Slice Brothers Pizza, which first opened on a wedge-shaped piece of pavement in Northeast Minneapolis in 2021, is beginning a new chapter: Owners Adam Kado and Hosie Thurmond have sold the business to their employees, who will continue operations at Slice’s Midtown Global Market location. Slice Brothers’ other locations in Northeast and St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood will close permanently.
Thurmond and Kado are longtime best friends—they grew up together in St. Paul. When they founded Slice Brothers, Minneapolis’s first Black-owned pizzeria, their aim was to both serve affordable food and create jobs, leveraging their position as entrepreneurs to help create generational wealth for communities of color. For four years, they did just that: Slice expanded from its original Northeast location to Midtown Global Market, Frogtown, and locations in the Mall of America and downtown St. Paul (though the latter two were short-lived due to rent disputes and financial challenges).
But, Kado says, just as Slice Brothers was ambitiously expanding, rising costs of labor and goods were catching up to them. Right at the moment when they needed more capital, their profit margins were shrinking. The pizzeria’s model was built on affordability—Kado says they got major pushback after raising prices to $5 a slice—but without the kind of high-volume foot-traffic that the average New York pizzeria might benefit from, the numbers weren’t adding up. There were many conversations, he says, about “going premium” versus remaining value-driven. In retrospect, he thinks having a liquor license would have made a difference.
“You go into these things backwards—you’re learning as you go,” Kado says. “We didn’t have mentors or anything like that, so we just figured things out. But you have a social responsibility as a capitalist to run a productive business, from your suppliers to your employees to the people that you partner with. The wisest thing you can do, if the numbers aren’t penciling, is to say no, and move on to a different endeavor. I would have loved to keep it forever, franchise it one day, and pass it on to our kids. But I think that would have been more than what was financially feasible.”
Originally, Kado and Thurmond planned to close Slice Brothers entirely. Then the idea arose to sell the business to its employees, similar to Andy’s Garage at Midtown Global Market. “We were like, Wait, hold on—we have all this equipment. We created a lot of jobs throughout this. I don’t see why we can’t put it to good use, and keep it going,” Kado says. The new ownership is collective, though it’s being led by Slice Brothers’ longtime managers. Thurmond and Kado officially end their operations at MGM on November 21, after which the pizzeria’s new chapter begins. (There may be a pause in operations before things kick off again, Kado says.)
“We appreciated all the support we got through the year that gave us the confidence to do what we did,” Kado says. “In the long run, it didn’t play out how we imagined, but I think there’s still a lot to look back on and be proud of—where we started with the 300-square-foot location to five locations, whether or not those locations lasted a long time. It’s indicative of the work and the support that we got from not just Minneapolis, but the entire Twin Cities community.” Stay tuned for more updates from Slice Brothers Pizza via Instagram.
November 14, 2025
1:55 PM