We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Devin Peek. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Devin below.

Alright, Devin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

Working in a family business is rewarding, but can be exhausting as well. The biggest hurdle in a family business is differentiating between personal and professional feelings. I own a pizzeria called “The Place Pizza” with my 3 brothers. We have been open for 14 months, and within that time there have been some very rewarding moments, and probably the biggest arguments we have had our whole lives. We have been able to overcome most arguments and the key is to forgive, learn, and move on quickly. The restaurant industry can be brutal on small business owners. We have made expensive mistakes and we have to learn quickly and adapt to survive. Some examples of expensive mistakes have been in our Point of Sale contract, and our maintenance supply contract. Although we were lied to about those contracts, there is nothing we can do except learn for next time, and adjust our budget to be able to pay those contracts. Overall, I believe that it is possible to work with family as long as you communicate about issues and do not hold grudges.

Devin , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Devin Peek, and I own 2 pizzerias with my 3 brothers. We have a carry out/delivery location in Salt Lake City, UT 84116, and a restaurant located in Saratoga Springs, UT 84045, about 40 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. We do wood-fired artisan pizzas. This idea started as a joke during a middle of the night conversation. I was managing a pizzeria in Orem, which due to the pandemic, and my boss lowering my pay, I joked with my brother Kaden, while we were prepping for a catering the next day that we should start our own pizzeria and do things different. We recruited my brother, Kyler, who was managing a pizza hut in Hawaii at the time, and he found a crazy good deal on a location in Saratoga Springs right across from the new Costco, and suddenly our joke became real serious. There were several hiccups along the way since we were dealing with new construction. We signed our lease in January 2021, and did not get keys to open until September 2022. This cost us a lot more money than expected, but due to support from several people, we were able to open. The blessing from the delayed construction was that we were able to perfect our menu. Almost everything we use is made from scratch. The dough we make is a light sourdough that uses a starter that was my grandmother’s recipe that we used for sourdough pancakes growing up. We make our own sauces that we grew up on and the freshest toppings we can find. It has been a hit in the community with a 4.7 google rating with over 300 reviews. We were also able to open a second kitchen in Salt Lake City that offers takeout and delivery about 6 months after we opened our first location. Going forward, our goals are to get heavy into the catering side of things. We were able to buy a mobile oven that can be rolled almost anywhere, and we have been able to cater a couple weddings, and several corporate events. Our other goal that we have is to become sustainable.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

This last year has been the hardest year of my life. Starting a restaurant is rough, and several of the owners have not been paid for most of 2023. You have to be resilient when not getting paid. We decided early on to offer a fair wage to our employees, and it is rough paying an employee over double what I take home, but at the end of the day, we would not be here without our amazing employees. Obviously the goal is to get to a point where that changes, but it takes resilience to barely make it financially while consistently working 60-70 hour weeks. Like I mentioned earlier, by learning and making less expensive mistakes, we will be able to avoid not being paid.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

There were probably 3 or 4 close calls in our first year. Although we do share some of the blame, I would place some of the blame on the companies we chose to associate with. Our first payroll company did not pay the right tax rates, which led us to have a lien put on our business by the state of Utah. Our accountant reported our sales wrong which has gotten us in trouble with the state. One major issue that was our fault was that we were consistently losing money on doordash. We did not have the tax rates set properly which ended us costing us thousands of dollars. There were a couple times where I had to personally pay for our food order, or my brother personally covered rent. This led to multiple sleepless nights wondering if we were going to make it.

Contact Info:

• Website: theplace.pizza
• Instagram: theplacepizza.ut
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=100064586917042
• Twitter: theplacepizza

Image Credits
They are my personal photos