How do you like your pizza? Pepperoni? Extra cheese? In Philadelphia, Muhammad Abdul-Hadi serves pizza with a side of second chances.
Abdul-Hadi, the founder of Down North Pizza, hires only those who have been incarcerated. He will be in Charleston June 11 at the Charleston Wine + Food Test Kitchen to discuss food, activism and collaboration. The discussion is part of the festival’s Summer Sizzle series and will be moderated by local food activist K.J. Kearney, creator of Black Food Fridays, a movement encouraging people to support Black-owned food and beverage businesses.
Abdul-Hadi graduated from Temple University in 2018 with a degree in criminal justice, which he said was interested in because “growing up in Philadelphia, I was surrounded by family members and community members who were affected by the incarceration system. I was intrigued by the law and how people could get it to work for them and how it works against them.”
A different path
When he graduated, he didn’t go to law school or a district attorney’s office — he went with his dream.
“Opening a restaurant was on my bucket list,” Abdul-Hadi said. “I had a background in criminal justice and had to figure out how to marry the two. When I had an opportunity to open up a restaurant in an area with the highest rate of recidivism, I landed on the idea of creating this mission-based restaurant space that would combat recidivism and serve the neighborhood.”
He said that he doesn’t have the skills to make the pizza himself, but he knew how to assemble a team.
The restaurant opened at the end of 2020 doing takeout pizza and had its grand opening in March 2021. It still relies mostly on takeout, with only a handful of seats inside. The building required a complete overhaul of the space that Abdul-Hadi said was “just a shell.” The pizzeria is downstairs and apartments for employees are upstairs.
“The two main factors of recidivism are homelessness and unemployment,” Abdul-Hadi said. “If you can target those two things, then you reduce it by 70% to 80%.”
Atmosphere of respect
The pizza shop has seven employees and, while the scale of what Pizza Down North is doing is small, Abdul-Hadi said not one of the employees has been incarcerated since being hired, attributing it to an atmosphere of respect and non-judgment in the restaurant.
Despite not being able to cook, Abdul-Hadi knew he wanted to create a nostalgic pizza in a square shape.
“We call it a Philly-style pizza. It got its inspiration from Detroit, but we put a Philly twist on it, hydrating the dough a little more and making it a square and not a rectangle. Philly didn’t have its own style of pizza before this,” he said.
In addition to pizzas, Down North Pizza offers wings, fries, milkshakes and several vegan options.
Abdul-Hadi said he is looking forward to the Charleston event, adding that food and activism are natural partners.
“If you want to go back to the civil rights movement, selling food funded the movement. Food is always at the forefront of activism,” he said. “There are not many people who don’t like pizza.
Everybody speaks the universal language of pizza, and food is a great segue to conversations.’”
At the June event, he will be offering his new cookbook, We The Pizza, which features anecdotes as well as recipes from restaurant staff who have been with him since opening.
To learn more about the event, visit: charlestonwineandfood.com
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