Pizza Loves Emily is an unassuming neighborhood restaurant in Clinton Hill, located right on Fulton Street. It might surprise you that this local haunt is the common ancestor of all locations of Emmy Squared, the renowned national chain of Detroit-style pizza restaurants. Its namesake and founder, Emily Hyland, is far from a typical food-industry tycoon. From her home in Santa Fe, where she currently teaches yoga and writes poetry, she talked to me about restaurant success (for better or worse), mental health in the food space, and so much more.

Tell me about yourself and how you founded the Emily Pizza empire.

I founded the Pizza Loves Emily original location in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, in 2014 with my Chef/Partner, Matt Hyland. We were married then, but we are not anymore. We still co-own and operate the restaurants together, amicably! I was a high school English teacher and instructional coach in the city, and I loved working with students and teaching writing. I was becoming increasingly unhappy in the bureaucracy of that world. So, I dropped out of the graduate program I was in to become a principal. I had been in yoga-teacher training that year on the weekends. That gave me the courage to make this change in my life and pursue teaching yoga. That summer, I was making almost no money, teaching yoga maybe once a week.

Matt was working as a pizza chef for Pizza Modo at the Brooklyn Flea. We had just moved to Downtown Brooklyn and had all this space and time open. He started working at Sottocasa, a Neopolitan pizza place on Atlantic Avenue. When he came home from one of his first nights there, he said, “This is what I want to do.” He got clear training and started to understand pizza techniques. I had all this time and high-level systems implementation and organizational skills from my time in the world of education. He had this very creative spirit ready to embark on this journey. Rather impulsively, we jumped on it.

We found this spot in Clinton Hill. It was mostly based on gut intuition. We just rolled with the flow. I was our opening CEO, and I managed the restaurant. I hosted every night at the door and figured out how to do all the businessy stuff. Matt cultivated the menu.

Emily is now turning 10! What do you think is the secret to restaurant longevity, if there is one?

My baby is growing up! My short answer would be a whole lot of luck. In the restaurant industry, particularly, it feels like everything is up against you. I don’t know if there really is a formula for it. The real answer is probably pretty business-y. Keeping your cost of goods tight and keeping track of inventory is very tough. It takes commitment and ambition. You could have all of these things and still not succeed because the stars might just not align in your favor. It’s very challenging, especially with greedy New York City landlords and insurance prices rising and everything being so darn expensive.

Emily is super involved in the neighborhood, from cupcake decorating events to breast cancer awareness initiatives. Tell me a bit more about its place in the neighborhood beyond its role as a restaurant.

Matt and I lived in that area, about a 15-minute walk away. I taught yoga in that community. It’s such a sweet nook of New York City. There are so many amazing people, and what better way to bring people together than over a pizza pie? If there are creative ways to support other small businesses or friends, or do creative projects that bring people in, why wouldn’t I do that?

The cupcake class will hopefully be taking place this fall. Alex LaRosa, our partner in that, is a longtime yoga student of mine, who also happens to be a super-talented cupcake artist. Why not make cupcakes and eat pizza and then eat the cupcakes?! It goes hand-in-hand. We’re working on a pizza and painting afternoon, too. Our dishwasher is a well-known Senegalese painter, who painted our vestibule. What a neat way to engage with the skills of someone who is employed at the restaurant in a different way and give people other dimensions of awareness of the restaurant. I love being around people, and I love taking advantage of the space we have, giving people a more layered approach.

We still have a plethora of regulars who have been with us since week one. That really speaks to what Brooklyn is. Even though I don’t live there anymore, if I walk down the street or go into a local restaurant, chances are that I’ll run into someone I know through having dined at Emily or taken my yoga class. I find the spirit of that to be so powerful. There are two kids named Quinn and Phoebe, who I consider my niece and nephew, who started out as regulars the week we opened when Quinn was four and Phoebe was 16 months old. They’re like family now. They come out on their spring break every year to visit me, and I’m like their aunt. That, to me, is what a neighborhood restaurant is about. At the end of the day, it’s not really about the restaurant — it’s about the people. The relationships that I’ve gotten to cultivate with these two beautiful children are the best things that have ever come out of this restaurant.

The original Emily location is traditional brick-oven pizza, and Emmy Squared is that square, Detroit-style pizza. How did you make this change, particularly in NYC, where there is so much excellent New York-style pizza?

Matt is an incredibly talented visionary chef. He was always making these grandma-style, focaccia-like pizzas at home. When we had the opportunity to open a second concept, he knew he wanted to stay in the realm of pizza but wanted to do something different stylistically. He leaned into what he liked. We both really liked bar pie, which has a super crispy frico crust. We liked having pizza in pans, and we liked that focaccia-like texture. With a little research, we found out that what we liked was Detroit-style. Those sauce stripes go on top, the middle is nice and airy, and it’s cooked in a very specific pan.

Once we honed in on what the style was, he was able to make it his own with all of the inventive, fun toppings that are such a signature of Emily and Emmy Squared.

There’s so much pizza in NYC, period. How did you stand out and grow?

It’s funny, when we first started, we weren’t thinking about competing. We weren’t expecting or aiming for the level of success we’ve achieved with it. We just wanted to open the type of restaurant we could go to in our neighborhood and have a meal. It wasn’t maybe the wisest decision to jump into that saturated market, but we did. It’s all about consistency and having a little bit of levity. There’s so much emphasis on how pizza should be. Instead, our approach was that it was supposed to be fun. We wanted it to be cooked with integrity, and we have some values around it. People really appreciated our fun, unique toppings.

In addition to starting restaurants and teaching high school, you’re also an experienced yoga instructor. Tell me about how this has influenced your career in food and if you see mindfulness expanding into the food world.

I’ve been a yoga practitioner for much longer than I’ve been in the pizza industry. I’ve been teaching for 12 years now. That definitely ebbed and flowed — it went on hiatus when the restaurant opened. Now that I’m not in New York City and not running the restaurant full-time in the way I was in the early years, I co-own a beautiful studio in Santa Fe. That whole contemplative world has really helped keep my feet on the ground throughout this rollercoaster experience of opening a restaurant and expanding it beyond what I ever could have imagined. As my life changed in so many ways, I’m very thankful that I have a mindfulness practice to support me.

It’s quite hard to make good decisions for yourself when you’ve just worked a double at a restaurant and have had to deal with entitled New York City diners and you are starving and are activated in your nervous system. It’s hard to not shovel down some really carb and fat-based food at two o’clock in the morning. We’re in a moment where there is more awareness about the food industry. I think the pandemic gave people a much greater understanding of it. There is also this societal trend of sobriety and it being okay to not drink.

I stopped drinking almost four years ago, and it changed my life. I think that the more support there is for people in the food service industry, there will be less reliance on things like alcohol to decompress at the end of service.

What is next for you and the Emily pizza empire?

I’m also a poet, which is how I predominantly spend my time. I have a collection coming out in October, which is very heavily influenced by the restaurant industry, called Divorced Business Partners. It’s about a little mom-and-pop restaurant that’s opened, and then the marriage falls apart as it becomes successful. I also lead a few mindfulness-based retreats a year, so I have those coming up.

In terms of the original Emily, we’re taking it one day at a time, making sure those doors stay open, keeping folks employed and making good pizza for the neighborhood. I’m not as involved in the day-to-day of Emmy Squared as I was in the past, but my understanding is that the organization is continuing to grow into new markets. Stay tuned, who knows where they will pop up and serve all of your Detroit-style pizza needs!