NYPD Starts Franchising

Uncle D's hits town

by Sally Mitani

posted 12/26/2008

NYPD is slowly and carefully franchising its New York–style pizza. While the two campus locations will continue to be called NYPD (short for New York Pizza Depot), there are now three locations of Uncle D’s, as the franchise is called: in Bloomington (Indiana), in Ypsilanti, and the newest one, which opened over the summer inside Tippins party store on Ann Arbor–Saline Road.

“The main goal is not to open up like mushrooms,” says Maurizio Grillo, the NYPD partner who came here directly from Tuscany. “Most people hear ‘franchise’ and they think it’s some big corporation, but this is just small, just our family.” The other two NYPD / Uncle D’s partners, Grillo’s cousins Mauro and Domenico Telemaco, used to own a pizza joint in New York and came to Ann Arbor to start the business in 1997 at the behest of Domenico’s then-girlfriend, now-wife, Erin.

Reggie Kaji (pronounced “Cagey”), the manager at Tippins, says it took about four months to turn what used to be the deli counter into a pizza bakery (a slightly stripped-down version of the deli counter now lives on the other side of the store). “Spicy Medi¬terranean [chicken, feta cheese, and artichokes] is by far the best-selling pie,” says Kaji. “Myself, I just like pepperoni. I’m not big on a lot of toppings.” The pizza operation, including the seating area, takes up 1,400 square feet. “We had the seating area before,” he says, “but now we have more people sitting in it.”

Uncle D’s at Tippins, 4845 Ann Arbor–Saline Road, 665–1111. Mon.–Sat. 10 a.m.–10 p.m., Sun. noon–9 p.m. (party store opens earlier).   

[Originally published in December, 2008.]