Yahoo Finance Family buys Mr. K’s in South End. The culinary delight they’ll introduce to Charlotte.
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A couple who outbid more than 50 contenders for the iconic Mr. K’s Soft Ice Cream site in South End said they’re excited to introduce Charlotte to a style of pizza they’d always loved in their native Midwest.
“It’s crispy at the bottom,” Laura Kanellopoulos told The Charlotte Observer of the pizza she grew up on in Columbus, Ohio. “The middle is fluffy, and there’s actually bubbles in the middle. The top is soft, we don’t have a crust, and toppings are edge to edge.”
“It’s cut in squares,” she said of their pizzas, which are round. “You don’t have to cut it up or roll it up.”
And you’ll taste your topping in every bite, she said — 100 pepperonis, for instance, come on a 16-inch pepperoni pie.
Sunshine State debut
The style was so successful when she and her husband, George, opened their first of two The Crust pizza, subs and salads locations in 2014 in Naples, Florida, customers knew to expect two-hour waits for takeout, she said.
Their first location, a 1,600-square-foot pizzeria near the beach in Naples, did $2 million in business the first year, she said. “It was insane.”
And yes, they named it The Crust, despite their pizza having none. “It’s kind of ironic,” she said.
Although Laura Kanellopoulos worked in the restaurant and hotel industries since age 14, her husband’s career was in apartment rentals around Ohio State University, she said.
They opened the small pizzeria in Naples, where they’d moved in 2004, only because they could no longer stand the “bad pizza” there, she said. They tested recipes on friends who were likewise from Columbus, she said.
Ohioans invented, love this pizza
So what’s the style of their pizza called?
“We kind of coined the term ‘Midwest Pizza,’” Laura Kanellopoulos said. “It’s not Chicago-style or New York-style.”
A friend told her how nice Charlotte was, and the couple moved here nearly four years ago, Laura Kanellopoulos said.
She’s amazed how South End has since boomed with apartments and other construction
When the Mr. K’s site went up for sale, the couple knew it’d be perfect for The Crust, she said. They and their three grown children plan to incorporate the same “urban-style” design in the Mr. K’s location as they have in Naples.
Mr. K’s Soft Ice Cream owner George Dizes told the Observer last month that the 1,400-square-foot restaurant at 2107 South Blvd., had been listed for sale. Dizes told Charlotte 5 on Friday that he finally sold the building.
George Kanellopoulos offered $300,000, “well over the listing price,” his wife said.
Urban-style decor
“We’re not changing anything from the way the restaurant in Naples looks — the hardwood-looking ceramic tile floors, recycled barn wood, lots of stainless steel,” she said. “It’s just a nice, cool restaurant. For the exterior, maybe some fresh paint and cleaning.”
The couple hopes to open in several months, after zoning approvals.
They already are eyeing a larger site in the South Park area for a possible second Charlotte location of The Crust. It would offer indoor dining, she said.
The South End site will likely be take-out only, in part because the type of kitchen they have eats up lots of space, she said.
“We make all of our own dough, we heat our own dough,” she said. “We make all of our dressings, the mushrooms are not canned, they’re always fresh, and they’re baked. There’s no microwave.”
A small company in Columbus, Ohio, makes their pepperonis, she said.
“All pizzas, subs and salads are made with the freshest ingredients and to order, at reasonable prices, and we have a recipe for continued success,” George Kanellopoulos said.
He also said The Crust focuses “so strongly on cleanliness and health code compliance that, instead of having our employees spend two extra hours on cleaning after their shifts, we have them do the necessary side work associated with running our business” and a professional cleaning crew comes in after the workers leave.
The professional crew “cleans our restaurant from top to bottom,” he said. “We remove each chair table, bar stool and all kitchen and dining room equipment to thoroughly clean and sanitize everything. We did this well before the pandemic hit and now focus even more on these very important factors. It is something we are extremely proud of.”
