In the first two weeks of Paranormal Pizza opening its doors in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, owner Marc Kubushefski sold out of dough every night. “It has been absolutely insane,” he reports. “I always think I’ve got enough ready for two or three days, but more people keep ordering each day. What a crazy first two weeks!”
How did a UFO- and X-Files-themed vegan pizzeria make such immediate waves in a Pennsylvania town of 75,000? It’s a serpentine tale of success spawned by a perfect storm brewed by Instagram, the pandemic and, of course, the paranormal. Kubushefski recently sat down with us to share his story.
What was the inspiration behind Paranormal Pizza?
The whole thing started out by posting pictures of my pizzas on Instagram about two years ago (they looked really bad). All of a sudden, the pandemic started, and places were closed. A few people asked if they could buy some pizza from me if I froze it for them, so I did. More people heard I was selling frozen vegan pizzas and started messaging me to buy them. I started an account under our old name (the Local Plant Based Pizza Co., an Instagram handle drunkenly made up on a whim) just to sell the pizzas, and it kinda took off.
Eventually, I had three freezers in my kitchen loaded with frozen pizzas to sell, and it just became too much. So I started making hot pizzas every Monday night out of my home, since that’s the day most restaurants are closed. Sure enough, the 15 to 20 preorders sold out every week, and random people were showing up at my house to buy pizza. It was mind-blowing. I’d never show up at a stranger’s house to buy food—but, obviously, there was a demand for vegan pizza.
How did you come up with the “paranormal” theme of your pizzeria?
I’m a huge X-Files and UFO fan. When I was operating as the Local Plant Based Pizza Co., I had created the hot pizza preorder menu for each item to be named after an X-Files character. I thought it was pretty cool, and it seemed like it was pretty well-received.
After I had signed the lease to our restaurant, I still had people asking about frozen pizzas over a year after I had stopped making them, so I decided to change the name to remove our association with the frozen pizzas and to fit with the theme and menu names that I had built. Hence the name Paranormal Pizza. We have a gothic, X-Files kind of sci-fi vibe going on inside.
What are some highlights of your menu?
Our best selling item is the Alien Bounty Hunter. It has a ring of garlic knots around the edge, and it’s topped with our housemade cashew mozzarella and pepperoni seitan, followed by Beyond Meat’s Hot Italian Sausage, green peppers, onions and mushrooms. That seems to be the most popular item.
Why did you choose to make your cheese in-house versus buying premade?
The reason we make our cheese in-house is because you can go to any local pizza shop and get a vegan pizza with some kind of storebought vegan cheese that they have probably never tasted and just threw on the menu as a compliance product, just to say, “We offer vegan pizza!” My whole purpose of opening a vegan pizza shop was to create vegan pizzas that vegans want, not some upcharged, subpar pizza that really isn’t good but that vegans just settle with. We don’t want to make good vegan pizza—we want to make good pizza.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for allergies to cashews—which is one of the main ingredients in our cheese—I wouldn’t have even labeled our pizza vegan. I would have just marketed it as a regular pizza shop. A lot of our customers have meat eating partners or friends that come back for more, because they didn’t expect the pizza to be as good as it was. I’ve always made all of the ingredients from scratch since I started making my own pizzas a few years ago, so I’d like to continue that trend. We can’t compete with the Beyond Sausage, though. That stuff is just so damn good!
Do you have plans for expanding the menu?
We do have plans to expand the menu in the near future. Pizza was the prime focus from the inception, so I wanted to make sure the pizza was perfect before we started introducing other menu items. Also, our staff is limited. We are operating with only four people. Once we add a fifth employee, we will introduce our signature wings, among a few other items.
Can you talk about the customer response since opening?
The customer response has been overwhelmingly impressive. We’ve had people come back two or three days in a row—many repeat customers! People are calling back after they’re done eating their pizza to tell us how lucky they are to have us in their town, because they have never tasted better pizza. We put a lot of effort into our product, so to receive that type of feedback is gratifying.
