We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Yancey Carapico a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Yancey, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I had sold my previous/first pizza business less than 2 years before opening up my new spot. I had been searching all over the region for a new location with a friend/partner to do a pizza/bar concept. We never were able to find the right place. My friend had a storefront in downtown Berlin, MD that he wasn’t utilizing to its maximum potential. He had been asking me to get in there and make pizzas, side by side with his people making sushi. I just wanted to get back to making pizzas so badly that I took the offer and it became a shared space. Pizza on one side and sushi on the other. I went to visit a friend for a week in Costa Rica. I took an empty notebook and came up with the entire business plan while sitting in the jungle in his backyard in my downtime. Since it was to be a shared space I thought I needed a business name that wasn’t too far off from my friends sushi business name. His was called the Rusty Anchor. He’s a great friend of mine like a brother for 25 plus years. I worked for him the summer i turned 21, and I always kept a box of Cap’n Crunch in the kitchen at his restaurant and he had been calling me Cap’n for all those years. And then I thought that if there was a pizza on a ship then the Captain’s slice would be the best one. And as this was my classic New York slice shop concept I was going with. Then I thought I’ll name all of my pizzas after Captain’s. But in the broad sense of the word Captain. And it just went from there. I got back from Costa Rica and started making pizzas in that space 13 days later.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I pretty much have always worked in the food industry in some facet for many years, usually cooking. Cooking both personally and professionally was always a passion for me. I used to travel to Chincoteague, VA regularly from Ocean City, MD and would often eat pizza there and I was never satisfied with the quality. And I said to myself that I could do better than this. So I did. I drove out to Minnesota in the winter of 2019 and purchased a food truck. It was a 100% wood fired Neapolitan brick oven pizza food truck. I towed it back 1,250 to Maryland with a snow storm on top of me the whole time. I opened up Cosa Pizza in the spring of 2019 in Chincoteague, VA. I tried to stay as true as possible to real Neapolitan pizza, with the ingredients, combinations, techniques etc. The response from our customers was overwhelmingly positive. I ran that for 3 years then sold it. With my classic New York slice shop that I opened in Berlin, MD on April, 22 2023, I was still using mostly Italian ingredients and techniques now in the form of a New York style pizza as opposed to Neapolitan. The customers really appreciate the quality ingredients and the interesting toppings and unusual pairings that we do with our pizzas. We make pizza at The Cap’ns Slice unlike any other in the area. You’re going to get a quality product at a fair price and in a short amount of time. We have been open 16 going on 17 months now and have made over 100 different named/specialty pizzas.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Prior to opening up my first pizza business in the spring of 2019 I never had any social media experience whatsoever. I never had been on Facebook. MySpace etc. ever. So when I opened up I quickly realized that it was important to do for the business. So I just started doing Instagram just showing the pizzas and the daily life stuff a small independent pizza shop operator. The response that we got both online and in person was overwhelmingly positive. I had someone in Chincoteague ask me to teach a class on social media! I think because I had no prior history of social media use that I was just able to be true and creative with it. To me the Instagram platform was just another creative outlet like the creation of all the pizzas. I would suggest just to be yourself and show people who you truly are, even if it’s not always perfect. And take good pictures, and choose good music!

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

Yes, I did have to sell my first pizza business Cosa Pizza after owning/operating for 3+ years. It wasn’t easy. That’s your creation, your passion, your child if you will. As hard as it was to let it go, I knew that I could rebuild again somewhere else and continue with my passion of running my own pizza business again. And I did it took a little under 2 years to make it happen. And I thought about having my own pizza business again every single day in between the time I sold my first place and opening up my second one. It felt like forever. But I had to stay positive and knit would happen again someday soon. If you are passionate about what you do, then just stay on the path and it will work out. All good things in all good time.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: thecapnsslice
• Facebook: The Cap’ns Slice

Image Credits

Nick Denny
Nick Denny Photography