100 Pizza in Brentwood started as a basement experiment
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The original Wilde family test kitchen for 100 Pizza. Photo: Courtesy of 100 Pizza
A veteran of marketing, Michael Wilde spent his entire career helping other people build up their brands.
- Several years ago, Wilde was worn down by the grind of constant travel for his consulting business. One day, he said to himself, "Why don't you try to build your own brand and do something with that?"
Driving the news: Wilde chose his family's culinary passion, pizza, as his entrepreneurial choice. There was only one problem: He'd never even worked in a restaurant before, not to mention run a pizza shop.
- So Wilde and his son Parker turned their basement into a test kitchen and got to work experimenting with pizza recipes.
Why it matters: The Wilde family's basement became a culinary laboratory that evolved into a standalone Brentwood neighborhood joint called 100 Pizza, which over the last year has become one of the buzzier new pizza spots in the Nashville area.
- 100 Pizza makes 500 balls of dough per week, and it's not uncommon for the Wilde family business to sell out on busy nights.
Flashback: Let's rewind to when 100 Pizza was still just an idea, and the family was trying to discover the perfect recipe. In the test kitchen, Wilde's wife Kim was the harshest critic of each attempt. (She would keep it 100, you might say.)
- "One day, we got to the point where she was like, 'Whoa, you got something,'" Wilde said.
Yes, but: Even after opening, Wilde didn't feel like his pizza recipe was quite right. He said it took about four months to hit their stride. He tinkered with everything from the hydration levels in the dough to the baking times.
- "The dough is everything," Wilde's experimentation taught him, and to perfect that, he zeroed in on the motherland of pizza: New York.
Inside the H2O: Advisers, especially from New York and New Jersey, would tell Wilde that "water is important."
- Tap water in Tennessee is famously hard, he says, so instead of shipping in water from New York, he concocted a complicated and creative solution. 100 Pizza filters all the minerals and chemicals out of the water, then uses a reverse-osmosis process to add them back in to match the same levels in New York.
- The result is "New York water" in the dough of 100 Pizza. "When we got down to it, the right water, the right flour and premium olive oil were the key."
What he's saying: "It's been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, 100 percent," Wilde tells Axios. "But you know what, I knew I was going to jump outside my comfort zone. I've found I really enjoy it."
State of play: 100 Pizza is a true family business. Wilde, his wife Kim, son Parker and daughter Riley all run the shop together.
- Online influencers have posted social media reels singing 100 Pizza's praises. The tiny shop with just a few dine-in tables recently marked its one-year anniversary, and so far, business is going well, Wilde says.
- Even though it's tucked away in the bowels of Brentwood, it's worth the journey to see what all the fuss is about.
The bottom line: The recipe is right, and the mechanics of running the restaurant are working. The goal now is simply to get the word out. "When somebody comes in and tries the pizza, they come back," he said.
If you go: 100 Pizza is located at 214 Ward Cir #200 in Brentwood.
- It's open on Wednesday and Thursday from 11am-2pm for lunch and 4pm-8pm for dinner, on Friday from 11am-8:30pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 3pm-8pm.