and they were like terry come come see come look and come look at these spots and uh there was this wonderful man his name is steve wartimer he has a lot of businesses he has one of austin’s most iconic business the continental club um uh music venue there um and he helped us find our location and it um it had not been a restaurant before but it was in a great location we loved it it was an old school brick building and had flavor and so we got the lease on that spot um and we you know joseph had put himself through a counting school he was a filmmaker to learn that counting of the business put together a business plan uh made a lot of pizza for a lot of people to get them to invest in our business and we of course um thought we had it down got all the everything that we thought it was going to cost we thought it would cost 300 000 dollars or probably 250 000 dollars at that time met with a banker um and then got the banker behind us everybody was excited and and then we got our first bids back from the contractor and it was double what we thought it would be and it was crushing you know we’re we’re also excited and young and um and we’re crushed but then for me because i’d been in the business um for so long all i could see were the good things like we’ve got this banker he’s excited we have all these investors they’re excited who cares that it’s more than we thought it would be we can do this like let’s do it and um and so we jenn and joseph were buoyed by that too and they were like okay let’s do it and even though we you know we’re all just you know wanting to vomit every single second with the pressure and um but they’re around every turn even there were there were people that would come and and buoy us up like we were i remember we were at the health department and meeting with the health department and of course they were making so many changes to our plans which were going to cost so much money and we were just on the verge of being discouraged and a stranger came up and said excuse me i i couldn’t help but over here that you’re home slice and and i’ve seen your sign in the window i live in the neighborhood and i’m so excited for you guys to come i love pizza i love new york pizza and i just want you to know we’re all pulling for you and you know those moments that keep you going when you’re just like thank you

Anthony Codispoti: it’s like water in the desert it’s like just what you need to do at that moment to to pick yourselves back up

Terri Hannifin Buis: around every turn there were things like that that kept us going despite the challenges and

Anthony Codispoti: so you had investors you had you had a banker that was willing to also offer support uh you’re running into a lot of roadblocks which is very common when you’re opening up a new physical business uh business with physical location especially when it’s your very first one a lot of times there’s there’s so many things that don’t know that you don’t know um but eventually you get to the point where you open the doors and what were those first days like

Terri Hannifin Buis: way beyond our imagination we got pummeled we were so pummeled with business which was fantastic um and people would wait we’d have to put them on a wait for two hours to get a table and then they would wait 45 minutes to an hour to get their pizza and they would they would do it and we trained our staff um uh to um there’s a great story that motivated me about creative thinking that was a story about it’s we don’t have time for the story but anyhow it uh it was the basically the gist of it was how can you distract people from the time it takes so that they don’t get impatient and so we were we were just so grateful that we had all these people come in so we started this thing where we would give it 10 discount we had a theme of the month if you participated in the theme of the month um we’re going to give you 10 up your ticket and the themes of the month would be things like if you get up in the middle of the dining room and bust a move a dance move in front of everybody in the restaurant we’re going to give you 10 off or if you do truth or dare with your server um you’re we’re going to and so that would distract that it would create an experience and distract the guests from the amount of time it would take from when they ordered to when they got their pizza so they didn’t even notice that it took that long and it was fun for everybody it was fun for staff it was fun for the guest it was fun for us um it was fun for the other guests watching the people people would get up and sing a song in front of everybody in the restaurant and um and so that’s what it was like and then we finally learned how to actually work our oven so pizzas started taking 10 minutes instead of 45 minutes and

Anthony Codispoti: wait what was that what what was that difference just okay well I’ll tell you had the heat turned up enough

Terri Hannifin Buis: no we had the heat turned up in fact we kept turning up the heat which was the problem um we kept turning up the heat and we would try to fill the ovens the decks we had um deck ovens and we would fill them up with pizzas and and gosh they were just taking forever little did we know at the time we were killing the decks um killing the heat with the amount of pizzas we were putting in so we learned from a um Someone who I still to this day believe was in the Witness Protection Program, who was one of our purveyors, but he would come in, he was an old pizzeria person. And he said, no, no, don’t put six pizzas in the oven, just put four. And you have to rotate them around the deck so you don’t kill the decks, you don’t kill the heat. And we’re like, what are you talking about? You have no idea. We have so many customers. We have to, you know, make so many pizzas. He’s like, trust me, and turn your ovens down.

You’re turning them too high. And we’re like, that doesn’t make any sense. But we trusted him and we did it very counterintuitive and it worked. So instead of putting six pizzas in the deck we had put four, and we could make more pizzas in less time.

Anthony Codispoti: So a couple of things I want to appeal back there. So I love the idea that you guys had the 10% off for the theme of the month. It’s creative and it’s brilliant and it’s simple. It’s all those things wrapped together. And it reminds me of people often will cite Disney theme parks as examples of this.

Right? And we took our kids to Disney last summer for the first time. And, you know, the lines are long and kids are impatient and it’s hot. And so, you know, like one of the things that they do is they’re, you can’t see most of the line.

Right? It winds, it turns, they take you through, they take you by something that talks and they take you by something else that’s animated and just little things along the way. So that, you know, by the time the kids get there they don’t even realize that they’ve been waiting 45 minutes to get on this slide. And so that made me think of your story there. But then we just sort of glossed over the gentleman who helped you with the pizza ovens there who was, you’re convinced was in the witness protection program. That, that sounds like a little fun tangent for us to go into for just a second. Why were you convinced about that?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well, it might be because I love stories of the mafia. However, and Jen and I always thought like maybe our pizzeria in Austin, we can, mafia will come and sit in the front little bistro table in the front of the restaurant and, you know, do their thing.

But that was always a hope of ours. But this guy, he was a distributor and he would come in and eat our pizza and he’d sit at our counter and he’d, you know, super friendly in that old school way. He had the New York accent and, you know, a talker and, and he said, like, you know, I miss it. Let me come in and work for you one day a week. And we’re like, are you sure? And he’s like, yeah, let me come in and work for you. And he would, you know, just work with the guys and you could tell he had, he had done this before. Come to find out and he helped us. He gave us this clue with the, with the oven, which was invaluable. But he kept trying to make us change our pizza dough recipe to add sugar. And we just were like, no, that’s not what we do.

Anyhow, he flash forward. He, he opened his own place in Austin and he tried to recruit our guys and he got our phone number, his phone number was one number off of our phone number. He was telling, we found out through our hairstylist, his wife was telling her hairstylist that he was the one who gave us our recipes, which is not true. And anyhow, so the way he went about things kind of made us even more convinced. Okay, he’s, he’s this underhanded New York. Yeah, we’re all about like sharing information and booing up other businesses, but he was trying to, you know, he was shady. And anyhow, he, he motivated us to even be better for sure. And he, he, he, one of my stories about him, I got my hackles up when he did this and I was telling, I was doing a lineup for our staff and I was saying, okay, guys, we, you know, he thinks he can beat us. I got competitive. We can beat him. We’re going to even be better. We’re going to be this and one of our pizza cooks at the time, he said, well, you know, Terry, he said, what motivates me is not trying to beat somebody else, but what motivates me is that I know that this pizza I’m making might be the one meal out for a family that’s coming in, might be the one chance they get to go out and eat. And I want that pizza to be the very best it can be for that family. And I just started crying. I was like, yes, what he said, absolutely what he said.

Anthony Codispoti: That is definitely the motivation is something positive rather than, you know, you’re trying to beat this other guy over here. It’s like, let’s just focus on our thing and let’s, let’s make it the best experience for our customers that we can. So right out of the gate, you guys were slammed. Why? What was so special or different about what you guys were doing versus other pizza that available there in Austin?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well, I think it was a combination of things. I think it was true. There wasn’t a lot of competition in, in Austin at that time. I think pizza is something that everybody loves. And I think because of the amount of care and attention, Jen took to make sure the dough was perfect. And, and, and we, oh my gosh, we tried so many different cheeses. We tried so many, everything needed to be just right.

We spent so much, even just on our dressing or salad dressing, we, I can’t even tell you how many vinegars we tasted to make sure this is, has to taste like the old school in New York style salad that we want. We, at the time, we, we were making subs and there was no place to get the right bread, to get the bread just right. And so we had modeled our subs after this place in Western New York called Aunt Cookies and we just couldn’t find the bread in Texas.

And so we fed X the bread from Petrilo’s Bakery in, in Western New York. And so we didn’t make money on our subs forever, but we just wanted to have them right. We wanted to turn Austinites onto this sub. And so the attention to detail that we took for all of our ingredients and and the people we hired, our vibe, you know, we were just, we just wanted to make a great experience for everybody. I think it was a combination of all those things. And I don’t know. We, yeah, we heard great people who really cared and I don’t know.

Anthony Codispoti: Tell me that you’re not still fed Xing bread in from New York. You got a way to make this happen now.

Terri Hannifin Buis: We did. We worked with a chef and with our kitchen manager at the time and we reverse engineered their bread and our, our bread is excellent. We make it fresh every day. People order our bread wholesale. Um, so we really worked hard on it to get it right.

Anthony Codispoti: So that’s made in-house now. And are you able to supply the new Houston location as well from Austin? With that bread?

Terri Hannifin Buis: They make it in-house too. We, we make it in each of our shops. We make the bread fresh.

Anthony Codispoti: So how quickly after you had opened that first location, did you open the second one?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Five years. And we were, we were, we got the least four years that the, um, the, the owner of that building, they’d been the owner for generations. And there had, there was a sewing machine repair shop and a dry cleaner in it. And, um, they, they were raising the rent. I, I want to say they were raising the rent from $18 a square foot to $25 a square foot or something like that.

And the, uh, the current businesses were like, this is outrageous. We can’t pay that. And so the landlord came to us and said, would you have any interest? And we, at that time, as I told you, we were saying no to people who were calling for 10 pizzas.

We were having to say no and send them to other pizzerias. And, um, also coincidentally at that time, we had so many employees who were just growing, you know, they had become managers. We had, and we just had so many that were just ready for more responsibility. And so it just was perfect timing. We said, yes, please. Yes. And so we took the lease and we, um, we built that restaurant. Um, and I think we opened in 2010 and

Anthony Codispoti: that was a great, was it dine in as well?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Or just, it was take out, just take out. And yeah. And little did we know what a great compliment to one another they would be. Um, so our weights were still very long to get a table at our dine in location. And so we had that to offer. We could say you’re welcome to order, take out a next door.

Anthony Codispoti: Um, and. So these, and it just, the second location was right next door to the first one. It was across the park. Like a different part of town. You guys were so overloaded with demand in that one spot. You’re like, yeah, we could support opening a second location. Okay. Got it. Yeah.

Terri Hannifin Buis: And we did, and we did. And it was great. And it was a great learning experience for us. Um, wildly different businesses at take out and dine in and, you know, full service versus take out. And. It was just great. And we had all these leaders that who were ready, who helped us open that location. Um, just worked out great.

Anthony Codispoti: And when did number three come? How much later was that?

Terri Hannifin Buis: 2018. Uh, we opened in 2018 and that we, um, my, my business partners and I, we were not looking to expand. We were, you know, quality of life was our goal. Um, we were not, we were not those ambitious, like let’s print, you know, get hundreds of businesses and we were like, this is a lot. My business partners had two kids, you know, we were, we’re all, you know, we were enjoying what we had. However, we kept building employees that were ready for more responsibility.

I mean itching for more responsibility. And so our, um, our first employees, um, nano Whitman and Phil Kortzak, and we had brought on the other employees that were just natural leaders and, uh, Jeff Metler helped us open more home size and Adam Cooper came. Everybody just came in and, and we just kept building leaders, building leaders. So really they were what pushed us organically into opening another restaurant.

Anthony Codispoti: So interesting for every other growth story I’ve heard is there was demand for it. There was, you know, right. We wanted to grow the business. We either we wanted to franchise or we’ve got investors that are looking for better growth is the first time I’ve heard a growth story that was, uh, really pushed along by we had employees who were looking for bigger challenges. We needed to open another location so they could keep growing in, you know, their own personal development. That’s fascinating to me. Yeah.

Terri Hannifin Buis: I mean, that was really it. That was, and same with our Houston location. It was the same thing. Our leaders were ready for more. And we are our original, uh, Steve, where at the Heimer, um, who is one of our, um, investors, our biggest investor who helped us install lights. And, you know, he’s just phenomenal, but he kept saying, come to Houston, come to Houston. I’ve got the great location. It’s really great. You guys will love it. And we just kept saying, no, no, thank you.

Thank you so much. Nope. We’ve got our hands full.

Um, no, thank you. And he, he brought Joseph, my other business partner down. I think for a baseball game or something, an Astros game and show Joseph the building and Joseph called Jen and I. And he said, I think you guys need to come see this building. And we were like, Oh no. He said, just come, just come look at it. We’re like, we really don’t want to.

He’s like, just do. So we came down and it was a two-story plain brick building that is old school looking, um, just the era that we love. And it had, someone had painted Lionel Richie on the side of the building. And it said, is it me you’re looking for? And Jen and I, you know, we went to, we graduated high school in 86. We, you know, went to

Anthony Codispoti: college in New York in the eighties. Yeah. We were just like, Oh no. We were done for. So we said yes. Yeah. It’s a sign. And it was tough because we opened it. Um, we got the lease and then COVID hit. And it was our first business outside of our city.

Terri Hannifin Buis: And, you know, one of the best things about being an entrepreneur is that you don’t know what you don’t know, right? And so you’re like, Oh, we can do this. There’s not that great a pizza. I’m not Houston.

We’ll, we’ll be a slam dunk. Um, and, and then you, then you open it and you’re like, Oh, all these other factors that we didn’t anticipate and we certainly didn’t anticipate COVID. We certainly didn’t anticipate what was going to happen to all of our Austin restaurants during that time. And, uh, man, it was an incredible challenge. Um, and so we simplified what we were going to do down there. And one of our business partners, um, we had brought on these junior business partners who just were ready for more to be partners in the restaurant. And he moved to Houston to open that location. And, um, you know, we just took one thing at a time and got through and eventually opened it and it’s been so great. Houston is such a great town. Um, we’ve loved it.

Anthony Codispoti: So, uh, when did you actually open the doors? What point in COVID were we?

Terri Hannifin Buis: We opened the doors to two years ago in three months. Um, so we kind of shut down the process during the height of COVID. Um, so, uh, like end of 2022.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. And we, we, yeah, cause Austin, it was, you know, we were in Texas during COVID. And so what that means is there were a lot of challenges. I don’t know what other states had, but we would have customers come in and spit at our staff, um, because they were wearing masks. And, uh, we, it was, you know, just get in their face. And it was really challenging. We lost, we had up until that point kept people for, you know, 12 years.

Um, that, that left because the restaurant business wasn’t fun anymore. Cause it was a fight every day. And, um, and that was a real blow for us.

Um, it was just a blow all the way around. It was, you’re not going to meet a restaurant tour or any business person that would say it was the hardest, it was just the hardest time in my career. Um, so we, we really had to focus on Austin and keeping our staff safe and making it, you know, trying to hire people in the middle of COVID. And, um, you know, it was just a major challenge. So, uh, so we didn’t do a lot in Houston. And then, and then when things started opening up, we focused and we’re able to open, um, and, uh, it’s, it’s just been a really another, I feel like I’m going through a master’s class of being a restaurant tour right now.

Anthony Codispoti: So who, who or what were you able to lean on during those difficult COVID times? Right. It’s not fun anymore. There’s all these rules, things are changing. People are being rude to the staff. Folks, folks that have been with you a long time are leaving. Like how, how do you and your partners get through a difficult time like that?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well, we, we had to lean on each other, our, our, our main people and remind ourselves over and over again, what our core goals were and, and what our concept is. And, um, of course we, at that time, we had to turn all of our dining rooms into expo stations because everything was curbside.

And so we, we had to reinvent our restaurant every three months. And thank God we had really, um, resilient people working for us that were up for pivoting and they were up for the challenges. I mean, um, it was really, we relied on ourselves and just reminding each other why we’re in this business, why we got in and in the first place, what our goal is. We still believe in our goal. We want to make people happy. We want to make the world a better place.

And yes, it looks different now, how to make people happy. And yes, um, we’re reinvent, inventing ourselves, uh, every second, but so long as we keep that at the center of what we do, we’ll get through this and we did. And in so many ways we’re stronger than we’ve ever been.

Anthony Codispoti: So, you know, you had to endure that together. Sometimes those hardships, yeah, bring you guys closer together because it, it pulls you back to that foundation of those core values and the goals that were the, the whole reason for starting everything in the first place. So you’re up to four locations now, almost 400 employees. What’s the future look like? You guys got another location or two up your sleeves?

Terri Hannifin Buis: You know, we think about it because we do feel like we do believe in our product and we believe in our hospitality and we, we know it’s, it’s a winning recipe, you know. Um, and so we do think about that.

Where would our next locations be? Um, but we also, we don’t want to do it in a hurry. You know, we need, we want to do it. The, we want to have leaders who are ready because it’s so hard. It’s so hard if you don’t have someone who believes in the mission, you know, who, who totally believes in hospitality in every corner of our business, whether you’re, it’s the dishwasher or the, or the host or, you know, no matter where they are in the business, it’s, um, if you don’t buy into that and into the details of, yes, we are doing three day proofs on our dough. And yes, that requires you to move the dough boxes into different areas of the walk-in. And yes, that is hard, but this is what the job is.

And we, you know, the details matter. You really need people who believe that to, to do it. Otherwise it’s just too hard. And so that’s our, that’s our biggest challenge, making sure that we have enough people that want to grow and that want to move to do it.

Anthony Codispoti: Cause otherwise it sounds like each of your locations is almost like a little incubator for developing this talent than to help with the next location or locations.

Terri Hannifin Buis: It’s true, although, I don’t know if we have time, but I will say after COVID changed everything. So whereas before our staff, our employees ate out, did eat out with full service. And so they understood the kind of hospitality that we’re talking about. Cause even if we have a takeout location, we still want people to feel the kind of care that you might feel in a fine dining restaurant.

And now most of our employees do third party takeout. They don’t, they don’t have a lot of human connection. So it’s, we’re, we’re learning to teach that type of hospitality to people who have just an entirely different perspective than, than we’ve ever had.

So that’s, that’s our newest, biggest challenges. How can we turn people on to that type of quality human connection? And how can we learn that, how to do that digitally too, to make hospitality through our website and through some of these third party delivery places.

Anthony Codispoti: So it’s, it’s- Because there’s a lot of times now where it’s DoorDash or Uber Eats or somebody that’s coming to get the order, you never see the customer, you never talk to the customer, you don’t have any direct interaction with them. Yeah. So have you come up with some ideas that you’re, you’re, you’ve either done or you’re experimenting with to create a little bit of that through a digital space?

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well, we’re constantly trying to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes. What’s it like when you’re, when you’re wanting to order from Uber Eats or DoorDash, what is their experience? What is the DoorDash or the actual delivery person’s experience with their job? What is their job like? How can we make their job easier?

So they’re motivated to put our orders first so that they’re motivated to get our pizza in front of the guest hands quickly while it’s still fresh and hot. So we’re just educating ourselves a lot and trying to tweak the process as best we can and trying to learn about the different platforms and, and, and just, you know, that’s mostly what we’re doing. Talking to our employees, like, tell me about, tell me about the experience, this interaction, tell me about what, what, from your experience when the guest is really turned on, what turns them on. So it’s, it’s hard. It’s hard when it’s not us in the restaurant anymore. I don’t know. It’s a, it’s a challenge, but we’re, we love it.

Anthony Codispoti: So, you know, Terry, sometimes I find that things that in the moment seem like a mistake. Later on, I look back at, and I’m like, oh, I’m actually really glad that happened. It caused me to change direction or it taught me such an important lesson. It fueled me to do something else. Can you think back to something where in the moment you’re like, this is a disaster. What a huge goof up on our part. But now you look back on it and you’re like, man, it was the best thing that ever happened to us.

Terri Hannifin Buis: It’s a good question. Well, I mean, I could, I would say we made a lot of mistakes during COVID when we were reinventing ourselves. We had a super clunky order system.

We, we put a lot of challenges on our guests in the process of trying to pivot and trying to, trying to keep our team safe and our guests safe. I, there was one of a restaurateur who hired me to be director of operations for his restaurants in Denver, John Hickenlooper. He’s, was governor of Colorado, a senator, really fascinating person. But he used to say, if I knew then what I know now, what a shame it would be to your point. But I love that saying.

Yeah. If, if, if we knew now, if, if we had, if we had known what we were doing at that time, it would have been a shame because we had to make these mistakes. We made so many. And had we not made those mistakes, we wouldn’t be as strong as we are right now. We wouldn’t have the people that we have right now. We wouldn’t, you know, when you’re, when you’re working with human motivation, or that’s the thing that motivates you to make people happy, you have to make mistakes. You have to see both sides. You can’t just keep making people happy because then you don’t really know how to recover it when you don’t.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. Um, maybe, uh, COVID is your answer to this, but I always like to ask my guests, excuse me about a serious challenge that they’ve overcome in their lives. Maybe it has to do with work. Maybe it’s something personal. Maybe the two of them come together. Kind of curious to hear what that is for you, how you got through it and some lessons that you learned.

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well, I will say my answer is still going on. I haven’t gotten through it. It’s a work in progress. Um, but my biggest challenge for me is because we’ve grown so much. We have, uh, four restaurants. We have 380 employees.

We have some 45 managers. I don’t get to be in the day to day. I don’t get to interact with the customers every day.

I don’t get to work side by side with my team every day. And that’s my favorite part of the business. Um, and so my biggest challenge is how do I find joy? And, um, I am in meetings a lot when, when my job is so distant from the core of our business. How do I find my joy?

How do I feel? How do I offer value? How do I, um, support my team in the best way I can when, um, when I’m not, uh, with them all the time and, and I’m so wide open to people’s advice on this on how do you grow and still, and still love what you do every day and how, how when you were a person who got in the restaurant business, because you never wanted to work in an office and you never wanted to have meetings all day. That was your nightmare. And now you’re in meetings all day and that’s what you do. And you’re on the computer all the time and you’re not, uh, having face to face interactions all the time. Um, that is by far and away my personal biggest challenge. Um, and I’m, I’m still in it. I’m still trying to find that the answer to that.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s tough, right? Because just to kind of, you know, reiterate what you’re saying, like you got into this line of work, you started this business because you love being in the front line, right? You were the woman who was clicking her heels cause she got to work the fry station.

She got to be the cashier and she got to learn from this guy about how, you know, why he kept the grill so clean. And, you know, because you were so excited and thrilled about all those details and taught that to your team, it’s fueled your growth, which is great. That’s a wonderful thing. You can share this, you know, beautiful product with so many more people and you’re helping all of your employees with their personal development and their own career trajectory. But the byproduct is that the business has grown to the point where you’re not needed on the front line. You’re needed in these meetings to help continue to fuel this growth. You know, is there the opportunity for you to, Hey, one day a week, I, I’m going to go, I’m going to go work in one of the restaurants and I’m just, I’m going to put myself right back there in the front line, or is there just not even the time in the headspace to think about doing something like that?

Terri Hannifin Buis: You know, I love it being in the restaurant. It’s an interesting thing because we’ve grown so much. I’m still being a founding owner holds a weight that I can’t relate to because I’m just me and I, you know, I’m like just feel so lucky and happy all the time and grateful.

But I walk in the restaurants and, Oh my gosh, the pressure is on. And any comment I make is taken from a perspective that, that isn’t always where it’s, where it comes from. So if I, if I say, Oh, that’s amazing.

That I’ve noticed how, let’s just make an example. I noticed how clean the, the prep area was way to go. That can be taken as, well, you didn’t mention anything about how clean the line was.

Obviously you’re critical about the line or, or, you know, I’ll, I’ll say something about one person. I’ll say like, gosh, I’m so impressed. I watched how that customer reacted to you. That was really inspiring. That was great. It will be like, well, it just gets turned around.

Anthony Codispoti: Like I must be doing a terrible job.

Terri Hannifin Buis: Yeah. Or yeah, just in, in so many ways that I, I, I still, because I’m just me and I, you know, I think of me as, you know, the one who gets down on her knees to clean the corners under the dishwasher, you know, um, they don’t know me as that person who, you know, of course I’m going to take out the trash, but I, at this point, like, if I did, that would make them feel like they weren’t doing their job. And so it’s a different experience. And I’m, it’s hard for me to remember, um, or it’s hard for me to know exactly with each person how they’re going to take what I say. And so I’m having to really learn on a whole other level, communication skills that I’ve never learned.

And so it’s, it, it seems like, yeah, it’s your restaurant. Get in there and do it. But honestly, I have, I don’t know the POS system. And as I’ve gotten older, my eyes are not very good. And so it’s hard for me to read the tickets to run the food.

You know, there’s all kinds of challenges now that, uh, that I didn’t have. And I kind of get in their way and I make them nervous. And I really, um, you know, everybody wants to please the founding owner. And so it’s just different. It’s a challenge that I face and, um, which is good, you know.

Anthony Codispoti: No, uh, just got one more question for you, Terry, but before I ask it, I want to do two things for everyone listening today. I know that you love this show because Terry’s been an amazing guest. Lots of wonderful advice and great stories.

Please hit the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app so you can continue to get access to more great episodes like this. Uh, and if you want to get in touch with Terry or follow her story, you can find their website online at homeslicepizza.com. Terry, any other ways that are good for folks to connect with you or with the business? Yes.

Terri Hannifin Buis: Um, you can connect with us on Instagram. Um, uh, home slice, there’s a home slice pizza, um, connect with us on Instagram. We have Facebook, um, but you can get to all those things from our website. Great.

Anthony Codispoti: So last question, as you look to the future, what exciting changes do you see coming to your industry that you are really looking forward to? Can’t wait to see how they unfold.

Terri Hannifin Buis: Well, certainly, um, the changes in the way people eat out and, and how people eat out, uh, they get takeout more. They just, they, they, that just is something that is happening.

It’s full service. Isn’t as dominant as it, as it once was. So, um, and especially in the pizza business. Um, so it’s really interesting for me to see how that’s going to unfold and how hospitality changes and kind of like the, you know, the Disney story that you shared and, and the story that I shared about how we were, we were needing to create an experience for guests.

Um, when, you know, they had to wait for their pizza or, or, um, you know, you’re not face to face with someone you’re relying on a middle person to get you your, your food, how can we, how can we turn that into a wonderful experience? And how, how the industry itself is going to start to evolve in that way. So I’m looking forward to that.

Anthony Codispoti: Let’s hurry. I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Terri Hannifin Buis: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Anthony Codispoti: Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.