Slim & Husky's: 'Pizza beeria' gives Nashville community a slice of fame
Lizzy Alfs
Community is at the heart of Slim & Husky’s Pizza Beeria, a Nashville eatery founded by three friends dedicated to giving back to underserved neighborhoods.
Tennessee State University grads Clinton Gray, Derrick Moore and Emanuel Reed struck a chord with Nashville diners when in 2017 they opened their first casual pizza restaurant in a historically black North Nashville neighborhood that’s largely been left out of the city’s dining boom.
From the early days of operating their Buchanan Street location, the ‘90s hip hop and R&B-themed Slim & Husky’s drew long lines at all hours of the day for delicious pizza pies with names like “Nothin But A ‘V’ Thang” for a vegan-friendly special and “The Smokin’ Herb,” for one loaded with spinach and mushrooms. Local brews and canned wine round out the menu,
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It is the trio’s mission to keep their restaurant approachable for neighborhood residents and to employ people who live within walking distance that has earned the pizza restaurant national acclaim.
“We just understand there are not a lot of opportunities in this community for jobs and there are not a lot of opportunities for young children and teenagers to see people that look like them succeeding in business. We wanted to bring that here,” Derrick Moore said last year prior to the opening of the first Slim & Husky’s.
On the heels of that success, Slim & Husky’s opened a carry-out outpost with a cinnamon roll menu, aptly named The Rollout. Another Slim & Husky’s debuted in June in Nashville's Antioch neighborhood. The trio plan to expand elsewhere in the city.
The Antioch restaurant developed a one-of-a-kind partnership with a nearby elementary school to encourage childhood reading. Students who meet their weekly reading goals get complimentary pizza and cinnamon rolls from Slim & Husky’s. The restaurant owners hope the partnership eventually becomes a citywide initiative.
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Opening a restaurant was a leap of faith for Gray, Moore and Reed, three ambitious Nashville natives who are no strangers to entrepreneurship. Though they entered the Nashville restaurant scene during a time of intense competition, especially for independent operators with limited capital, Slim & Husky’s is expanding while many local eateries are struggling to drive sales.
The pizzeria was their second business venture, behind eco-friendly moving and storage company Green Truck Moving Co., started in 2010 when they were all 25. They launched the moving company as a low-budget startup with rented trucks and it quickly took off.
“We developed our business just by bootstrapping and just working hard and so I think the community kind of gravitated to our differences in being green and being active in the community,” Gray said.
Gray said they had a longtime dream to open a restaurant, and they wanted to help revive the Buchanan area. The name Slim & Husky’s comes from an inside joke, since Gray and Moore would shop in the husky clothing section as kids and Reed would don slim fits.
“We figured starting a pizza company in an area that doesn’t have a whole lot of restaurants would be a great way to kind of help upstart that community back again and that’s why we chose the Buchanan area,” Gray said.