Big ideas for a successful small business

Good Morning America's Small Business Saturday segment reaches one of the largest television audiences in the United States, and East Village Pizza's inclusion in the 2024 broadcast placed the restaurant and its owner, Frank Kabatas, in front of millions of viewers at a moment when the show was specifically celebrating the kind of entrepreneurship that Kabatas embodies.

Small Business Saturday was created to direct consumer attention and spending toward independently owned businesses rather than large chains, and East Village Pizza is precisely the kind of business the initiative was designed to celebrate. It is independently owned, deeply rooted in a specific neighborhood, and built on the personal story and daily decisions of one person who chose to build something rather than work for someone else's vision.

For Kabatas, appearing on Good Morning America was a marker of how far the restaurant had traveled from its origins. He arrived in New York in 1997 with no culinary background and no plan to become a restaurateur. He was fired from his first job in the industry after six months. He spent years building toward ownership of the restaurant that had let him go, purchased it in 2003, and built it into a business that national television programs now seek out as an example of what small business success looks like.

The segment paired the East Village Pizza story with tips from PR expert Jenna Guarneri, creating a framework that connected the specific — one man, one restaurant, one neighborhood in Manhattan — with the general principles of small business success: know your product deeply, build genuine community relationships, create reasons for people to pay attention and return. East Village Pizza has done all three, and the results show in the numbers: over 1.7 million Instagram followers, consistent press coverage from local and national outlets, and a customer base that includes both long-time East Village residents and visitors from across the city and beyond.

The practical lessons that East Village Pizza demonstrates for other small business owners are worth identifying specifically. First: product quality is the foundation of everything else. The 72-hour cold-fermented dough and fresh daily mozzarella are not marketing talking points — they are the reason the restaurant earned media attention in the first place. Second: authenticity in storytelling builds audience better than manufactured content. Kabatas's Instagram account, which documents the daily reality of running a pizza restaurant with genuine humor and openness, grew to its current size because people respond to the truth of what they see. Third: differentiation matters. The double-stacked pizza and heart-shaped pizza are not gimmicks — they are genuine innovations that created specific reasons for people to seek out East Village Pizza over the dozens of other pizzerias available in Manhattan.

Good Morning America's Small Business Saturday coverage brought all of this to a national audience. For anyone who saw the segment and wants to experience the pizza behind the story, East Village Pizza is at 145 1st Ave in Manhattan, open daily from 11AM until 3AM and until 5AM on Fridays and Saturdays. Delivery is available throughout the East Village, Lower East Side, Union Square, and surrounding neighborhoods. Order online or call (212) 529-4545.