Your Pie, a new fast-casual pizza franchise on Gunbarrel Road near Hamilton Place mall, will have its grand opening Friday, April 13.
The new restaurant is owned by father-and-son team Himanshu and Harshil Patel who also own three Smoothie King locations in Chattanooga and Fort Oglethorpe. Your Pie is at 1919 Gunbarrel Road, Suite 103, where Fresh to Order closed last September.
The new restaurant will serve up custom-built, Neapolitan pizzas for $8 each.
"It is one price if you pick one topping or you pick 30 toppings," said co-owner Harshil Patel.
The franchise also will serve gelato and paninis as well as beer, but Patel said the restaurant also will be "family-friendly." It will be open Sunday-Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Customers can also choose from signature pizzas, but Patel said 85 percent of customers usually choose to build their own. The company's motto is, "Express Your Inner Pie." The restaurant also will serve free gelato with every kid-sized pizza sold.
Customers can enjoy their food while sitting inside or outside. Patel said there are 84 seats inside and 32 on the patio.
The restaurant will employ 32 full-time and part-time employees, as well.
Your Pie is opening right across the street from Atlanta-
based pizza chain Uncle Maddio's Pizza, serving up a bit of competition in the area where Mission BBQ and Bad Daddy's Burger Bar also opened this week. In all, four new restaurant concepts to the Chattanooga market are debuting his spring in the same block of Gunbarrel Road.
Uncle Maddio's was founded by the same group that launched Moe's Southwest Grill. Mike Chaudhary, a Nashville franchisee, said he has signed an agreement to open six of the Uncle Maddio's restaurants over the next couple of years. The new Gunbarrel Road site for Uncle Maddio's will include seating for 62 persons.
Patel is confident Your Pie will be able to complete, though.
"We have a brick oven, which is a total different ball game," he said. "Our oven cooks the pizza in about two or three minutes on average."
Your Pie, which Patel said operates 65 store locations nationwide with 40 more under construction, got its start in the college town of Athens, Ga.
In 2006, the restaurant's founder Drew French was visiting his wife's family in Ischia, a small, volcanic island 19 miles from the city of Naples, Italy. There, the company says, "He fell in love with the region's use of brick ovens and the perfectly-crisp doughs and smoky, earthy flavors that came out of it." Two years later, the first Your Pie opened in Athens.
Contact staff writer Allison Shirk at ashirk@timesfreepress.com, @Allison_Shirk or 423-757-6651.