AJ Miller does not have a storefront, a commercial brick oven or a delivery fleet. He bakes 15 pizzas a week in his San Diego apartment, and more than 3,500 people are now competing for those weekly order slots, which sell out in less than 30 seconds, NY Post reported on Nov. 8.
The Connecticut transplant turned a homesick hobby into a small business called Echo Apizza after he was laid off from his marketing job this past summer. His 15-inch pies have also helped him build a social media following of more than 114,000, according to the outlet, which drew on earlier reporting by Axios.
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From Missing Home to a 3,500-Person Line
According to NY Post’s report, Miller moved to San Diego in 2020 and soon found himself missing the East Coast-style pizza he grew up with in Connecticut. Unable to find the kind of pie he wanted in Southern California, he taught himself to make it.
He began documenting his pizza experiments online and gradually attracted followers who wanted to taste the results. When the layoff came, he decided to turn the kitchen hobby into a business. Miller bakes out of his apartment in Ocean Beach, a coastal neighborhood whose municipal pier, built in 1966, was once the longest concrete pier in the world, according to Wikipedia’s entry on the neighborhood. Running a pizza business from a rental kitchen means the whole operation has to fit into a small footprint, the kind of space that guides to studio apartment living are built around.
Miller told Axios that exclusivity likely plays a part in the demand, since people tend to want what they cannot easily get, NY Post reported. With 15 slots against more than 3,500 hopefuls, fewer than 1 in 200 people on the list can get a pie in any given week.
His path adds a food-world wrinkle to the ongoing debate over side gigs and careers, including the question of whether the idea that Gen Z is abandoning careers for gig work holds up. In Miller’s case, a layoff turned a kitchen hobby into income.
How a Home Oven Stands In for Coal
Without a commercial oven, Miller had to improvise. He sets his standard home oven to its 550-degree maximum and bakes the pies directly on a heavy baking steel plate to push as much heat as possible into the crust, then finishes them under the broiler to get the blistered edges, according to NY Post. Plenty of home cooks chasing that kind of char buy outdoor pizza ovens for the extra heat, but Miller has stuck with a standard home oven.
The dough gets a three-day cold fermentation using sourdough, and the toppings are sourced locally. Customers who land an order pick up their pizzas the following Friday. “It took a couple years to really perfect my craft,” Miller said, adding that he still makes small adjustments every time and sees room for improvement.
His ordering page on Hotplate describes the pies as thin and crispy, New York and New Haven inspired, and baked in a home oven. Small-space bakers who want to copy the setup tend to start with the basics: a sturdy pizza peel for sliding pies on and off the steel, plus a baking steel heavy enough to hold heat between pies. It is the same patient, practice-driven routine common among people who cook from scratch most nights.
The Style Behind the Name
The business name comes from his favorite style, New Haven-style “apizza,” which is made in a coal-fired oven and known for its paper-thin crust, NY Post reported. Miller said it is similar to New York-style pizza.
According to Wikipedia’s entry on New Haven-style pizza, the style originated in 1925 at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana and is now served at many other pizzerias in the area, most notably Sally’s Apizza and Modern Apizza. The name comes from the Neapolitan phrase for “the pizza.” The style is known for a thin, often oblong crust with characteristic charring, a chewy texture and limited use of melting cheese, and it is traditionally baked in a coal-fired oven at temperatures above 650 degrees Fahrenheit and sold whole rather than by the slice.
Regional pizza loyalty tends to travel with people when they move, and for a Connecticut native on the West Coast, a homemade version may be the closest option short of a plane ticket.
Prices, Profits and What Comes Next
The pizzas reportedly sell for $25 to $30 each, according to NY Post. At those prices, 15 pies would bring in roughly $375 to $450 a week before ingredients, packaging and fees. Miller told Axios he is turning a profit, though not enough to live on. If he grows slowly, he said, he may one day cook in a professional kitchen or even open a restaurant.
For now, he keeps baking at home and posting the results on social media, including on his Instagram account, @ajeatworld, where commenters regularly praise the pies. One viewer quoted by NY Post wrote that finding a San Diego man who makes pizza out of his apartment oven “literally changed my life.”
At 15 pizzas a week against a list of more than 3,500 hopefuls, the math is simple: most people waiting will not get a pie anytime soon. That scarcity, plus a style that is hard to find on the West Coast, is what led NY Post to describe the apartment operation as some of the hottest pizza in Southern California.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: N i c o l a from Fiumicino (Rome), Italy – CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons
