When Bill Crawford, a graduate of Harvard Business School and a business professor at Brigham Young University-Idaho, started exploring opening a pizza parlor in Rexburg, Idaho, a city of 40,000 people, most of his colleagues were skeptical or discouraging. “What a bad idea to start a food business,” they advised him, it’s risky, uncertain, and you won’t make a healthy profit.

But Crawford persisted, and while remaining as a full-time business professor, fittingly enough teaching Small Business Management, in 2018, he opened Righteous Slice. Since then, he has never looked back and is having the time of his life. “Pizza is a product that gives me total freedom to be creative, but it also gives me an opportunity to push myself to learn and improve every day,” he says, spoken like a true entrepreneur.

To open Righteous Slice, he and his wife Cindy took out a bank loan, covering about half their up-front capital and then assembled equity partners, mostly from friends. Though he was warned not to rely on friends, Crawford says that that has been one of the highlights and “I wouldn’t want to do without their support and encouragement.”

The pizza shop seats 100 people, and a slice and beverage cost $7. Righteous Slice blends into the prevailing community since it’s closed on Sunday and doesn’t serve alcohol. Indeed about 95% of Rexburg’s population consists of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormons, according to a quick AI search. As is Crawford himself.

It’s a Family Affair

Because Crawford is a full-time business professor, running the business has become a family affair. Cheryl Crawford oversees HR and finance, and his son Andrew was recently named full-time manager. And it has a vigorous training program to bring new staffers into its culture, a topic very important to a business professor.

Indeed, reporter Ed Levine used Righteous Slice in a New York Times Food article to epitomize how the New York City-style slice pizza is now permeating the nation, even in out-of-the-way locales like Idaho.

Being Near a College Campus Helps Draw a Crowd

The shop is located about a block from Brigham Young University-Idaho’s campus, and Crawford estimates that about half of its regulars are connected to the university including students, faculty and administrators. But he tries to keep his professorial duties separate from his business and doesn’t do anything special to lure them in.

It’s located on the ground floor of an apartment complex, in a mixed commercial and residential area, and for a smaller city, is extremely urban, with a lot of foot traffic.

When Crawford was growing up in Phoenix (among other places), Grandma’s Pizza, which served slices, became one of his role models. But when he first opened Righteous Slice, he served Neapolitan pizza (and still does), after attending Tony Gemignani’s International School of Pizza in San Francisco.

But the demand for Neapolitan pizza seemed limited in Rexburg, and Crawford, looking for other options, developed NY-slice pizza. He was also influenced by attending the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, where independent pizzerias demonstrated their slice pizza. It offers a full menu, beyond pizza, including salads, a couple of appetizers, shakes and desserts.

What Makes NY-Style Slice Pizza Special

He says New York City slice pizza is special because “every detail of it has been thought out including the crust, the baking and fermentation, which all come together.”

He’s made several trips to the New York metropolitan area tasting pizza at Razza in Jersey City, Paulie Gee’s in Brooklyn, L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn.

What do people on a diet choose at Righteous Slice? Crawford admits there are few if any options, but he says “a lot of people on a diet still come to Righteous Slice and eat anything they want.”

Unlike most pizza parlors, it doesn’t do much delivery and hasn’t forged a positive relationship with third-party deliverers. Crawford says they move too slowly and “We want every guest to experience the pizza as soon as possible after it comes out of the oven.” They’re exploring developing their own delivery service to solve the problem.

Customers on Yelp seemed pleased with the pizza at Righteous Slice. Marc from Rexburg wrote “really good pizza, served piping hot, by cheerful, clean, well-dressed young people with impeccable manners.” And Peter from Atlanta noted that “When you think of Idaho, pizza likely doesn’t come to mind, but Righteous Slice offers up noteworthy pizza that would do well in any major city.”

Its name Righteous Slice has no religious affiliation but is a slogan people on the West Coast use, meaning it blows them away, Crawford suggests.

Asked the keys to its success, Crawford replies: 1) Stay hyper-focused on providing the best guest experience, 2) There is no number 2.

It’s spending $75,000 remodeling the pizza shop, but, once that’s completed, opening a second pizza shop is on his radar screen. Why has it been successful? “There was a gap in the market. People wanted a different kind of pizza and we nailed it, though not on our first try,” Crawford admits.