By Tracy Morin | Photos courtesy of Franky’s Pizza & Delicatessen
Benjamin Hoover, executive chef and co-owner of Franky’s Pizza & Delicatessen in Warren, Ohio, is part of a bona fide foodservice dynasty in Northeast Ohio. He’s also co-owner/operations manager of the Monday Dinner Project Restaurant Group, owned with his family members, who operate completely different concepts: a fast-casual barbecue restaurant and an artisan ice cream brand.
But, while the family gathers weekly to exchange ideas, Hoover has a strong vision of his own for Franky’s, which relies on a commercial-bakery-type production schedule, airtight operational systems and creativity-boosting competitions (including a first-place win at the International Pizza Challenge in 2026) to stay at the top of its game. With a pizza style inspired by both New York squares and Ohio’s lesser-known Brier Hill sheet-pan pies, Franky’s has established itself as a true original and innovator while honoring the long-established traditions of its region.
PMQ: Tell us about your background before pizza.
Benjamin Hoover: I very much grew up in a restaurant family. It was exactly how you picture it: doing homework in the back booth and spending more time joking around with line cooks than hanging out with friends my own age. My first job was scrubbing dishes at my parents’ restaurant, and it was a fantastic way to gain entry into the industry.
As I grew up and graduated high school, I flew the coop and pursued secondary education at a state university. However, during this time, I kept finding myself gravitating back toward the kitchen. Through kitchen jobs in my college town, I found that having grown up in a kitchen environment, I had a bit of a head start over my peers. And, during this time, I started to find my footing as a chef outside of my parents’ restaurant. I decided that I was going to pursue the industry full-time.
I applied to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Due to a last minute dropout for the starting semester, I was quickly accepted. Within a week of applying, I had quit my job, packed my car and was headed east to start classes. I spent two years getting my degree and finding my way into as many different kitchens as possible. I ventured into fine dining, hotels and farm-to-table concepts, and spent every waking moment with kitchen clogs on. During this time, I also took as many opportunities as possible to head down to New York City, to explore, learn and, of course, eat lots of pizza.
PMQ: Was that what started your path to pizza?
Hoover: As I explored the pizza culture in New York City, bouncing around to all of the legendary slice shops, I was consistently impressed by the classic “New York slice.” However, in nearly every slice case, beneath the traditional wedge-cut round pie, there was always something else that caught my eye: the New York Sicilian, a square-cut, rectangular pie with a thicker, crispier crust. It’s the Sicilian slice that I fell in love with and exclusively sell at my restaurant.
A big part of the reason why is that the square cut pan-style pizza more closely resembles the “sheet pan” pizzas I grew up with back home. For those unfamiliar with Northeast Ohio, you may be surprised to learn of the strong Italian-American heritage that Youngstown and the surrounding cities have. By my estimate, mom-and-pop Italian restaurants outnumber any other cuisine in this area by a healthy margin. Nearly all of them sell pizza, most commonly the “Brier Hill/Old World” style or “sheet-pan pizzas.”
As I became more and more obsessed with pizza, I dove into the history. I started to better understand its origin, how it transformed, and how it settled into the fabric of different communities. I wanted to take the sheet pan-style pizzas I grew up on back to their roots.
PMQ: When did you open your pizzeria?
Hoover: In 2022, I purchased the building where my restaurant currently is. Built as a flooring warehouse in 1952, it had been abandoned since the mid ’90s—nearly 30 years before my ownership. I spent two years rehabbing the space, saving it from the city’s demolition list, and opened my restaurant in 2024.
During this time, I maintained active management and operational roles in several other companies. My parents, Erik and Stacey, as well as my brother Max, and later my wife, Emily, co-own Monday Dinner Project (MDP). MDP is a restaurant group that includes our fast-casual barbecue restaurant, Cockeye BBQ, and our artisan ice cream brand, Cockeye Creamery. In the same way that I am creatively at the forefront of Franky’s, my brother leads Cockeye Creamery, and my parents lead Cockeye BBQ. However, we, as a family, run these businesses together.
Funnily enough, the company is called Monday Dinner Project because that is the only day of the week all of the business are closed and no one is working. Monday is the day we have family dinner together. That is the day we sit together as a family of passionate chefs and restaurateurs, at my mom’s dining room table, and share ideas.
PMQ: Tell us about your pizza style and dough.
Hoover: Franky’s Pizza & Delicatessen currently exclusively sells New York Sicilian-style pizzas. We run on a par-bake model, meaning I have a staff of bakers who arrive around 5 a.m. every morning to prep and bake the doughs. Essentially, for the first eight hours of the day, we’re a commercial bakery that produces focaccia.
We utilize a series of pre-ferments to build a depth of flavor. Then we spin up a high-hydration dough. Through a series of proofing and stretching (all done by hand), we’re able to achieve the correct shape and perfect crumb. Then the doughs are baked at just the right moment to lock them in. Currently, our bakers produce 600 to 800 pounds of dough daily.
This has major advantages. For anyone who has ever made pizzas before, you’ve probably come to understand that stretching the dough is the challenging part, especially when working with high-hydration doughs. So we remove that task from our pizza makers and shift it to a specialized position. This makes our pizza build procedure extremely fast and allows us to shorten our bake time significantly. This allows us to offer an artisan product at a high-volume production quantity. Second, the “double-baked” aspect helps us to produce an extremely crispy and light pizza.
PMQ: Tell us about your competition experience. How does competing help improve your craft and your business?
Hoover: Competition has always been a part of my journey as a chef. It’s hard not to be passionate about your craft and nice to be able to have an environment outside of your normal everyday business to flex those muscles. As a kid growing up, I spent a lot of time doing competition barbecue alongside my father—and, more recently, my brother has won national awards in the artisan ice cream space. I think more so than the desire to win, for me, it’s about putting yourself into spaces with other people who live a lifestyle like your own. This past International Pizza Challenge in March had, I believe, around 750 competitors. A lot of the time, as operators, we spend so much of our lives in the kitchen, we lose the opportunity to connect with one another.
Another big part of why I compete is to have something to bring back to my staff. Franky’s has over two dozen employees, and I absolutely would not be able to do what I do without them. There is staff in my kitchen for 17 to 18 hours every day, prepping dough and sweating in front of the ovens. It’s important to me to provide them something tangible to say that what we’re doing is special.
PMQ: How do you approach marketing and use social media to build buzz?
Hoover: When Franky’s opened in 2024, we shot out of a cannon. Due to the strong presence our other restaurants have in our city, the expectations were high. This being my first step into the industry as an executive chef, it was extremely daunting. We sold out nearly every day for three months. Since then, we have nearly tripled our staff, completely renovated our kitchen twice and maintained a steady workflow since.
My primary tool for attracting new business and maintaining existing guests is to lead with the product. We rely heavily on word-of-mouth and social media (both free options!). Our modus operandi across all of our businesses, and something we set as high priority with our staff, is simply that the product needs to be exceptional. At the end of the day, a great guest experience is paramount. If you’re selling the highest quality dishes that you can, at a relatively reasonable price, and front-of-house staff are kind and approachable, those are really all of the tools you need.
PMQ: How does your menu also work to attract customers and keep them coming back?
Hoover: One interesting aspect of all of our businesses (Franky’s, Cockeye BBQ and Cockeye Creamery) is that we utilize rotating seasonal and specials menus. At Franky’s, we call them “Spotlight Specials.” On a rotating basis, every two or three weeks, we release new pizzas and sandwiches onto this specials menu. The specials’ non-permanence allows us to play creatively with new ingredients and seasonal concepts.
This has two major benefits. Internally, it allows us to “soft launch” new things onto the menu to test for their viability in the market. We can see what has traction. If something sells exceptionally well, then we can think about putting it on the regular menu. This also fosters a collaborative environment within the staff. For some folks in my kitchen, whether they have decades of experience or are just starting out, this might be the first time they’ve ever been allowed to flex creatively.
From a guest perspective, this allows us to maintain a high level of engagement with our regulars. Franky’s proximity to our economic downtown means that we do a steady lunch business. We see doctors, lawyers, police, skilled tradesmen and pretty much anyone with a lunch break between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. And, once we broke into that market, we quickly found ourselves in the rotation—meaning we get a steady lunch order once or twice a week. Our ability to offer something new to these guests nearly every week means our menu never gets stale. I am extremely fortunate to enjoy this, and the dialogue around “What’s the spotlight next week?” is a conversation I am glad I get to keep having. In 2025, I ran over 50 unique specials, primarily sandwiches and pizzas.
PMQ: What are your specialties and best sellers?
Hoover: Currently, our signature pizza is The Sunday Sauce Sicilian, an upside-down Sicilian with an extra-virgin olive oil and house “white seasoning” base. Mozzarella goes down first and is topped with an eight-hour braised “Sunday Sauce,” with meatballs and sausage in a hearty tomato sauce. We finish the pie with seasoned, toasted breadcrumbs, Pecorino Romano cheese and fresh basil. This pizza won first place in the Sicilian Category at The International Pizza Challenge in Las Vegas in 2026. This pie calls back to the roots of Sicilian style pizza in Italy with sfincinone, pays homage to the Brier Hill pizza of my hometown, and is a super personal evolution of my own grandmother’s Sunday meat sauce, simmering on her stove constantly throughout my childhood.
Before The Sunday Sauce came onto the menu, our best seller was our Spicy Pepperoni, a red-sauce pie with cup-and-char pepperoni, capicola and a housemade Italian chili crunch oil. The chili crunch is a recipe I am super proud of—it’s a blend of chilis and herbs with garlic and toasted sesame seeds, triple-fried in extra-virgin olive oil. It’s inspired by the classic experience of getting a pepperoni slice and throwing a couple of shakes of crushed red pepper on top.
PMQ: What else has been key to your pizzeria’s success?
Hoover: The thing that I think sets our businesses apart from others is the nearly surgical way we look at our systems and processes. I have felt firsthand the effect that corporately run restaurants have had on the labor pool. Many cooks who find their way onto our staff have lots of experience in kitchens. However, a lot of these folks have experience working for national chains and corporately managed restaurants.
The switch that flipped, for me, was to craft our operations around the skill sets of the labor pool that I have access to, as opposed to hiring folks and becoming frustrated with the gaps in their knowledge. We utilize detailed assembly diagrams, cohesive recipe guides, outlined task guidelines, color-coded kitchen display screens, etc. I am passionate about culinary education, and every member of my staff leaves my kitchen with a better understanding of food science and cooking as a craft. The best advice I could offer to another operator is to use systems—you’ll make it impossible for your staff to put out a bad product.
Tracy Morin is PMQ’s associate editor.
