if you want good pizza come to st marks
it's the best pizza i'll be in any
borough i always come and say marks i
know about two birds so they love me in
there i shop every day in there i got
two slices a day keep the doctor away my
guys
one thing a lot of people tell us is
that when you walk into two bros it's
like a microcosm of new york in general
you can see homeless people to wall
street bankers on the same line waiting
for that same pizza it's something that
everyone can rely on at any time of
their life whatever the situation is my
name is ellie hilali i'm one of the bros
i'm warren halali i'm one of the pros we
are the two bros
our pizza is by far the best quality
pizza you could get especially for a
dollar
a lot of plain cheese slices and then we
do some topping slices
the pizza two bros is made from scratch
every single day and cost you get it
served hot and you get it served in a
matter of seconds people are very busy
they come outside for lunch they have
five minutes to figure out what they
want to do here's a place where i'm
getting a fresh hot slice within nine
seconds and it's one dollar that's our
skill is getting the people in and out
and that's what we're good at and it's
really it's a science it's something
that we worked on for the last 10 years
perfecting
we wanted to create a buzz when we
opened and we put this one dollar
special to start the business it was our
marketing and pr everything we just said
we're not going to spend the money
on pr and stuff we'll just give it away
like this when we started we put a
sandwich board up and we took a chalk
marker and we put pizza one dollar it
didn't really create anything no one was
really walking in no one really cared
five weeks into it i would say we came
up with the idea of let's create like a
dollar sign that we print in big bright
red and the next day from when we put
that sign up everything changed like it
was always busy you know we used to see
the same people five six times a week
and then we realized that the numbers
were going to be able to work as long as
we sold a certain amount of pizza and we
were like you know people now understand
that this name is really connected to
this dollar thing
because it's real it's us you know it's
who we are we're two
brothers best friends that love pizza
[Music]
i could just get one cheese slice can i
get a well done one
yeah that's perfect
thanks so much i'm scott weiner and i'm
a professional pizza enthusiast
[Music]
still too hot 181. it's a infrared
thermometer so if it's over 170 that's
where it'll burn your mouth so i just
got the uh the cheese slice the dollar
slice
[Music]
i mean it tastes tastes like dollar
pizza
it tastes like you know roller rink
little league softball game pizza on the
side you know it's not pizza as a focus
it's like you go here when you're hungry
and you need something fast dollar
slices as a price point is not a new
thing obviously pizza has been one
dollar and the last time it was a dollar
was probably in the late 80s pizza as a
resurging force as a dollar
food that really came on the rise
right around the recession in 2008. 99
fresh pizza was the one that i always go
to at the port authority and then
suddenly i saw two bros was opening up
and then 99 fresh open up more and then
now there's got to be 80 or 90 dollar
slice places around the city the
recession was really important for the
dollar slice
because you had a lot of people's
careers changed around that time and
some of these dollar slice places come
from that fallout
when we started two bros i was
24 and my brother was 23. babies
we're not pizza men by trade and we
never were we grew up in brooklyn in a
neighborhood called mill basin we both
went to school in new york and we'd
always be eating late night food and
somehow we'd always be drawn to pizza
when a space became available we started
negotiating with the landlord you know
we would google like the type of things
we would need to ask all our savings
whatever money we had saved up we put
into it once we got out of school we
opened the first place at st mark's
towards the end of 2007.
two bros and the other dollar slice
places they make money because that low
price point brings in the volume and so
as long as they're doing volume then
they can stay in business the restaurant
businesses in new york is as tough as it
gets the issue with our business is that
if you don't sell a certain amount then
you then you're dying and the number
really really depends on you know what
your occupancy cost and what
and that being said the range is around
45 to 50 cents
of the actual cost of the slice yeah but
that's before labor and i get it it's
asking whether it costs to make a slice
another misconception with dollars
license general is like yeah the pizza's
fake the dough's frozen that they're
buying from someone the cheese is like a
fake cheese we're really using the
highest end ingredients on our pizzas
a big part of it is our buying power we
buy almost everything directs from the
manufacturer we don't have any middlemen
huge quantities yes trailers of cheese
you know trailers of flour trailers of
uh cans of soda everything in huge
volume when your margins are razor thin
you know every dollar counts
the speed of which a person gets in and
out determines how much pizza we can
sell that's something that that we train
our pizza guys more than anything else
the employees they come into work at 7am
the first thing they do is they start
making a fresh dough
for either the day or the next day and
then they make fresh sauce
and they'll be doing that for three four
hours before we even open for lunch
they know they gotta just keep making
them as the people are coming so they
know when they're gonna get hit at lunch
they know when they're gonna get the
after war crowd they know this stuff and
our people do a great job you know they
really do of always giving people a
fresh hot slice
would we consider it two bro street food
well most of our stores have completely
opened doors and they're like pretty
much part of the street most people are
taking that slice without a bag and just
continuing to walk
this is quick it's like chinese food i
can definitely say this is better than
like the five dollars i sold over the
world in new york city
i come here every day it's kind of bad
well this is i'm coming back from my
third
it's good it's cheesy it has the right
amount of sauce and it's never like hard
it's always doughy in the crust and it's
cheap it's a dollar can't beat that
[Music]
i think dollar pizza is on the way out
as the 10-year leases that started in
2008 as they run out i think we're gonna
see the dollar slice turn into a dollar
twenty-five slice a dollar fifty slice i
really think we'll look back at this
time fondly because this is a time
period where pizza should not cost a
dollar
special moment i lived in new york city
i could buy a slice of pizza for just a
buck how cool is that it's getting more
and more expensive to
operate businesses especially in new
york for the foreseeable future it's a
dollar you know it's important to us
we're very torn in a lot of
conversations about raising the price
and as long as we're able
to sell it for a dollar we'll continue
to do that we don't know what's gonna
tomorrow's gonna bring every day the
world changes
[Music]
you