Pizza Joint, the slice shop that started as a single restaurant in 2011, has opened a new location inside the Sunfire Village shopping center in Far East El Paso, bringing its 20-inch extra-large pies and specialty slices to the area. The shop now occupies suites B201 and B202 at 2106 N. Zaragoza Road.
According to El Paso Inc., the new spot gives Pizza Joint four locations across El Paso plus additional outposts in Horizon City and Lubbock, Texas. The chain has served pizza by the slice and extra-large pies since 2011, growing into what the outlet described as a local hot spot for specialty slices and vegan options. Founder Melissa Maese Goldberg, a UTEP alumna, opened the original shop on March 17, 2011, after a high school trip to the East Coast introduced her to pizza sold by the slice, per the U.S. Small Business Administration. She launched the business with seven employees after being laid off from a previous job, the agency's account notes.
A Chain Built Slice By Slice Since 2011
Pizza Joint's growth has been steady rather than sudden. The brand expanded from its original Uptown location at 2900 N. Mesa St. into Downtown El Paso at 500 N. Stanton St. in November 2014, according to a historical account from The Prospector. From there it added a Westside shop at 7000 Westwind Dr. in 2017, taking over the former Andre's Pizza space, before pushing into Horizon City's Eastlake neighborhood at 13034 Eastlake Blvd. this past February and eventually Lubbock.
The Downtown location has doubled as something of a cultural hub since it opened, hosting weekly Wednesday open mic nights and staying open for late-night service until 3 a.m. on weekends, the shop's own site notes. The menu across locations includes specialty slices and vegan options.
Sunfire Village Joins A Booming Corridor
The new location sits inside Sunfire Village, a shopping center in Far East El Paso. Pizza Joint shares the plaza with Tool Box East, an outpost of a Downtown gay bar that Hoodline reported had opened in the same center this past July. The plaza sits within El Paso's Las Tierras neighborhood, per property records.
Zaragoza Road has become one of Far East El Paso's busiest commercial corridors as residential subdivisions have multiplied nearby. River Oaks Properties has headlined that growth with projects like the 63,000-square-foot, Albertsons-anchored Market at Pebble Hills, built specifically to keep pace with the subdivisions springing up around it. Demographic data from the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization shows Far East El Paso has added more than 200,000 residents since 2000, making it the fastest-growing residential sector in El Paso County.
Public Infrastructure Races To Keep Up
That population surge hasn't just drawn pizzerias and retailers. The City of El Paso's Capital Improvement Department built a new 9,000-square-foot Fire Station 38 near Pebble Hills Boulevard and Tim Foster Street using voter-approved public safety bonds, a facility that includes three emergency vehicle bays and full firefighter living quarters. It's the kind of public investment that tends to follow rapid residential sprawl on the city's outer edges.
Pizza Joint's expansion also isn't the brand's first brush with wider attention. In November 2018, ABC's Good Morning America highlighted the shop's seasonal Thanksgiving pie, The Feast, which swaps tomato sauce and cheese for deep-fried turkey, cranberry sauce, and fried onions, as reported by The Daily Meal. The pie had already been a local holiday staple for eight years before that national broadcast. Hoodline previously noted the chain's Eastlake move as context for the city's increasingly competitive pizza market.
