Freak Brothers Pizza, a vegan pizza food truck, hopes to take a big step from food truck to a brick-and-mortar restaurant in fall of 2017.
Freak Brothers Pizza started three years ago serving pizza from a mobile wood-fired pizza oven hauled on a trailer at running races, and has expanded to serving at other events including musical festivals, concerts and private events.
“We’re just really excited and blessed to bring our restaurant to the Phoenix community and to see how we can help make a difference,” Nathan Coury, who co-owns Freak Brothers Pizza alongside his brother Jamil, said. “With all the crazy stuff going on in the world we just want to create positive ripples and do our part.”
The new project will be located at First and Garfield streets as part of the Churchill, a project that will house several other restaurants and retailers after opening in fall 2017. The greater Churchill project is currently in its pre-development phase, which involves finding tenants and continuing funding efforts, according to Dan Klocke, executive director of the Downtown Phoenix Partnership.
Nathan Coury does the on-the-ground operations of the business and recruits people to work for Freak Brothers Pizza, while Jamil Coury does more high-level operations, such as making connections with people and finding the new location.
“It’s a good relationship, we both contribute something significant to the business,” Nathan Coury said. “We want to keep growing our special events business while also doing the restaurant. That will be a new challenge–to try and manage both at the same time–but I’ve got some really great people working with me.”
Customers will see an expanded menu when paying a visit to Freak Brothers Pizza at the Churchill. The venue will also feature a stage with music events and a full bar.
“Just a real community feeling space,” Coury said of the brick-and-mortar location.
“Right now we just do pizza. We’re excited to experiment a little bit more in the restaurant space,” Coury said, explaining that the menu will also have salad, dessert and hummus, but will still remain simple and small.
Josh Walker, a manager at Freak Brothers Pizza, will be closely involved with the new location opening.
“I’m super excited to have to comeback at the end of the day, everyday, and do a recap to figure out what we need to change, what works well and how to keep improving,” Walker said.
The anticipation Coury and Walker have for the new, permanent location is shared by current customers.
“I’m completely stoked for them to open,” Emily Eliason, a customer of Freak Brothers Pizza, said. “I have tried so many vegan pizzas in the last three and a half years and their pizza is by far my favorite.”
For Freaky Brothers Pizza, the restaurant goes beyond just pizza.
“The pizza is kind of a front. We make a really good pizza, but we’re really about things like compassion and creative expression,” Coury said. “That’s what we really care about and we put that into the pizza. We just want to support people living their best lifestyle.”
One of Coury’s favorite memories is when Freak Brothers Pizza served pizza from the mobile wood-fired oven all night at a trail running race put on by Ragnar Relay.
“We go to their trail races, which are out-of-state like California, Texas or Colorado and travel for several days,” Coury said. “We’re able to feed people pizza at 2 a.m. while they’re out running. That’s really fun and a cool bonding experience to travel with a group of friends and go cook pizza for these runners at the races.”
Contact the reporter mnischke@asu.edu.
