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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 Ryan Pera!

My name is Ryan Pera and I was born and raised here in the Bay Area. I can say that I have been making art since a very young age, because that’s all that I remember doing growing up. I can honestly say that my first real toy was a pencil and the fat stack of white paper that my dad would bring home from work. Since my dad was an artist, I was always watching him either paint or draw. With time and practice, I got better. I was never a left-brained type of guy. No matter what it was that I did in life, I knew it had to be in the arts.

Today, I am finishing up my last year at California College of the Arts/CCA to get my bachelor’s degree in Illustration. To be able to create art through imagery, on a flat surface, and have someone asking questions and commenting on it, is what I live for. I love making art that can translate to the viewer even if it is as simple as this piece.

Ryan’s Piece, “Phases of Pizza”

It’s cool to know that I was able to enter a contest against someone I knew personally. Being much younger than I am, my nephew, Jalen, who is eight years old, was excited throughout the whole process of this contest. He focused more on sketching on pieces of napkin and paper at the restaurant rather than finishing his pizza.

For illustrations, making small thumbnail sketches is a quick and effective way to test out ideas for images, as well as ideas for the composition of the final piece, all of which my nephew was doing without me prompting him. He stayed up until 2 AM to work on the poster. He woke up early and continued to work until he got it done. I originally wanted him to enter the competition, because he was so excited. I didn’t care to enter with the little bit of time I had. With less than eight hours until the deadline, I decided to give it a shot, paint something and submit.

Jalen’s (Ryan’s nephew) Piece – “Golden Warriors”

To know that he (Jalen) was proud to enter his first art contest and get a feel for it was one thing, but to know how he felt when finding out he was a winner was another. It was most rewarding to know that I have a piece hanging next to my nephew’s piece in the same exact restaurant location in Pleasant Hill along with other great artists of all ages. Thank you Zachary’s!

We are bringing back a crew and customer favorite in Oakland and Berkeley! Our Roasted Pepper pizza is a dream pie for veggie lovers! It’s filled with red, green, and yellow bell peppers, Anaheim chiles, Pasilla peppers, and onion. We finish it off with lots of Monterey Jack and cheddar cheese. It’s available stuffed or thin crust for a limited time only.

Ask one of our veteran employee owners about the best way to order the Roasted Pepper pizza and they will certainly suggest that you add pepperoni to the top. Putting pepperoni on top gives this pie a crunchy pop that perfectly compliments the smokiness of the roasted peppers. Yes please!

Our San Ramon and Pleasant Hill locations are keeping the Butternut Squash pizza around for a few more weeks. This popular pie has roasted butternut squash, goat cheese, spinach, red onion, fresh parsley and mozzarella. It’s also available stuffed or thin crust. This pizza is the brainchild of employee owner Justin Lassen. He credits the pizza creation to “the healthy appetites of the San Ramon employee owners” who helped sample lots of trial runs (poor little dears!).

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!

We are trying out a brand new pizza at all four of our locations! Our Butternut Squash pizza is a completely and totally delish combination of roasted butternut squash, goat cheese, spinach, red onion, fresh parsley, and mozzarella cheese. It’s available stuffed or thin crust for a limited time only.

This pizza is the brainchild of employee owner Justin Lassen. He credits the pizza to “the healthy appetites of the San Ramon employee owners” who helped sample lots of trial runs (poor babies!). We are super excited about this new pie (goat cheese in the stuffed pizza is out-of-control!).

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 have new pizza specials at all of our locations!

We are trying out a brand new pizza in San Ramon and Pleasant Hill! Our Butternut Squash pizza is a completely and totally delish combination of roasted butternut squash, goat cheese, spinach, red onion, fresh parsley, and mozzarella cheese. It’s available stuffed or thin crust for a limited time only. This pizza is the brainchild of employee owner Justin Lassen. He credits the pizza to “the healthy appetites of the San Ramon employee owners” who helped sample lots of trial runs (poor babies!). We are super excited about this new pie (goat cheese in the stuffed pizza is out-of-control!).

In Oakland and Berkeley, we are bringing back another employee owner original. Aria’s Enchi-Holla Enchilada pizza blends two of our faves: pizza (no surprise, there!) and enchiladas! This pie is loaded with free range chicken breast marinated in green enchilada sauce, corn, cilantro, black olives, Monterey Jack and cheddar cheese. The stuffed pizza comes with a layer of corn tortillas (what?!) and the thin pizza comes with tortilla chips. Aria won our employee pizza contest a couple of years ago and her Enchi-Holla pizza became a staple in our rotating specials line-up.

Oh, Bay Area, it’s a delicious week at Zachary’s!

Okay, kale lovers, we heard you! Our Kale salad is back in Oakland and Berkeley. This perfectly refreshing salad has kale (of course!), feta, matchstick carrots, green apples, cucumber, and roasted pumpkin seeds. It’s tossed in our house-made Tahini dressing. It’s light, refreshing, and tasty. AND it’s a perfect way to get some veggies in before moving on to PIZZA!

We’ve got two in-demand specials coming back TODAY!

The ever-popular Hot Link pizza special is back in Oakland and Berkeley! This crew and customer favorite is stuffed with sliced Louisiana Hot Link sausage, fresh cilantro and mozzarella cheese. It’s a little bit spicy and a lot-a bit YUM.

In Pleasant Hill and San Ramon, our Hawaiian pizza is back in action! This pie has Canadian bacon, pineapple, green onion and pepper jack cheese. Regional Manager, Luis Ibarra, whipped up this tasty spin on traditional Hawaiian pizza and it is top notch!

Both specials are available stuffed or thin crust for a limited time only!

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!