They’re not exactly Minnesota twins, but best friends Adam Kado and Hosie Thurmond think of each other as brothers. Hence the name of their Minneapolis-based pizza company—Slice Brothers. And, together, they’ve started a family that’s growing fast.

Their first pizza shop, simply called Slice, opened in Northeast Minneapolis in 2021. Since then, Kado and Thurmond have reimagined their brand and added two locations in the city, while a third one is scheduled to open next month in the Mall of America.

Offering New York-style fare and slices priced around $5, Slice Brothers is the first Black-owned pizzeria in Minneapolis. And the owners are on a mission that goes beyond serving the culinary classics. They also want to create jobs in their communities and help build generational wealth for people of color.

Related: Publication names the top Black-owned pizzerias in the U.S.

Without generational wealth of their own, Kado and Thurmond have had plenty of hurdles to jump while building Slice Brothers. “We continue to have to prove ourselves with each deal and each new piece of attention we get,” Thurmond said in a recent interview with Twin Cities Eater. “We have to continue pushing forward, and it’s hard. It’s a taxing thing.”

Like the trio of socially conscious operators behind the Black-owned Slim & Husky’s chain, Kado and Thurmond work hard to inspire other entrepreneurs of color to pursue their dreams of business ownership. Every job they create at a new Slice Brothers shop matters to them. And during a teacher’s strike in early 2022, they showed their support by giving away free slices to any Minneapolis Schools employee with proper identification.

“Being public school products, we’ve been in that space, so we understand how important it is to have good teachers—but also happy, fulfilled teachers who feel like they’re being paid so they can do their jobs adequately,” Thurmond told Racket at the time. “Which is why, ultimately, they’re able to change the lives of some students.”

The Slice Brothers menu runs the gamut from classic New York slices to trendy items like the Dill Pickle Ranch Slice and the Nashville Hot Slice. There’s nothing fancy here, nothing too showy, but they’ve already made such an impression on the city that, when their third store opened in St. Paul on September 14, Mayor Melvin Carter showed up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“We have to do this the right way, where we’re not just turning into fat cats—we still have our ethical code and our morals and our values that have gotten us to this place,” Kado told Twin Cities Eater. “Finding balance is tough. Me and Hosie are just guys from the neighborhood, and now we’re in this position. Man, we’re in a different world meeting different people. We’re really pleased with that. But it comes with a lot.”

But as their company grows, are the entrepreneurs hoping to build a Slice Brothers empire? Twin Cities Eater posed that very question, and Thurmond’s answer was thoughtful—and, again, socially conscious.

“It’s really easy to say yes, we are, but I don’t think that that’s where our why is,” Thurmond replied. “Our why really isn’t to build a pizza empire. Our why is to distribute affordable pizza. It turned out that that’s needed in a lot more areas of the Twin Cities and—who knows—the region or wherever. We continue to take those opportunities.”