Mievè Pizza: Los Angeles' Most Beloved Pizza Popup

Meet Mieve Pizza

A pop up operation in Los Angeles slinging delicious, square pan pizzas with unique toppings out of a secret location every week. With no permanent location, their pizzas are only available by pre-order or at a pop up.

How they got started

Founder Amir spent years perfecting his pizza recipe, feeding friends, and constantly hearing  that he’s onto something great. After working 8 years in management consulting, he left the corporate world and started making pies and building Mievé full time in LA.

The operation started out of Amir’s house in LA with customers placing orders for whole pies over Instagram DM or email. Even in the early days, Mievé would sell out their pre-order drops in less than 5 minutes and customers would line up with their cars down the block waiting for their pickup slot.

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Whats special about Meivé’s pizza

No round pies here! Mievé specializes in square pan pizzas with a unique crust thats light and airy. Their pizzas are all personal size (four slices) and they’re probably best known for their elevated or unexpected toppings. You can try their Pepperoni that comes with charred shishito peppers, garlic ricotta, and hot honey, or their Lasagna pie that has beef ragu and bechamel sauce. Its not uncommon for customers to claim Mievé makes the best pizza they’ve ever had.

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How they operate

These days, customers can get their hands on a pizza from Mievé in two ways: Pre-order a whole pie for pickup or wait for a slice pop up. Since launching out a private own home, Mievé has moved onto partnering with local coffee shops where they can pop up and make pizzas on the spot. When the coffee shop closes down in the afternoon, Mievé fires up some pizza ovens in the back and gets to cooking. An added benefit of a temporary pop up is that customers can stick around and enjoy their pie on the spot!

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Hot Pizza 🤝 Hotplate

Even if a customer orders their pizza a week in advance, they still expect it to be hot and fresh when it comes time to pickup. To help predict the flow of customers and ensure everyone gets a hot and crispy pie, Mievé uses Hotplate to set short pickup windows for every pre-order.

Customers have only a 30 minute window to pickup their order before it gets set aside for donation. Not only does this mean that a consistent, high quality product goes out to each customer, but also the team at Mievé can see a schedule of their upcoming pickups before the night even begins, making it much easier to manage their production.

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What worked well

Mievé has already made a name for themselves in Los Angeles and they’re surely on their way to even greater success. Here are some key takeaways we’ve learned from their story:

• Secrecy was the secret sauce: When they first got started, Mievé was able to generate a lot of hype by keeping their location confidential and swearing customers to secrecy. That hush-hush attitude led to videos like this on social media which helped generate an air of exclusivity around the brand. Everyone wanted to get their hands on something secret, especially when it looks this delicious

• A few, fun flavors: Each of Mievé’s menus only has 2-3 options, but each one is a unique, well thought out combination of flavors that customers love. Having minimal options makes it easy both for customers to make a decision and for the kitchen team to keep up.

• Pick smart partners: Working with coffee shops for a dinner pop up is brilliant and a win-win for both businesses. For Mievé, they can offer a more convenient place for customers to pickup and and start offering slices to walk up customers. For the coffee shop, they can extend their business hours and sell drinks to customers that come for Mieve’s pop up. A clever partnership that helps both businesses grow.

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