Brittany March, the owner of a culinary pop-up called It’s Food Detroit, has a deep love for pizza that goes all the way back to childhood. When her mom told her to “get your own money” for takeout, March did just that.
“Me and my friend would paint rocks, go around the subdivision, sell the rocks, and we'd come back with at least $10 to go get pizza,” she said.
Today, March cooks her own pizza, offering a vegan-first take on Detroit-style. She has plans to open up her own brick-and-mortar called Roots and Dough next spring.
Other local pizzerias, like Mootz Pizzeria + Bar, Michigan & Trumbull, Pie Sci Pizza, and Grandma Bob's Pizza do have vegan options, March said. But she hopes to bring something unique to the city’s East Side.
“...I don't want to jam the vegan, plant-based thing on people, but I primarily want people to know our identity is vegan,” she said. “I'm vegan. You don't have to be vegan. But if you want to have good food and you're vegan, this is your home.”
It takes a village
March works as a maintenance supervisor for Otis Elevator during the week, but as soon as the weekend hits, she gets busy in the kitchen.
“Friday at 4 or 5 p.m., I turn it right into pizza,” she said.
It’s Food Detroit started as a vegan pop up that's had a few different homes, and a lot of helping hands over the years. March currently works out of the kitchen at Alkebu-lan Village, a community center on Harper Ave. on the east side of Detroit.
Alkebu-lan provides a wide variety of children's programming. Upstairs, there's a labyrinth of activity spaces: a martial arts studio, a small fitness center, a dance studio, and a room full of vinyls and DJ decks. On the ground floor, a small dining area separates a large roller rink and the kitchen. This is where March sells 60 to 100 pies every weekend under the name Village Pizza.
In exchange for the use of the space, March leads culinary training for some of the older kids. She trained a small group of teenagers at Alkebu-lan to help with kitchen prep on Friday and Saturday nights. The kids earned a stipend anytime they worked, March said.
“Some of them would shred cheese, some of them would fold boxes,” she said. “And then, [on the] actual day of operations, some of them are taking orders, they're cutting pizzas. They're learning the full business, as I was, on how to run a business.”
March has scaled back on the youth involvement a bit as she looks toward buying her own space.
Refining a vegan-friendly recipe
The menu at Village Pizza is almost entirely vegan, with pizzas like the No-Swine Hawaiian topped with pineapple, green peppers, onion and seitan bacon. Or the Beyond Supreme with beyond ground beef, mushrooms, green peppers and onion. There's a few non-vegan options for those that want them, but vegan is at the heart of Village Pizza.
As March was growing up, she said, she naturally adopted her mother’s “health-conscious” eating habits. But in college, she made a more drastic change to her diet.
“I gained a lot of weight in college my senior year, and I was like, ‘I'm cutting everything out,’” she said. “I'm cutting everything out until I can figure out how to get my weight under control. And when I went back to filtering things back into my diet, one of the things that I did not miss was chicken, turkey, or fish.”
One of the harder foods to cut out, she said, was cheese.
“...I was like, ‘I won't be vegan if that means I can't eat cheese on pizza,’” she said. “And then, when I started the business, I said to myself, ‘Well, if you're going to make a good vegan pizza, you’ve got to stop eating cheese pizza.”
One of the things that made the transition easier, March said, was understanding that vegan cheese and dairy cheese are incredibly different products. She’s since found a mix of different vegan cheese brands that she uses on her own pies.
March’s pizzas are significantly less cheesy than what foodies may be used to, but her recipes aren’t any less flavorful.
“I don't look for a cheese pull,” she said, referring to the long strings of melted cheese that are created when you pull a slice of pizza away from the pie. “Like, if I want to be on Instagram, and I want a lot of followers, and I don't want anybody to come buy food, yeah, I'll give you a cheese pull all day with vegan cheese. But if I want people to come back, and eat vegan pizza, and enjoy the vegan pizza, then I'm going to use the least amount of vegan cheese as my base…”
The roots of her pizza love
March attributes her pizza love, in part, to her Uncle Archie and Aunt Ruth, her mother’s sister. The couple owned a home in Metamora, Michigan where March would stay every weekend as a child.
Saturday mornings, she said, began with the sound of Uncle Archie mowing the lawn of their 25-acre property. When he came back inside the house, the family would enjoy a big breakfast of grits, oatmeal, eggs, turkey, sausage, bacon, water, juice, and milk.
Then, they would head into town to run errands before finishing off the day at K-Mart.
“And inside of Kmart, there was always, in the 90s, a Little Caesars,” March said. “This Little Caesars used to have a small version of the Crazy Bread… And then you could get what they call now the Hot-N-Readys. And that's what we would eat after eating that big-ass breakfast.”
If she could share a slice with anyone in history, March said, it would be Uncle Archie.
“It's nostalgic for me just because of how I grew up, and what being in that type of environment meant to me,” March said. “Just enjoying time with, kind of like my dad, which was my uncle… and how much time he invested in me.”
March hopes the community will continue to invest in her vision, with a goal of closing on a building for Roots and Dough in the next couple months. James Oliver Coffee Co. in Corktown will host a fundraiser for the project on Saturday, June 21.
