The Unlikely Plan That Launched Down North Pizza

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Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Muhammad. It’s great to have you here. Muhammad, we all know, the failure rates for businesses are quite high. Building a business is not an easy thing to do. But you’ve managed not only to build a successful business, but to do it while addressing an important social mission. That’s no small feat, and I’m going to ask you about that. But first, tell me about yourself. Did you grow up in Philly?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
Yes. I’m a Philly native, born and raised. I bleed green. You know, for those who know what that means. [Laughter]

Loren Feldman:
It means you’re an Eagles fan.

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
Yes.

Loren Feldman:
For those who don’t know Philadelphia, what part of town did you grow up in? And what kind of neighborhood is it?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
I grew up in West Philadelphia. The historic 52nd Street is where I grew up and where I’m from, all up and down that historic strip of commercial corridor in West Philly.

Loren Feldman:
Why is it historic?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
There’s a lot of history for the commercial corridor with Black entrepreneurs in that particular area. So 52nd Street was the area that you can walk up and down—as we call it, The Strip—and you just see Black entrepreneurship, Black businesses, immigrant businesses. Pretty affluent, within that particular strip of 52nd Street.

Loren Feldman:
Was that something that made an impact on you? Did some of the people you saw there become role models for you?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
It definitely did something to me, because I saw a lot of people who look like me who were able to do something positive within the community. You had different types of businesses on that strip, and you also had people playing chess. You had people doing a lot of positive things that you can see. It definitely had an impact on myself. And my father used to take me up and down that strip. He was friends with a lot of the individuals who had businesses there. So it definitely exposed me to a lot.

Loren Feldman:
How did you first get interested in entrepreneurship?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
I first got interested in entrepreneurship, because of, honestly, my brother. I have an older brother, who has only ever been an entrepreneur for as long as I can think. And he, growing up in Philly, went to Howard University in the ’80s, started printing on T-shirts, doing his thing.

I remember seeing that, and I remember him hiring me over the summers, because I used to actually go down to D.C. and live with him. And I used to work folding shirts, when I was about 7, 8, 9, 10. I would get paid. It wasn’t what I would consider a livable wage back then when I was eight, but yeah, I was getting paid. I was pulling a lot of shirts, and I remember receiving the check for about $5 to $10.

Loren Feldman:
That’s a good job for a 7- or 8-year-old.

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
I always saw him start countless businesses. And even if they didn’t amount or didn’t prosper, it never stopped him from starting something. So that resilience, I think, is something that’s in my bloodline. I always knew I wanted to get into entrepreneurship in some capacity. But for me, I needed to have a plan. And I know that having a job wasn’t the worst thing to do, when you potentially want to get into entrepreneurship. Because a lot of entrepreneurs understand that in order to be a great leader or great boss, you have to be a great worker as well.

I think that the thing that led me to focus on entrepreneurship was because it was just very hard for me to find a job at points in my life. Funny thing about it, I’ve never gotten a job based off of filling out an application. Never got a callback for an interview in my life. I filled out applications but I never got a callback to come interview for a job. Any employment that I had is because of the person who I knew and they knew my values. So that was always something for me that I always knew that I could never rely on. Because I’ve never gotten any traction from just filling out an application and somebody actually calling me back in for an interview.

Loren Feldman:
How did you think about that? Why do you think you didn’t get those callbacks?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
I’m not too sure, to be honest, but I know that I was filling out for countless interviews and just never getting a call. But I never at the time really thought about the why. For me, I knew that I had to take an alternative route. So if I wanted to get a job, I had to either know somebody at the particular place that I wanted to be employed, or nine times out of 10, it probably wouldn’t be happening.

Loren Feldman:
You went to high school in West Philadelphia, right?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
Yep. I graduated from West Philadelphia High School.

Loren Feldman:
And what did you do after high school? Is this when you were trying to apply for jobs?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
Yeah, my journey is a little different from a lot of people’s. It’s not no straight line. You know, as people will say, you went to school, the kind of straight line. Mine was more like a heart rate, if you can equate it to something. But a lot of learning. So yeah, when I finally graduated high school—because I dropped out, actually, for two years—two years after I was supposed to graduate, when I finally graduated, I actually went to automotive school, because I always loved cars.

Loren Feldman:
And how did that go?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
It was a 12-month program. Seven months in, I had an epiphany. I woke up and said, “I don’t want to work on cars for the rest of my life.” And yeah, I didn’t go back. Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. And then after that, I enrolled in Community College of Philadelphia.

So let me try my hand in this school thing, which for me—I tell people all the time, going through school, I was at most, maybe a D-plus, C student. School wasn’t my thing, in the sense that I always lived outside of a box in the way that I thought. So, for me, I wasn’t really the guy who was super enthused. I liked the idea of meeting and networking with people, but the actual school? It was ups and downs.

So for me, I’m like, “Let’s give this school thing a try,” because both my parents were educated. They both went to college. So it was something I knew I could do, but for me, it just wasn’t really panning out. So I went to CCP and did that for a year and a half and I failed every single class. Yeah, it just didn’t work out. And I tell people this because I ended up wasting my grandma’s and my dad’s hard-earned money. You know, because they’re the ones that paid for my school, and I felt bad. But it just wasn’t something that I was connecting with at the time. So I ended up leaving school.

Loren Feldman:
What did you do then?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
I went to work for my brother. He had a clothing line.

Loren Feldman:
Was he still in D.C.?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
No, at the time, he moved back to Philly. So in 2000-2001, there was like a real big clothing line that came out of Philly called Miskeen—very popular. Probably the most popular clothing line ever to come out of Philadelphia.

Loren Feldman:
And that was your brother’s?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
It was my brother’s and he had three other partners in that. And I went to work for him. When he started that company, and he was getting it up off the ground, I was a board boy. Because we used to hand-paint shirts. So I used to have to load shirts up on easels and let them paint the T-shirts. So that was literally my job.

Loren Feldman:
You now have a restaurant where you specialize in hiring people who’ve been incarcerated. When you’re talking about the heart-rate pattern of the ups and downs of your growing up, are you referring to an experience with prison yourself?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
No, I didn’t have any experience with prison until I was 33 years old. I was able to navigate throughout Philly as a Black man and not have interactions with law enforcement, which is unheard of in a big city like this. My run-ins didn’t come until I was actually 32-33.

Loren Feldman:
What happened then?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
I was doing business with some guys and didn’t know what those guys were into, and you know how that goes. Ignorance is not an excuse. You’re supposed to know. So I ended up getting in some trouble behind that. But for me, I don’t have any regrets in life. So I took it and made this situation out of it that I’m in currently now. And I haven’t looked back since.

Loren Feldman:
Did you have to go to prison at that point?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
No, I didn’t have to go to prison, luckily. People ask me about my particular story, and the reason why I don’t really talk too much about it is because, at the time, I had resources to be able to navigate through the carceral system. And I choose not to focus on myself because of my having resources. In particular, we talk about white-collar crime. It’s a very different situation, as opposed to individuals whose lives are being snatched away from them because they don’t have the resources. Which is a lot of the guys who are in the kitchen who work at Down North Pizza.

So for me, I really like to focus on them. Because I can be looked at as an exception to the rule, because of what I had access to in my personal situation. And these guys spent numerous years in jail, meaning like the total prison count in years of everybody that’s in Down North Pizza is close to 60 years. So for me, that’s more of a focal point than myself and my situation, which are very different.

Loren Feldman:
I think I heard you suggest that having this experience is what led you to Down North Pizza and what you’re doing now. Tell us, how did that happen?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
The funny thing about it is that I came up with this concept before I got into my situation, which just validated the need for Down North Pizza even more. So the concept was already thought of and mapped out probably around 2017. I purchased this building that we reside in in 2015. And at the time, I had my own real estate development company, where I only hired returning citizens. So a lot of people don’t know that this actual building that we are residing in, Down North Pizza, was built by returning citizens, formerly incarcerated individuals. So it’s the full-circle moment about even the building that we reside in.

Loren Feldman:
You built that building as a developer?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
No, I just had the construction team. So it was my company that was doing a lot of development in Philadelphia around the time. That was another one of my entrepreneurial ventures. For some years, I did a lot of real estate development in the city. And my crew was totally individuals who’ve been formerly incarcerated.

Loren Feldman:
I didn’t know about the development company. How did you get into that and how did that go?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
That went well. My dad was a mechanical engineer. So I was exposed to architecture, blueprints, all that stuff, very early on. And actually, growing up, I remember in school winning some architecture competitions, like building houses out of different materials. And I always loved the aesthetic of things. So I always wanted to get into real estate and be a developer. Everything has taken time. So I got into real estate development around 2013-2014.

And I was able to come across real estate, purchase, and actually build some parcels up in Philadelphia. Some I sold, and some I chose to keep, and the thing about this particular property was that it spoke to my soul in a way I can’t really describe. So it never was a parcel that I wanted to actually sell. I always knew that, even when I purchased it, I wasn’t gonna do anything at that moment. Because I wanted to figure out: What I want to do with this? Whatever this thing is going to be, it’s going to have to be something that’s beneficial to the community that it will potentially serve. So for two years, I didn’t do anything with the building, because I was still trying to map out what that thing was going to be.

Loren Feldman:
The building, I believe, is in Strawberry Mansion?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
Yes, Strawberry Mansion is probably one of the most impoverished, underdeveloped areas in Philadelphia. It has the highest murder rate per capita. So this is the type of area that, yes, we reside in—an area that needs a lot of TLC. And it’s been neglected on so many different levels. It’s been historically Black-owned. It’s a lot of Black homeowners in this particular corridor of Philly. So there’s a lot of potential. That’s what I saw.

Loren Feldman:
How did you start thinking about pizza? What led to that?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
So, I came to the realization that when I started developing this spot, it was a commercial, mixed-use building space. So I’m like, “You know what? I always wanted to have a restaurant. So I’m gonna build it out.” Mind you, no experience, never worked in a restaurant, never even been in the back of the house of a restaurant, but I’m building this out for a restaurant.

Loren Feldman:
Did you know what a tough business restaurants can be, at that time?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
So it was like, I’m just going to build this thing out. And as I’m building—because that’s just the type of person I am—I don’t necessarily have to have the whole thing figured out at the moment. But I’m gonna just continue to build this thing out and we’ll see where this goes.

So I was building a space out and it was like, “All right, this is where I think things should go. I think this is how it should be. I’m just gonna go for that.” And me just being immersed in the neighborhood, I started to see there’s so much that’s happening negatively around this particular area. And I’m like, “This area needs a lot. But it needs somebody willing to make the initial sacrifice to actually start, and maybe that can bring what this area actually needs to bring other people in and kind of start the repertory justice of repairing this particular area that’s been neglected for so long.”

Loren Feldman:
So what did you do?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
So I’m like, “I’m gonna open up a restaurant. I’m gonna do this.” But it can’t just be a restaurant that’s sitting there just making food and not having a clear benefit for the neighborhood. It has to do something. So that’s when I’m like, “All right, what is one of the issues that plagues this area?” You can pick many, right? I told you it’s underdeveloped, impoverished, so there’s a plethora of things that this particular neighborhood is suffering from.

So one of them is recidivism. It has one of the highest recidivism rates in Philadelphia: people returning back and forth to jail. So how about we do a restaurant where—because I already knew the value of individuals who were previously incarcerated. Because, as I said before, when I had a construction company, those were my employees—the most reliable, resilient individuals, on-time, hard-working individuals, you can imagine. So this was the workforce that I was already used to working with.

So me having the idea of building a concept that solely hired these individuals was not foreign to me. And it made all the sense, because I already knew their inherent value, if you just give them a chance. Also understanding that when you look at the pizza landscape, there’s not too many people that look like myself who’s actually in the business of making pizza. But it’s one of the most consumed food items in America. I wanted to change that narrative as well.

So for me, I’m thinking of how many different boxes I can check with this one small business model in North Philadelphia—everything stacked against me, as far as success, right? No foot traffic, one of the worst areas in Philadelphia, everything that you can think of negative. You got that going against you. But here you are, on the flip side, trying to bring everything positive out of this situation. So that’s where I was at, when it came to this particular concept.

Loren Feldman:
There are a lot of very good pizza places that don’t wind up getting national attention. You managed to start a pizza restaurant that has gotten that kind of attention, on best pizza lists all over the place. How did you figure out how to make pizza like that?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
I’m not a chef and never aspire to be one. Michael Carter, somebody who I met through another person, fit the criteria on every level, when it comes to being the spokesperson and part of the fabric of Down North Pizza. So these luxurious, delicious pies are brought to you by that individual. He’s the architect behind the menu, behind all of these great flavors that you experience. So for me, I’m just behind the scenes, making things happen on every other front. But Mike was focused on the kitchen.

Loren Feldman:
Tell me about Mike. How did he learn how to cook pizza like that?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
He’s worked in the industry for some years. Mike did a total of 12 years in prison, went to culinary school, helped open up some of the top restaurants in Philly, and has been working in these kitchens for some time. And during the pandemic, the last restaurant he was working at closed down. And for people that don’t know, Down North Pizza opened up literally during the pandemic. So that’s another strike against us, as far as going into business.

Loren Feldman:
In 2020?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
We opened the doors at the end of 2020. And that’s another thing. You know, in his neighborhood, we’ve got recidivism. We’ve got all this stuff. And it’s the tail end of a pandemic, where businesses were closing left and right. So for me, if you want to call me a risk taker, you know, you think about all of those things and people would say that’s a hell of a risk. But you know what they say: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” And I don’t lead with fear with anything that I do. And I’m okay if things don’t work out. I’m just gonna go back to the drawing board and figure it out some other way.

Loren Feldman:
Did you have to raise money to open it and hire people and to get started? Or did you have that money from the development company?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
Yeah, I used my own money. I was not able to raise any money because people thought I was out of my mind. With all of these things, the strikes that we went through, line by line. It just didn’t make sense to a smart business person.

Loren Feldman:
Were people close to you concerned that you were making a mistake?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
I think people were like, “Yes, sounds good.” You know, condescending, like when you tell somebody an idea? Moreso like, “Yeah, you know, that’s nice.” So that was a lot of what I was getting. I knew what I needed to do in order to make this thing successful. So I wasn’t really too concerned, because I’m the type of person where I love to prove myself to people. And honestly, even if people were willing to raise money, I probably wouldn’t have taken it, because I would have wanted to prove myself. And then we can come back and revisit this at a time where there’s way more leverage on us that I would have after I proved myself that I know this is going to be successful.

Loren Feldman:
So you’re the owner. Mike Carter is the head chef. What’s your day-to-day role in the business?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
Everything outside of cooking. So anything you can think of. I have a behind-the-scenes team that I work with, but everything else—outside of physically being in there. And I was actually working the line the first year we opened because I knew nothing about a restaurant. And I was okay with being a student and working and understanding, because this is a business that I invested a lot of money in. So I needed to know everything that I needed to know, down to making a piece of pizza and what things are supposed to look like, taste like. So I sacrificed the first year, just working in the shop.

We always laugh about it now, but I started off on the fries and wings and eventually moved my way up to making pizza. I was literally a student, and I’m okay with that. Because I think being an entrepreneur, one of the biggest character flaws with individuals that they don’t understand is that you have to have an enormous amount of humility, if you ever want to get to any level of success being an entrepreneur. I think that’s missing because, no, I don’t know everything, and I don’t say or act like I know everything. I’m always learning constantly, and that’s every day.

Loren Feldman:
Was the restaurant successful from the beginning?

Muhammad Abdul-Hadi:
Now you’re taking me back down memory lane. And it’s like, thinking about the first year of Down North Pizza was bananas. We literally had lines all down Lehigh Avenue. You weren’t getting a pizza for about two to three hours, I want to say. It got a little better after six months, but for the first six months, if you walked in and ordered a pizza, your pizza would be anywhere between an hour and a half and two hours’ wait. And that’s after maybe waiting in line for like half an hour to an hour.

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