How a Background in Education Helped Emily Hyland Build a Pizza Empire
Earlier this fall, Philadelphia’s already-impressive pizza scene got another star player. Emmy Squared, inside the new Queen Hotel in the city’s Queen Village neighborhood, specializes in thick crust, Detroit-style pies and Le Big Matt—a double-patty burger on a squishy pretzel bun with a well-earned cult following.
The fifth location of Emmy Squared features menu favorites like the Colony pizza with pepperoni, pickled jalapenos, and local honey—and a few Philly-only specials like chopped cheese waffle fries and a white pie called the Tony Luke Jr., named after the cheesesteak magnate and inspired by the city’s iconic roast pork sandwich, with broccoli rabe, roasted garlic, bacon, and provolone. Just a few weeks in, the restaurant is already booked up and buzzing.
What started with neighborhood pizza shop Emily in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn has grown into a burgeoning pizza empire. In less than five years, Emily Hyland and her business partners Matt Hyland and Howard Greenstone are working on opening their ninth restaurant under the restaurant group Pizza Loves Emily.
Outposts of Emmy Squared and Emily, specializing in wood-fired Neapolitan pizzas, are in New York City, Nashville, and now, Philadelphia, and the group has an eye on expanding along the East Coast and beyond. The company’s approach to growing—with a focus on corporate mindfulness and a healthier work environment for all employees—is distinct, and exists in no small part thanks to Emily’s background in education.
A classically trained chef, Matt Hyland worked at places like The Breslin, Pizza Moto, and beloved Boerum Hill, Brooklyn pizzeria Sottocasa, run by Italian chef Luca Arrigoni, before opening Emily. Meanwhile, Emily Hyland worked as a public school english teacher and instructional coach (someone who helps train teachers and staff in evidence-based best practices) in New York City, and spent her weekends training to become a yoga instructor. After leaving her full time job, she and Matt launched their first restaurant. Five years in, Hyland, now the company’s director of culture, still taps into her experience as an educator to help run and expand the business.
“My leadership style is almost entirely rooted in best practices in the world of education,” Hyland says. “The key way to educate is through relationship building, and building collaborative communities. I knew from day one the type of restaurant community that I wanted to build was one that had balance.”
Balance comes, in part, from building best practices for the business, including how new staff members are trained. On an employee’s first day of training, Hyland starts with what she calls a norming activity. “That’s a best practice when a new group is formed,” she says. “You sit in a circle and talk about rules to govern this particular community.” The founder is also building outlines for some key positions, so that on training days, a staffer has a list of instructions and learning objectives to meet proficiency. “It’s super clear, so that the supervisor can come in and say, ‘Here are three things that are important for you to work on tomorrow, and from there we’ll work on these two things,’ and so on,” Hyland says.
Practicing and teaching yoga has also come in handy, specifically for keeping a cool head in a business that’s uniformly unpredictable. Mindfulness—an essential element of yoga—can be helpful in navigating the chaos. “It gives perspective, just to be able to back off from the paradigm of the restaurant, see it for what it is,” Hyland says. “Put your feet on the ground, reprioritize, and pivot toward what’s important.” And while her own training helps Hyland tap into that zen, she also holds a free yoga class for her employees once a week in New York City so that they, too, might benefit from practicing mindfulness.
“Bringing a feminine energy model centered on holistic wellness into a traditionally patriarchal structure,” Hyland says, “and infusing a human-first approach is at the core of our approach.”
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