Politics
How a Pizzeria Owner With a Million Fans on Instagram Spends His Sundays
Frank Kabatas serves slices to his hungry customers at East Village Pizza while posting videos for his insatiable audience of 1.7 million followers on Instagram.
On his second day in New York, Frank Kabatas stepped into East Village Pizza for the first time. As a child in Turkey, he’d eaten plenty of pide — a cheesy flatbread cousin of pizza — but he’d never been able to afford a proper slice. In 1997, when he was 23, he got a green card and decided to join his brother Mel in New York. Mel was working at the pizzeria, and he served Frank his first plain cheese slice.
“It wasn’t like it absolutely blew my mind,” Frank Kabatas said. “But I definitely did think to myself: I should have tried pizza sooner.”
For the next six months, Mr. Kabatas worked just about every job at the pizzeria, from bicycle delivery man to dishwasher to prep cook. After a verbal disagreement with another member of the staff, Mr. Kabatas said, he was fired. But he didn’t quit on pizza. He went to work for Ben’s Pizzeria in Greenwich Village, where he learned the secrets of baking great pies. Then he went to work for Domino’s on Long Island, where he learned the secrets of selling them.
In 2003, Mr. Kabatas and his brother borrowed $25,000 from an aunt in Turkey and bought East Village Pizza from its retiring owner. In the two decades since, they’ve made their pizzeria among the most popular in Manhattan — and on Instagram, where they’ve attracted 1.7 million followers.
Mr. Kabatas, 49, lives in a two-bedroomapartment in Queens with his wife, Melike, and two of their three daughters: 15-year-old Alisa and 11-year-old Sarah. Their oldest daughter, 18-year-old Eva, is a first-year student at Columbia University.
