Inside Papivivi: From Guidance Counselor to a Puerto Rican Shop With Pizza in Lynn

Papivivi is a Puerto Rican street food shop in Lynn, Massachusetts that also makes some of the best pizza on the North Shore, if you ask the owner. He'll tell you he's been to every pizzeria around there, and nobody's touching his.

What got me was how he got here. Six years ago he had zero restaurant experience. He was a guidance counselor.

The numbers

• 10 years as a guidance counselor in Brooklyn before any of this
• 1 summer of handing out free sliders around New York with his daughter
• 2 years of brewery pop-ups while driving Uber 6 days a week
• 6 years in the Lynn shop this year
• 18 months where it was just him and one cook, 6 days a week
• About 500 five-star reviews

From free sliders to a storefront

It started as an Instagram page he ran with his daughter. They cooked together and went around Manhattan, Staten Island and Brooklyn handing out free sliders. People followed, then people started asking them to do events.

After one summer he decided to start a business. His words: you have to be a little delusional. Back in Massachusetts there was no spot yet, so he drove Uber six days a week to pay the bills and did pop-ups on Friday and Saturday nights at breweries like Lamplighter in Cambridge and Bully Boy in Boston. How'd he get those? He just emailed and called.

Two years of that, then the owner of a small shop in Lynn wanted out and sold him the business and the building.

Pizza almost didn't make the cut

They had pizza on day one, dropped it, but kept the oven and used it for other things. Then they brought pizza back and people loved it. His struggle now is that people have a hard time picturing a Puerto Rican shop with great pizza.

The food is all done from scratch. Fresh marinades, meats marinated overnight, sofrito as the base for everything. His cook was a chef in Peru, and he taught him Puerto Rican food.

Social brings people in. Locals keep you open.

His social media works. On weekends he gets people driving in from Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire. But he was honest that the local base isn't as strong as it should be. He says every day someone tells him they've driven past for four or five years and never stopped. And about 80% of the loyal regulars who kept him open in years two through four have moved away.

His next move is catering. The way he sees it, what makes money in this business is liquor and catering, and he doesn't do liquor. Catering is prepaid, you know exactly what to make, and you know exactly what you'll make on it.

What a pizza owner can steal

• Pop-ups are cheap practice. He tested his food at breweries for two years before signing anything. All it took was emails and phone calls.
• Don't give up on an item too fast. Pizza came off the menu and came back as one of the things people love most.
• Social gets visitors. Locals pay the bills. If people are driving in from other states but not from down the street, that's the gap to work on.
• Look at catering. Prepaid orders with no guesswork are worth chasing, especially if you don't sell alcohol.

His advice for anyone opening a shop: have a lot of patience, and be consistent. Not just with the food, with how you treat people.

Papivivi is at 816 Boston St in Lynn, MA, closed Mondays. It's on the Shop Map with every other place I've visited on camera.

If you want to talk through this stuff with other owners, that's what SPM PRO is for.