We were lucky to catch up with Connor Branson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Connor, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
In 2018 I was waiting tables and manning a one-man kitchen with my friends at a café and patisserie on the Kansas City Plaza. On a particularly slow day, my good friend Phil and I were chatting about our aspirations. He tells me that someday, he and his wife want to open a vegan food truck and call it The Tree Hugger Truck, and how they were working hard towards that goal. Food trucks had always interested me; the rush of running a kitchen on wheels, the connection to customers who go out of their way to stop and enjoy your work, the ability to manage my own menu, and of course the niche branding that food trucks embrace. I share with Phil that I’ve always wanted a food truck of my own, and that I know I want it to be a Pro Wrestling themed pizza truck, but I didn’t have a name in mind. Without skipping a beat Phil goes, “Oh nice! You could call it You Wanna Pizza Me?” and walks off as though he hadn’t just come up with the greatest idea I’d ever heard. Fast forward a couple years, and Phil owns The Tree Hugger Truck, I’m a part of his kitchen crew, he eventually sells it to me to open his own brick and mortar, and I become the proud owner of You Wanna Pizza Me?. It was fate that we were serving tables a slow day, dreaming of our futures. He let me use the name for free as well and I can’t thank him enough.
Connor, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’ve worked in food service since I was 15 years old. I started at my small Missouri hometown’s McDonalds working on the crew. Eventually they moved me to the kitchen because I had a passion for cooking passed down to me by my mother, and I was taking Spanish classes in my high school, so they figured I could communicate better than others. After high school I went to college in Oklahoma City and had a summer job slicing deli meats at a Jersey Mikes Subs. The life of a part time sandwich artist was fun but I eventually looked for jobs in my degree field. Both of those fast food experiences gave me perspective on customer service, food handling, and kitchen time management, but when I worked on the Kansas City Plaza for a family-owned café and patisserie a few years later, I saw the drive and passion it takes to truly be a culinary entrepreneur. The rich history of that establishment, the generations of work and creativity that went into maintaining a successful restaurant, the generations of customers that would come in and be treated like family, that all spoke to me and inspires me in my own business now. The love and care that goes into it all: from the bakers that would come in at 3 or 4 in the morning to work tirelessly on detailed, award-winning patisserie, the chefs that would create beautiful dishes while orchestrating their moves to work around each other successfully, the front of house that made customers feel as though they were at home engaging in family tradition.
All of these I take with me and apply it to my 18’x8′ kitchen on wheels as best as I can. I’m proud to have put in the work in the food industry to gain the knowledge and experience to create that same family-first environment centered around a delicious flame-grilled, char-kissed pizza and a fun, nostalgic Pro Wrestling aesthetic.
I love hearing about customers’ favorite wrestlers or moments they remember growing up and watching their heroes win championships on TV. Wrestling is the ultimate in Americana and I have countless memories myself of cheering for the greats. It’s the only sport (yes, sport) in the world that is also theatre, tailoring itself completely to the entertainment and enjoyment of the fans watching in person or at home. I believe that’s a philosophy that fits in the culinary world as well, especially pizza. The customer orders exactly what they want, we create it and deliver an experience that’s been tailored completely to them. It’s fitting that my passions have collided and now I get to be head chef and owner of my own pro wrestling pizza food truck. . I’m only 31 now, so I’m young and have so much time to grow and hone my craft even more, and You Wanna Pizza Me? is how I bring that passion to life. 12 year old me, wearing my faded Stone Cold Steve Austin shirt, wouldn’t believe it.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
They told me I was a gifted kid, so they put me in a program throughout elementary and middle school with other gifted kids where we exercised our “different” brains on unique approaches to learning for a few hours a day. I had amazing support from my parents as well. As their oldest kid, my accomplishments in and out of school were celebrated. They constantly told me about how there were no limits to what I could achieve. To no fault of their own, this instilled some deeply rooted perfectionism in my head. There was nothing worse than underachieving. I cried to myself when I misspelled the word lathe in the 6th grade spelling bee. I got my first B on a report card in 11th grade and it nearly killed me. I had a real problem with being wrong that I still struggle with some days. However, when I opened my food truck while having no business ownership experience, I quickly realized that I’m going to make mistakes, sometimes daily. It’s not going to be fair and sometimes it’s completely out of my hands. Success was not going to be handed to me, and I couldn’t “big brain” my way into it either. The trick is to eliminate making the same mistakes repeatedly. I’m not going to be perfect, somedays I’m going to just be decent and somedays I’m going to plain stink, but if I want to stay afloat in this endeavor, I have to persist and eliminate those mistakes. President Calvin Coolidge said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence” and I believe he’s right. You have to keep going, whether its 110 degrees or 25 degrees in your little metal box kitchen.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
When I opened my store, I wanted to serve the people of my city. I grew up in Kansas City and apart from my four years in college, I’ve lived here my whole life. I purchased ownership of You Wanna Pizza Me? from my friend who had been running the truck under the name The Tree Hugger Truck. I was a member of his kitchen crew as well, and we served tasty vegan comfort food like tacos, nachos, burgers, fried Oreos, and homemade desserts. Seeing as Kansas City had/has a limited vegan food scene, especially during Covid, customers caught wind and flocked to his truck every night. It was clear that there was an appeal in the plant based community that I could try to tap into myself if I ever wanted to be my own boss someday. So when I took over, under a completely different name, different kitchen, different menu concept, to my surprise it was the vegans who kept us in business! We absolutely love our vegan customers who come through looking for good food at an affordable price. I’ve always tried my best to keep prices in a realistic range for them, as other pizzerias can charge almost double for a product that we’ve been told is not as satisfying as ours. Many of our new clients come from word of mouth from our vegan customers. We’re also unique in that we are not an entirely plant based restaurant, so those with dietary restrictions or preferences, but have partners who do eat meat or dairy, they are welcome and accommodated at our store. Social media groups like Vegan KC (shout out to our friends in there) have made it possible to spread word that there’s a food truck downtown called You Wanna Pizza Me? that makes a tasty vegan or standard flame-grilled pizza.
Our efforts have culminated this year by winning an award from PETA for having one of the top 10 Vegan Pizzas in the country for our taco pizza, El Luchador Vegan. This was decided on by their members, and I’m incredibly honored to have the the Vegan’s recognition and support.
Contact Info:
- Website: youwannapizzamekc.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youwannapizzamekc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/youwannapizzamekc
Image Credits
All credits to You Wanna Pizza Me?