By Tracy Morin
When two former teachers found themselves elbow-deep in pizza dough—and ready to open the doors of their pizzeria—they returned to what they know best: education. For Kira and Mark Zabrowski, managing partners of Much Ado About Pizza in Pleasanton, California, that academic attention infuses everything from their extensive pre-opening research on sourdough to their in-store customer experience, complete with a mini library and Shakespearean insult posters.
Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble (Macbeth)
The Zabrowskis admit they knew little about opening a pizzeria when they started on their path to pizzeria ownership. Mark had a business degree, Kira’s background was in theater. Both were teachers in a private school, where the closest they got to “foodservice” was orchestrating massive charitable drives to help locals in need. “We didn’t know what we needed to know,” Mark says with a laugh. “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
What they did know was that they wanted to build a family business—one in which the couple and their two kids, Mark Jr. and Zoe (now 18 and 16), could spend time together while also continue giving back to their community. They envisioned four pillars of contribution: feeding the hungry, supporting education, supporting the arts and supporting entrepreneurship.
Baking initially started as a hobby for Kira, who delved into bread making during the pandemic. “I’d always been a baker; Mark’s always been the chef,” Kira says. “Teaching online [during COVID], I would come downstairs and bake between classes, and I got a huge passion for sourdough. I read books like Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. I started growing my starter using his recipe and having success with my starter and my bread skills. I had the idea: If we could be a family business, what would be a good family business? And pizza just came to me.”
After experimenting with pizza dough at home, the couple attended a pizza trade show in 2021, gathering information for their dream business, and drummed up a 50-page business plan. They started serving pizza at local wineries and found a former Papa Murphy’s location to house their pizzeria—meaning they’d be confined to a carryout-focused business. Despite the space’s limitations, the Zabrowskis took the plunge. They signed the lease on April Fool’s Day 2022, opened their doors on Memorial Day, closed their last grade books as full-time teachers on June 10, and held a grand-opening ribbon cutting on July 22. “We were like, ‘Let’s just open the doors and see what happens!’” Kira says. “It was a mess. It was a disaster. The restaurant could hold maybe 10 people and feel full. We had 15 or 20 people waiting, and people wanted to stay. We had to shoo them away!”
While Mark admits their first year was “really challenging,” the couple had opened their doors on a shoestring—and they were determined to succeed. A major breakthrough arrived when Yelp reached out with the news of their glowing online reviews, landing Much Ado About Pizza on the Yelp Top 100 in 2024 (an achievement they would repeat the following year).
Unfortunately, they weren’t quite staffed to handle the extra attention. “We scrambled to hire a bunch of terrible people,” Mark says. “We figured out what hiring was, figured out defining our roles more. A lot of it’s been learning on the fly and—”
“Being thrown into the fire—like, completely,” Kira finishes. “We learned by failing.”
So We Grew Together (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
What they lacked in experience, the Zabrowskis made up for in sheer willingness to learn and remain hands-on in every aspect of their business. And, as they’ve found their footing, Mark Jr. and Zoe have developed their own unique skills to improve the pizzeria. Mark Jr., who drew the Much Ado logo, is “a great assistant manager,” Kira says. Zoe, meanwhile, relishes the culinary side, even winning Young Pizza Maker of the Year at the 2025 Pizza Tomorrow Summit. “Mark [Jr.] likes to run the oven, build the dough balls and handle the back of house,” Kira says. “Zoe can be at front, talking with the customers, or making pizzas. So they’re kind of like us—she’s like me, and Mark [Jr.] is like Mark.”
“It’s funny how the kids sort of fell into those roles,” Mark adds. “When we first started, they were like, ‘Why are you making us do this?’ But they’re starting to see value [in the work].” Family members remain the sole employees, other than a couple of high school students helping out with dishwashing a couple of hours each week. Meanwhile, they’ve built an extended family through the pizza community, including joining PMQ’s U.S. Pizza Team (USPT), networking with members who are happy to help the relative newbies. And though they may be former teachers, the Zabrowskis are also lifelong students.
“I think that was a huge turning point for us: discovering the competitive world of pizza,” Kira says. “My first competition was a virtual one—I sent in my recipe and met [USPT coordinator] Brian Hernandez. Then Brian introduced us to Lars Smith [of State of Mind Public House and Pizzeria], and he opened his doors to us—another turning point, where we got to spend three hours with him, talking about what it’s like to own a pizzeria, and things we should know. These moments really confirmed: ‘Hey, this is really cool. I think we can do this.’ [There’s a lot of] camaraderie behind the scenes…90% of these people want to talk to you and share their knowledge.”
As a bonus, the competitions they’ve joined as USPT members have generated invaluable local attention. “When we first opened, we did the mailers, the receipt ads, the local magazine ads,” Mark says. “People didn’t come in from any of those. What brings them in are the press releases and social media [about] everything we do in competitions.”
All the World’s a Stage (As You Like It)
Much Ado About Pizza almost didn’t happen—at least, in name and concept. The Shakespearean theme was a happy accident, formed by necessity when the couple found out their original name, Pizza Love, was already copyrighted. “It was a midsummer night’s eve, and I woke up, and it popped out of my brain,” Kira recalls. “I could see the logo: a cartoon Shakespeare eating pizza. What about Much Ado About Pizza? And Mark was like, ‘Huh?’ I said, ‘We could have a pizza called Hamlet! Then, if they want to build a pizza, it’d be called As You Like It!’ I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s it. Boom!’”
Kira, after all, had a degree in theater and worked in Shakespearean productions—The Bard had long been a big part of her life. “And we love a good pun,” she adds. “That’s been so much fun. Now our customers will come in and pitch an idea for a pizza, and they’ll have a funny name for it.”
Kira even wrote a fictional backstory for the pizzeria, now emblazoned on its website and pizza boxes—explaining that Shakespeare spent his “lost years,” around college age, searching for the perfect pizza crust around the world (think New York, Detroit and, yes, even Missouri). Much Ado, of course, stumbled upon and “decoded” this secret Shakespearean recipe for 21st-century customers. “Thy melody of this crust, paired with mine own special sauce and premium cheese, will be truly poetical!” the tongue-in-cheek backstory explains.
A second crust option, the Marlowe, is a rectangular pan style—also invented out of necessity while catering at wineries (square slices were easier to juggle with wine glasses). After the Zabrowskis opened the carryout business, customers requested the same style in-store. “Sometimes your customers help you write your menu,” Mark says. “Marlowe is Shakespeare’s friendly nemesis,” Kira adds. “We figure the crust is inflated because Marlowe was the blowhard. People don’t always get it, but I don’t care if they don’t.”
Fortunately, for the uninitiated, the entire pizzeria serves as a Shakespeare learning lab. “We just went into teacher mode,” Mark says. “We’ve got posters with Shakespearean insults, a picture of the Globe [Shakespeare’s theater], a small library of different plays and sonnets in the corner, and Yorick [from Hamlet]—a Halloween skull that’s sitting around the shop in different places. It was important to us to immerse people in [Shakespearean lore], because I knew not everybody was going to get it right away. We also wear [Renaissance-era] hats, and we try to always use the language.”
Kids love the space for its delightful touches, like retro arcade games, stickers and coloring sheets. Even the pizza boxes are interactive, creatively designed with rotating Shakespeare themes (such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the summer months). The Zabrowskis encourage people to take pictures of their dogs with the boxes and send them in.
The menu, of course, also relies heavily on the Bard, with punny pizza names like Fowl-Staff, the Ham-Let (pictured below) and Taming of the Chew. Social media pages and events further reinforce the pizzeria’s focus on creativity, humor and community—underscored by the couple’s continued focus on giving back to local charities.
What’s Past Is Prologue (The Tempest)
While they have realized significant success in their first five years in business, the Zabrowskis have only begun their pizza journey. At the same time, they remain realistic about their limitations, since the four family members handle almost every task in the business. (“Some days, I need roller skates,” Mark jokes.)
But, just as they’ve done all along, they expect to figure it out as they go. “Our goal when we started was to replace our teacher salaries, and that’s pretty much where we’re at,” Mark says. “But in order to hire more, you have to be able to produce more, and the system that we have in place has a cap. The demand’s there, and you want to meet the demand—so will we stay here and just figure out what the model looks like? Is it going to be a bigger location? Or a second location, which we don’t like? The whole idea was for us to hang out together and be together, but if you open another location, somebody’s going to be at the other location. So we’re on the fence.
“The thing about Kira and me is, we’re both kind of restless souls,” Mark continues. “We’re kicking ideas around. But we’re the boots on the ground. I’m not directing kids to make pizzas; I’m stretching the pizzas, I’m cooking the pizzas. And 90% of the time, we’re doing everything. So once we hit the shop, nothing happens with business growth. All that stuff goes out the window; we’re just [focusing on] orders today. Some things take us a month. Some things take us six months. Some things we revisit from last year or two years ago that we wanted to do. That’s just the way it goes. A lot of things are a slow burn. But you’ll hear more noise from Much Ado.”
“We’re going to noise it up,” Kira promises. “We’re noisy. Shouting from the mountaintops. I’ve always been a firm believer: If it’s meant to be, it’s going to come and it’s going to be so obvious, and we’re going to know what to do.”
Tracy Morin is PMQ’s associate editor.
