By Charlie Pogacar
For Frank Kabatas, owner of East Village Pizza in New York City, social media isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s a daily part of running the business. With 1.7 million followers on Instagram alone, he’s proof that pizzerias can turn their online presence into a powerful customer funnel. But if you ask him what others in the industry are doing wrong, he doesn’t mince words.
“They don’t spend enough time [doing it],” Kabatas said on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “Social media wants time. Social media wants effort. Social media wants good videos. And they don’t spend enough time [doing those things].”
Kabatas has been at it for more than a decade, starting in 2012 when few pizzerias were posting their content on the platform. And even fewer pizzerias were posting videos, so his early clips—showing the shop’s pizzas being stretched, sauced and baked—quickly went viral.
Related: How Frank Kabatas Turned an NYC Pizza Shop That Once Fired Him Into a Powerhouse
“It wasn’t because I had extraordinary skills,” he said. “The field was empty and I used it. I used the material in the right way at the right time.”
Of course, a lot has changed since 2012. What worked then doesn’t necessarily work now. “Now everybody is using Instagram,” Kabatas said. “Before they even open for a grand opening, they have their Instagram account. Now the field [is filled with countless] people. If you [kick] the ball, it’s going to hit someone before it gets to the goal.”
As East Village Pizza’s presence has grown on the platform, Kabatas has insisted on running the Instagram account himself. If you really don’t enjoy running your own social media channels, you could outsource it, he said. He just seems to believe something will be lost in translation if one were to outsource creating and posting the content.
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“People tell me, ‘We have a professional who could do it.’ But what I believe is nobody is going to give more effort than yourself in your own business,” Kabatas said. “My Instagram is like my business—what I want to show people is there. So I do it myself.”
Kabatas estimates he spends around two hours a day filming, choosing clips and putting them together—not every day, but enough to keep a steady flow of content. And he thinks every pizzeria owner should do the same for at least the first few years.
“For the first five years, you should do it yourself,” he said. “Because using Instagram is going to give you an idea about your business. It’s going to give you an idea about your pizza. You have to be in the moment.”
That means paying attention to what content works—and doubling down on it. For East Village Pizza, that means showcasing the shop’s most visually striking menu items—among those are the shop’s iconic “double stack pizza” and cheesy garlic knots. Those are the posts that perform the best and drive the most traffic to the shop, Kabatas said. The proof, for Kabatas, is in the following: The shop regularly receives foot traffic that includes tourists from across the U.S. and abroad.
Kabatas also stressed the importance of showing customers exactly what they’ll get when they walk in the door. “I don’t edit my videos,” Kabatas said. “I just cut them to put them together. No lighting changes, nothing like that. People come in and say, ‘[The shop is] exactly like what I saw on the video.’ That’s very important for me.”
In a world where algorithms change and competition grows fiercer by the day, Kabatas’ approach is refreshingly straightforward: Show up, put in the time, highlight what makes your shop special and make sure reality matches the picture you’re painting online.
“The main thing, 100%—you have to spend time on social media,” Kabatas said. “Keep [kicking] the ball.”
Links to the podcast episode:
