Sign Placement: 2012!

We are over-the-moon to be celebrating our fifth anniversary in Pleasant Hill on Wednesday, February 7th 2018! We can’t believe it was five short years ago that we opened our doors to the fantastically welcoming Pleasant Hill community.

In the last five years, we’ve developed a tight-knit crew of employee owners, participated in loads of community events like Art, Jazz, and Wine and Blues and Brews, hosted a holiday food drive, organized employee-owner volunteer days at the Contra Costa County food bank, hosted more than 30 community fundraisers, and sponsored two different art contests (2017 saw 27 art contest winners from Pleasant Hill!!!). Basically, the Pleasant Hill community has totally embraced us and we are hugging back hard!!

We love it here and we are super excited to be turning 5!

The walls of our restaurants are filled with one-of-a-kind Zachary’s Pizza Art. We held our first art contest in the late 1980′s and the tradition has continued every couple of years since. We love our art and the artists. We are excited to be able to use our blog as a medium for our community to get to know our artists better. Meet Stew Ellington!

For the first 30 years of my life, art was hugely important to me. At one time I had wanted to be an artist for a living. I made art in all sorts of media and in 2001 earned a master of fine arts degree in painting. After earning my degree, however, I completely lost interest in painting and avoided it for about 15 years. In fact, the poster I made for the Zachary’s contest is the first painting I’ve done since grad school! In the meantime, I’ve filled in the creative gaps of my life with photography and writing; I’ve designed and published two cocktail recipe books, among other creative projects.

I had wanted to enter the Zachary’s poster contest for years but could never think of an image I wanted to use. Plus, I was loath to pick up a paintbrush again for fear I would have lost my skills! Finally, it occurred to me I should just paint something I’m passionate about and make it work for the contest, and I happen to love vintage Italian Vespa scooters. The idea to create the front wheel out of a Zachary’s deep-dish pizza popped into my head and, eureka! I was on my way. I crossed my fingers and hoped I could still pull off a reasonably convincing painting after a 15-year hiatus.

I love how the Italian-ness of the scooter reflects the Italian(ish)-ness of pizza. I had a great time creating my poster in the style of vintage Vespa ads from Italy, with lots of bright, primary colors and cartoonish renderings. The official slogan of Vespa, “Not just a scooter… a lifestyle,” lent itself well to referencing Zachary’s pizza and providing a title for my piece. I’m really glad I was able to break my painting dry-spell with one that was so purely fun to do. Thanks, Zachary’s, for the opportunity and for years of awesome pizza! I’m so glad to finally be a part of this community event.

We are collecting donations for the Alameda County Community Food Bank and the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano for the next 10 days!

The Alameda County Community Food Bank serves one in five of our neighbors in Alameda County; two-thirds of these neighbors are children and seniors. 

The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano provides food to more than 190,000 people every month. 

We are collecting non-perishable donations at each of our locations until December 22nd! If you donate a full bag of groceries, you will be entered in a raffle to win a dinner at Zachary’s including a pizza of your choice, two salads and a round of drinks! We will choose a winner at each location.

To kick off our food drive, we volunteered at the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano! The pictures below are of Zachary’s employee owners boxing apples and oranges galore!

So many apples!

Z for Zachary’s!

Team Volunteer!

Go Lobby, go!

We finished the apples so we moved on to oranges!

Twelve of our awesomely energetic employee owners participated in San Ramon’s Bah Humbug 5K Run and Walk! They ran, they walked and they had a blast doing it!

Rewards were given out for best group costume. The Grinch Who Stole Zachary’s and our Who-Crew came in second place!

Long time employee owner, and Assistant Manager in our San Ramon and Pleasant Hill region, Lobsang Dharchen, said, “I am proud to represent my company… Doing (the) 5K with my cowokers feels like I am having fun with such a great team!”

We are super proud of this fab running crew! Keep your eyes peeled for them at the 2018 Oakland Running Festival!

One of the things that we are the most proud of is our long term relationship with our suppliers. We are truly fortunate to have close relationships with several companies that keep us stocked with fresh and delicious ingredients to make our pizza and various other products that we need to keep our restaurants running smoothly. In fact, when our founders, Zach Zachowski and Barbara Gabel, decided to retire, they were keenly aware of the impact that ending a relationship with a distributor could have on the distributor’s business. A perk of Zach and Barbara’s decision to sell the company to the employees (read more about our ESOP here), was that our relationships with our distributors stayed intact!

We were reminded of the notability of our relationship with one such supplier, Mike Hudson Distributing, based in Petaluma, CA, when we learned about one of our long term delivery drivers getting a route change. Jeff has been delivering to Zachary’s for 14 years!! He learned a few weeks ago that he could have the opportunity to drive in Humboldt County. This was a good move for him, so he let us know that he was saying good bye. The management team immediately moved to put together a Zachary’s care package for him, wrapped up in one of the pizza boxes he has been delivering to us since 2003. Here is a picture of Jeff cheesin’ with Zachary’s employee owners Mario, Arturo and Hugo:

Shhhh, don’t tell anyone, but Jeff said he would miss us the most!

Best of luck to Jeff as he embarks on this new journey!

Happy National Employee Ownership Month!

Zachary’s is an ESOP. What is an ESOP, you ask? ESOP stands for Employee Stock Ownership Plan. All of Zachary’s stock is owned by the employees. ESOPs are federally governed, defined contribution plans. More info here: National Center for Employee Ownership.

When Zachary’s founders, Zach Zachowski and Barbara Gabel, decided it was time to retire, instead of selling to a third party buyer or (gasp!) dissolving our beloved restaurants, they sold the company to the employees. Little by little, the Zachary’s crew bought more and more of the company until we became officially 100% employee owned in 2010.

To kick off employee ownership month, we hosted our Annual ESOP Meetings. This is a chance for our whole crew to get together to learn about our business and learn about the ESOP. In the photo on the left, employee owners eagerly await the start of the meeting… and the unveiling of Zachary’s 2016 share value!

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month! For the entire month of October, Zachary’s will be selling pink t-shirts! We started selling pink t-shirts in 2014 after a group of Zachary’s employee owners participated in the American Cancer Society’s “Making Strides Against Breast Cancer” walk in San Francisco. The walk was inspirational, a great place to learn and LOTS of fun.

Since 2014, we have continued the tradition of raising money for the American Cancer Society with our pink t-shirt sales. This year, t-shirts will be sold from our Oakland location on College Avenue and our Pleasant Hill location. All proceeds go directly to the American Cancer Society!

The Zachary’s Bocce team has been living it up in the Pleasant Hill Parks and Recreation Bocce League! Check out some team members/employee owners in action!

Luis!

Kate!

Tyler!

Our patio music series is in full swing! We are excited to be able to host such a fantastic line up of talented artists! In celebration of our patio music evenings, we also prepare our deliciously fruity Sangria! Come join us for some yummy adult beverages (we have Shirley Temples too!), your favorite Zachary’s pizza and some phenomenal local musicians!

6/28: Frankie G
7/5: Billy Schuab
7/12: Paul Cotruvo
7/19: Rick Mickaels
7/26: Dan Deshara
8/2: Bruce Brophy and Paul Trombetta
8/9: The Bell Brothers
8/16: Kyle Jester and Frankie G
8/23: The Lost Weekend

All patio music starts at 6:30pm.