By Charlie Pogacar
When Nicole Bean walked into her family’s pizzeria, Pizaro’s Pizza, for the first time as an employee, she wasn’t thinking about industry awards, competition trophies or introducing new styles of pizza to Houston. She was thinking about surviving her first Friday night shift.
“It was really eye-opening,” Bean said on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “I was just kind of wide-eyed…I did not know what I was getting myself into.”
That was over a decade ago. Today, Nicole is the co-owner of Pizaro’s Pizza alongside her husband, Brad, and other members of her family. She’s an award-winning pizzaiola who has competed internationally and helped Pizaro’s become one of the first pizzeria in Houston to serve authentic Neapolitan, New York and Detroit-style pizzas under one roof. She’s also a self-described systems thinker who brought SOPs and structure into the business, drawing from her past career in corporate retail.
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Armed with a varied skillset, Bean is a jack of all trades at Pizaro’s. “I still consider myself a pizza maker,” she said. “But I also do the ordering, work with the marketing team, cut the checks, take photos for social [media]—it’s whatever the business needs.”
In this week’s episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast, Bean talks about what it’s like to compete overseas, how she introduced Detroit-style pizza to a Neapolitan-focused shop in 2016 and why she runs her gluten-free program in pans designed for Detroit pies. She also shares lessons learned from nearly 14 years of operating two locations in a city that’s weathered everything from road construction to Hurricane Harvey—still an emotional topic for her and so many others in Houston who were affected by the natural disaster in 2017.
One of the more memorable pivots came when Bean and her brother attended a demo from Tony Gemignani in New York. There, they got their first taste of Detroit-style pizza—and knew right away it could be the solution to a problem they kept hearing from customers who wanted “something more substantial” than Neapolitan.
“I came back home and said, I need this oven, these pans, this flour,” Bean said. “It took about eight months to get it where I wanted it. And then we invited 80 people to a special dinner to try five versions and give feedback.”
Three of those five original Detroits remain on the menu today.
On the show, Bean also discusses what it’s like to be an ambassador for the Women in Pizza movement, how her team approaches employee training and why expansion is still on the table—but only if the right opportunity presents itself.
“I don’t want to be one of those restaurants that opens too fast and collapses,” she said. “We’re always looking, but we’re looking for the right fit, at the right time.”
To listen to the latest episode of Peel, check out one of the following links:
