Mikey's Late Night Slice, the Columbus pizzeria known for late-night hours, hefty slices and a wink-and-a-nudge menu, is finally crossing into Northeast Ohio. The chain plans to open its first Cleveland-area shop sometime in 2027 inside the former RAM Electronics building at 1898 W. 25th St. in Ohio City, bringing a business built on pedicabs and post-bar cravings into one of the city's most crowded pizza corridors.
Founder Mike “Mikey” Sorboro has opened a dozen shops, mostly around greater Columbus, plus outposts in Dayton and Cincinnati, since starting the pizzeria in 2009, according to Cleveland Scene. Sorboro began selling slices from a food truck in Columbus's Short North neighborhood the same year, the outlet reports, after noticing bar patrons wandering out at closing time with nowhere to get a late meal. Getting Mikey's on the map in Cleveland, Sorboro said, had been a longtime dream.
That dream took a while to materialize. Sorboro told Cleveland Scene that Mikey's had been taking its time looking for the right space for a Cleveland expansion, eyeing various spots in and around the city before settling on Ohio City as the neighborhood worth making completely their own. The chain now plans to use the West 25th Street shop as a springboard for further growth throughout Cleveland, Lakewood and beyond — a strategy echoed by Cleveland Scene's reporting that the company eyed several Cleveland-area prospects before finalizing the Ohio City lease.
A Slender, Century-Old Building Gets New Life
The space Mikey's is moving into isn't new construction — it's a slender three-story structure built around the turn of the century, per the same Cleveland Scene report. Historical research from the Plain Press traces the building's design to 1892, crediting architect Bernard Van Develde, who also designed 19th-century Cleveland Roman Catholic diocese buildings. The parcel itself dates back further still, originally developed in 1881 as part of the Lord and Barber tract, named for Ohio City founder Richard Lord and the city's first mayor, Josiah Barber.
The building's transition from RAM Electronics to a pizza shop is exactly the kind of adaptive reuse Ohio City Incorporated tracks closely. The community development organization placed 1898 W. 25th St. on the agenda of its quarterly public development meeting, held Monday, alongside updates on other major redevelopments along Lorain Avenue and West 25th Street, according to the group's own Eventbrite listing.
A Rival Slice Shop Is Moving In Next Door
Mikey's won't be the only out-of-town jumbo-slice concept setting up shop on that stretch of West 25th. Virginia-based Benny's Pizza announced plans to open as Benny Lorenzo's in a subdivided former Family Dollar space one block west of Mikey's planned location, according to Cleveland Scene. Benny's is known for enormous 28-inch pies, compared to the 18-inch pies Mikey's plans to slice up, setting the stage for a direct rivalry between two out-of-state jumbo-slice chains within a single block of each other, as Cleveland Magazine notes.
Neither chain is entering an empty market. West 25th Street and its surrounding blocks already host Citizen Pie at 2144 W. 25th St. and Pizza Whirl at 1822 W. 25th St., along with wood-fired favorite Cent's Pizza & Goods, which just chartered a Lake Erie cruise ship for its fifth anniversary. Nearby Tremont has also seen pizza activity heat up, with Edison's Pizza Kitchen staging its own comeback with a horseshoe bar earlier this year.
Late Hours, Whole Pies and a Menu Built on Attitude
Mikey's shops are open well past midnight depending on location, with some staying open until 2:30 or 3 a.m., and the Ohio City location will serve both whole pies and slices along with the chain's signature sauces. The Mikey's team has said the pizzeria was designed around the founders' preferred way of eating pizza, per Columbus Underground, and that the restaurant would have a sense of humor without sacrificing a great slice.
That sense of humor has defined the brand for years. According to PMQ Pizza, Mikey's signature novelties include the Cheezus Crust — a grilled-cheese sandwich made by melting American cheese between two whole slices of pizza — and the Pizza Dog, a hot dog stuffed with pepperoni and cheese and wrapped in pizza. The chain's spicy garlic ranch dip was originally called Slut Sauce before being rebranded as Unicorn Sauce in 2015 so it could be sold retail in grocery stores like Kroger and Giant Eagle.
Sorboro has been candid about the challenge of expanding a Central Ohio brand into a new market. In an April 2025 business interview, he noted that while Mikey's has built strong brand equity around Columbus, breaking into Cleveland means proving the product and service in a pizza market that's already saturated. The Ohio City opening caps a busy year of statewide growth for the chain, which opened new shops in Dayton in January, staged a comeback in Grandview Heights over the summer, and debuted its 12th shop in Polaris in August. Whether Mikey's late-night, pedicab-born style can win over a neighborhood already thick with pizza options remains the open question as construction moves forward on West 25th Street.
