Operations

Cousins continue family legacy with Artichoke Basille’s Pizza success story

Artichoke Basille's Pizza is a New York City mainstay with 16 units. The brand has begun to franchise, and a store might be coming to your community soon.

Photo: Artichoke Basille's Pizza

October 25, 2023 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group

Fran Garcia and his cousin Sal Basille know restaurants. It runs in their blood, and it's what makes their pizzeria brand, Artichoke Basille's Pizza, so successful.

Basille and Garcia grew up in the restaurant business and are fourth-generation restaurateurs based out of New York City. In a phone interview with Pizza Marketplace, Garcia said his great grandparents owned pastry shops, his grandfather owned sandwich shops and pizzerias and Basille's mother owned a restaurant in Staten Island which Garcia's mother took over in the '90s.

Sal Basille, left, and Fran Garcia, right, founded Artichoke Basille's Pizza in New York City. Photo: Artichoke Basille's Pizza

"It's the only thing we grew up around and it's the only thing we knew how to do," said Garcia. "We went to school and we did our homework in the restaurants. Our parents all worked in the restaurants. We basically grew up in them. … So, I really had no choice. I was born into it, and the one thing that I did like and that I wanted to achieve was to get into the pizza business and out of the restaurant business because the restaurant business is a lot harder than the pizza business."

Garcia would make artichoke pizzas at his mother's restaurant and hand it out to the guests to much fanfare. That artichoke pizza was the foundation on which Garcia and Basille built their pizzeria brand in New York City in March 2008.

With a limited menu of just pizzas and high foot traffic, the cousins sought out a tiny location with a small rent. The first location was just 400 square feet in the East Village.

"I liked pizza, and I knew it was profitable, and that soda and beer were profitable, and it was just a lot easier to do," Garcia said. When they first opened, they'd stand out on the sidewalk and hand out free samples of pizza, a great way to get it to the some 30,000 people who walked by the 14th Street location daily.

It took Basille and Garcia six to seven months to build out the former cellphone store. Garcia sat out on the sidewalk and clocked the number of people who walked by the shop at all hours of the day. He said he bought his restaurant equipment at auction on Halloween in 2007 — one of the busiest pizza days of the year.

"Nobody showed up to the auction because it was Halloween," Garcia recalled, "so I wound up getting two sets of ovens, a mixer — everything that I needed — for a song, basically, and I took possession of the space Nov. 1."

The cousins didn't have a lot of money to work with so they called in favors from friends who were plumbers, contractors and electricians by trade. "We made it happen," Garcia said.

The second store opened in 2011 in Chelsea.

When asked how he knew he was ready to open another unit, Garcia said he doesn't think anyone can really be ready. "I just knew that I wanted to expand. I was — and I am — ambitious. I wanted to grow," he said. "Once I had the money, I just jumped right in, and I feel like you have to be that way in business. Otherwise, you can talk yourself out of anything."

And soon, 15 years had flown by. Today, Artichoke Basille's Pizza has 16 units. Garcia said the brand had more than 20 at one time but closed three or four stores during the pandemic. Some units, like Brooklyn, didn't get affected the way stores in Manhattan did when the pandemic shut down the city. Franchising began in 2014. Nine units are franchised, and there are two in airports, two in California, two in Arizona and three in New Jersey. All 50 states have been registered for franchising and the brand keeps its FTD updated.

"We probably would have sold more had the pandemic not happened," Garcia added.

Artichoke Basille's Pizza keeps it menu simple with a handful of pizzas. Photo: Artichoke Basille's Pizza

On the menu

Appropriately, the artichoke slice is the brand's top seller, comprising 50% of sales. It's topped with artichoke hearts, spinach, a cream sauce, mozzarella and Pecorino-Romano cheese.

It's followed by the Margherita, which includes olive oil, plum tomatoes, fresh basil and a blend of cheeses.

The pepperoni slice weighs in in third place, and the crab pizza — which has a crab sauce, fresh mozzarella and a surimi stuffing — comes in at fourth most popular.

Dough is made in-house. Cheese is sourced directly from the manufacturer to their specifications. Employees used to cut pepperoni by hand, but Hormel now cuts it to perfection for the brand. Hard cheeses like wheels of imported Pecorino and Grana Padano are grated and shredded on site.

Toppings like mushrooms and peppers aren't offered to keep the menu pared down.

Delivery is available via third party delivery.

"We used to delivery ourselves, but once all of those delivery platforms popped up, it's almost impossible, especially for me … I can't hire delivery drivers if I wanted to. They all want to work for DoorDash and Uber Eats because it makes all the sense in the world for them. A guy can take, for example, a delivery from 14th Street to 23rd. Instead of coming back to 14th Street empty-handed, they'll pick up Chinese food on 23rd and deliver it to 17th Street. It's just non-stop work for them," Garcia said.

Operations

As the brand grows, continuity has become paramount to Artichoke Basille's success. Garcia said a small menu helps with consistency because they're only worried about six items rather than 30 items.

"The continuity of doing the same thing over and over, it just became second nature to make those pies perfect all the time."

The brand has also put systems in place to ensure the pizza in Brooklyn tastes the same as it does in New Jersey. Garcia said social media is one easy way to check that pizzas turn out as they should. He can go online and search by location on Instagram and see the latest piece of pizza that was posted. Garcia said that's the most useful tool he gets out of social media.

"It's impossible for a human being to be in two places at the same time," he said. "Even in New York City, some days it's hard with traffic to get from location to the other location and to try to touch all 10 of them."

Garcia said the cousins didn't get into the pizza business to compete with the barrage of good pizzas found in New York City.

"We have something different. The artichoke slices are not traditional pizza. It's very, very rich and creamy and decadent. It's a meal. It's filling," he said, adding that slices are twice the size of other pizzerias' slices.

"We give a great value. It's always fresh and it's always hot. We're very passionate. We care a lot about our product and our reputation."

About Mandy Wolf Detwiler

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Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the managing editor at Networld Media Group and the site editor for PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com. She has more than 20 years’ experience covering food, people and places.
 
An award-winning print journalist, Mandy brings more than 20 years’ experience to Networld Media Group. She has spent nearly two decades covering the pizza industry, from independent pizzerias to multi-unit chains and every size business in between. Mandy has been featured on the Food Network and has won numerous awards for her coverage of the restaurant industry. She has an insatiable appetite for learning, and can tell you where to find the best slices in the country after spending 15 years traveling and eating pizza for a living. 

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