Story by Rick Hynum | Photos by Faith Davila / Pizzabilities
After graduating from high school two years ago, Grace Baker couldn’t wait to prove herself in the working world. But her job prospects were bleak: She was born with Down Syndrome, and employers wouldn’t give her a chance.
It’s a problem that shouldn’t exist. Just ask Grace’s father, Josh Baker. He knows exactly what Grace—and others with special needs—are capable of. They demonstrate their value and work ethic every day at Pizzabilities, which debuted in Alpine, California, last July. Around 60% of Pizzabilities’ team members have physical or mental challenges, and as co-founder of the fast-casual restaurant concept, Baker plans to hire a lot more of them.
Just three months after the first Pizzabilities store opened in a former Pizza Hut location, Baker and business partner Ron Burner, the former owner of Nicolosi’s Italian Restaurant in San Diego and a pizza industry veteran, opened a second location in Santee, California. That site previously housed a Nicolosi’s restaurant, so it was readymade for Pizzabilities. A third location is set to open later this year in San Diego’s Miramar neighborhood.
With Grace eager to work but bereft of opportunities, Baker recalled, “My wife and I kept asking ourselves, ‘Man, what are we going to do?’ And eventually we said, ‘What if we build something ourselves?’ Then our first thought was, ‘What does Grace actually want to do? What does she like to do?’ And she absolutely loves pizza. She could eat it for every single meal every day and never get tired of it. That’s when we started thinking, ‘Maybe we could start a pizza place.’”
Baker reached out to Burner, his former high school baseball coach who has remained a good friend ever since. “His family has been in the pizza business for more than 70 years,” Baker said.
Burner had his heart set on retirement at the time, but he saw that Baker’s proposition made good sense. Even so, he gave Baker fair warning. “He said, ‘Are you sure you want to get into the restaurant business? It’s not easy. You don’t really know what you’re getting into.’ But I told him, ‘This is for Grace. If we just break even and make a little money, that’s great—but I just wanted something [meaningful] for her.”
The Ideal Restaurant Model
For his part, Baker owns a large escrow business in San Diego. He was contemplating the prospect of early retirement himself before the idea for Pizzabilities took hold and steered him in a different direction. Now he has his hands full again.
Pizzabilities’ Santee store is twice as large as the one in Alpine. Combined, they’re providing jobs for between 50 and 60 employees, the majority of whom have some kind of special need. And the next store, Baker said, “is going to be our biggest one yet.”
In other words, he said, “What started as something small for Grace just kind of exploded.”
Pizzabilities’ fast-casual model is ideal for team members with differing abilities. “If this was a full sit-down restaurant, it wouldn’t work,” Baker said. “With fast casual, it’s an assembly line. One person presses the dough, the next adds toppings, the next adds cheese, then it goes to the cashier and into the oven. Anyone can be trained on any part of that line. We use conveyor ovens. There’s no wood-fired cooking or anything complicated. Once the pizza goes in, it comes out done. That takes a lot of guesswork and stress out of the process.”
Baker adds, “We don’t have anything on the menu that requires a chef or complex cooking. It’s pizza, salads, cookies—simple things. That’s intentional. It’s not because we can’t do more. It’s because we want this to be accessible for everyone.”
Better yet, Baker notes, “Everything we do is designed to be repeatable. That’s what makes it franchisable. A family like mine—one that might have the means to do something for their child but doesn’t know how—can actually do this with the right training and support.”
Rallying to the Cause
The Pizzabilities brand, with its warm, distinctive orange and black color palette, merchandise line (from shirts, caps and sneakers to tote bags and cooler bags) and fast-growing social media presence, is tailormade for franchising. It can be replicated in any town or city around the country, and reliable employees will never be hard to find. Baker said he gets dozens of emails a day from people with differing abilities who are hungry for work.
And here’s another delightful discovery Baker has made during his unexpected detour into the pizza business: Local schools, colleges and universities will rally behind businesses that serve the special-needs community.
“One of the biggest things for us has been school lunches,” he said. “We now do pizzas for multiple school districts every Friday. It’s been a great way to get our foot in the door with schools because they want to support what we’re doing. They see the mission, and they want to be part of it.”
In fact, he noted, “The first school district actually came to us. We had donated backpacks filled with school supplies, and when they heard our story…there were tears in the room. They asked us, ‘Do you want to do school lunches for us on Fridays?’ And that’s how it all started.”
School lunches alone now generate between $10,000 and $15,000 a month for Pizzabilities. Baker expects that dollar figure to grow as word of the concept spreads. San Diego State University has already enlisted Pizzabilities as a caterer for football, basketball and other athletic programs. Those orders can total $6,000 to $8,000 in a single night. “We kept some classic Nicolosi’s items just for catering—lasagna, mac and cheese, chicken fettuccine Alfredo—so we have flexibility there,” Baker said.
“A big part of it is that people want to align with our mission,” he added. “Schools, churches, colleges—they like supporting a local business that’s doing something meaningful. It makes them look good, but, more importantly, it feelsgood to be part of something like this.”
Go-Getters in Action
And how do employees with disabilities feel about working at Pizzabilities? That’s the beauty of it. Baker said his team members are fired up to go into the restaurant every day—no one’s calling out with a hangover or something better to do with their time. They want to be there—because they have something to prove.
For most of them, the paycheck is secondary. Their work is valued and useful, and that’s what motivates them.
“They show up every day, every shift,” Baker said. “They want to work. They’re not clock-watching. They’re not trying to leave early. They take pride in what they do. They want to do a great job.”
As for Grace, the inspiration behind Pizzabilities? From the day the first location opened, the young go-getter was in her element. “Grace is super social and funny,” Baker said. “She loves people and loves to include people. She’s always right in the middle of everything. This job is perfect for her because she gets to be out there talking to customers and interacting with people. She’s a greeter in our church and works in the kids ministry. She’s the heartbeat of our family. Everybody loves her.”
And at 20 years old, Grace is already a businesswoman—she’s a Pizzabilities owner and has a personal and professional stake in the brand’s success. “She wakes up in the morning excited to go to work,” Baker said. “She’ll already have her uniform on, ready to go, even when it’s not time yet.”
“Grace loves pressing pizzas,” he said “We use a pizza press, similar to Blaze or MOD Pizza. Customers order at the counter, choose their dough, and she presses it, lays it out on the tray, and sends it down the line. She loves making boxes, too. She’s one of the fastest box makers we have. She can sit back there for two hours making boxes and be perfectly happy. Honestly, I don’t have the patience for that, but she loves it. She loves bussing the tables, greeting the customers and seeing if they need anything else.”
In other words, Grace Baker is the ideal employee in many respects. So are employees like Kelly, a talented artist with cerebral palsy who has emerged as a social media star for Pizzabilities, and Aidan, the brand’s employee of the month for January.
As the Pizzabilities concept takes off, it could spark a potentially transformative movement that just might prove, at last, that people with special needs have a place in the restaurant industry.
“I want to show this idea off and tell people there are a lot of advantages to it,” Baker said. “It’s not just a feel-good story. There’s a lot of business smarts to it.”
Rick Hynum is editor in chief of PMQ Pizza. Be on the lookout for more coverage of Pizzabilities in an upcoming issue of PMQ’s print magazine.
