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The owners of heavy metal pizza spot Sizzle Pie are working on a deal to sell White Owl Social Club to a group of three owners including visual artist AJ Fosik, who's already worked up some crazy new signage. The deal is expected to close by the end of August, says Sizzle Pie and White Owl co-owner Matthew Jacobson, although the future owners have already filed paperwork with the OLCC.
"We're super excited about what we've done with the White Owl," Jacobson tells WW. "We felt it was the best thing to do to pass the torch and focus on Sizzle Pie."
Sizzle Pies has two new expansions in the works. In September, Sizzle Pie will open long-planned, long-under-construction downtown Quality Bar, next to the Sizzle Pie location at 926 West Burnside Street. The bar has been forthcoming for long enough that even in 2013, Yelpers found a way to complain about a bar that's not even open yet. "We got held up for a really long time," Jacobson admits, but says it's fully licensed and will be ready to open.
Two weeks ago, Sizzle Pie started up a dedicated delivery kitchen at 1813 NE 2nd Ave., on the backside of Reverend Nat's Cider; this means that delivery hours have been expanded to Sizzle Pie's entire operating hours. They are currently also "softly open" with a pizza window there.
"Delivery's been a challenge," says Jacobson. "We didn't do it for the first year or two, and we were constrained on what we're able to do in capacity." Now, says Jacobson, Sizzle Pie will deliver pies till 3 or possibly 4 am, to the late-night drunks and bartenders just off shift.
The Portland pizza chain opened a Moda Center location and also plans a Seattle expansion into the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Jacobson says he and co-owner Michael McKennedy had already been working with the prospective new White Owl owners —AJ Fosik, Matthew Relkin and Jason Radich—to help them find another place to open a bar when "all these things started to gain momentum, and we were stressing out." So Jacobson and McKennedy decided it was time to sell White Owl.
"It's nice to sell things when they're successful," says Jacobson.
WWeek 2015