Metro Roundup: Dough Boy Pizza opens first location in Birmingham

A new pizza restaurant opened in August in the Pizitz Food Hall in downtown Birmingham.

Dough Boy Pizza, a fast-casual pizza restaurant, was created by Chef Erica Barrett.

It features Neapolitan-style pizza, consisting of thin-crust pizzas with mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce and featuring both traditional toppings (such as pepperoni and sausage) and non-traditional toppings ( such as short rib with caramelized onions and crawfish).

The restaurant, which opened Aug. 6, also is technology-driven. There are no cashiers, so customers order directly from electronic kiosks, and the entire restaurant runs on digital screens.

“With Dough Boy Pizza’s concept, we are looking to control labor and food costs with our technology focus,” said Barrett, who also owns SOCU Southern Kitchen & Oyster Bar in the Pizitz Food Hall. “This is perfect for the millennial who wants to grab their pizza and go. We wanted to build a restaurant of the future.”

While creating SOCU in Birmingham, Barrett stumbled across a pizza oven and immediately thought about creating a pizza shop. After importing additional pizza ovens from Italy, she got inspired by the Italian way of making pizza (which will be evident with the authentic, imported Italian crust on the pizzas at Dough Boy).

Future plans for Dough Boy include creating an app and franchising the restaurant (while using the low start-up cost as a key selling point).

Barrett has gained national attention after being featured in Shark Tank and CNBC’s The Profit. She also authored a cookbook, “Shuga & Seoul,”  which is a collection of sweet and soulful recipes from the depths of the South.

For more information, please visit instagram.com/officialdoughboypizza.