One of my buddies recently suggested that I write a column about an accountant who invested a fortune in a pizzeria.
The idea reminded me of my obsession of a few years ago to open up a hot dog stand. My wife headed off that mistake-in-the-making.
(Bill O'Leary/Washington Post) - Mark Bergami prepares a white clam pizza at Haven Pizzeria Napoletana.
(Bill O'Leary/Washington Post) - A white clam pizza.
But I was hooked on the accountant’s story. Here was another entrepreneur with too much money and not enough good ideas of what to do with it.
My appetite was heightened when I heard that he installed some specialized, super-duper pizza ovens. The tale gets even better: There are at least six pizza shops within, oh, 300 yards of his, and Washington is full of popular pizza places — 2Amys, Comet Ping Pong, Mia’s, Matchbox and Pete’s, to name just a few.
Then I got him on the phone.
Tiger Mullen, 56, is a self-described pizza nut, but he did not come to this idea lightly.
He approached it with the same mission-driven thoroughness that a private-equity dealmaker brings to a $100 million decision to buy a company. For example, before opening his restaurant, Haven Pizzeria Napoletana, the Pittsburgh area native:
●Visited the Barnes & Noble at Tysons Corner and bought books on breadmaking, pizza making and brick-oven construction.
●Hit up the bakers at Whole Foods for a slice of fresh baker’s yeast so he could make pizza dough. Then kept going back.
●Nearly burned down his house when he used his oven’s cleaning cycle in pursuit of a higher temperature to bake his pizza.
●Found a Michigan inventor who built him a propane-fired portable oven that was shipped to Mullen in pieces via United Parcel Service.
●Hooked the portable oven up to a natural gas line in his house to bypass the propane.
●Baked homemade pizza six nights a week for 18 months as he hunted for the perfect recipe, experimenting with different doughs, flours, temperatures, yeasts and toppings.
●Tested his recipe during a seven-hour pizza marathon at a Christmas-break family reunion, baking 60 pizzas for about 60 people
●Scouted 50 potential pizzeria locations throughout the Washington area with a commercial real estate broker before picking a former oriental rug store in Bethesda. The deciding factor: a rear entrance yards away from a Montgomery County parking lot.
●Walked the parking lot to count the spaces (326).
●Found two investors who bought a minority share.
●Interviewed 63 pizzaioli (pizza chefs) he found on Craigslist in Rhode Island, New Haven, Conn., and New York.
●Shelled out $400,000 for two custom-made, 12-by-12 coal-fired Italian bread ovens that weigh 100,000 pounds each.
I concluded that this was no whimsical pursuit, and I was no longer surprised once he told me his background.
An early self-starter
Mullen grew up in Oakmont, Pa., where his father was an investor in Pittsburgh area commercial real estate and several national businesses, including Bryant & Stratton for-profit colleges.
One of seven children, Mullen started his own landscaping business when he was 11. As a teenager, he painted houses; by 16, he was the general manager of a local carwash.
Mullen graduated from George Washington University with a degree in accounting in 1979 and spent four years working for what is now Ernst & Young. He dabbled in the apparel industry before starting his own boutique accounting practice, specializing in real estate. He has about 30 clients, some of which are the biggest real estate players in the area.
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