Upper crust: A-Town slides wood-fire pies to central Aurora, Denver

AURORA | Neapolitan pizzas and the fabricated pies cranked out by delivery giant Domino’s don’t have much in common, according to pure pie aficionados. True, they share the same fundamental structure — dough, red sauce and cheese — but the similarities end there.

That is, unless you count Will Harris.

“I worked at Domino’s in high school as a delivery guy,” Harris says with a chuckle. “I had my first training session in pizza there.”

Despite cutting his teeth on one of the industry’s lowest rungs while an Eaglecrest High student in the 1990s, where Harris has taken his pie-slinging career is a far cry from schlepping boxes around his hometown.

Harris is the owner and founder of A-Town pizza, one of Aurora’s only wood-fire pizza joints. Make that two. 

Following two years of success at A-Town’s flagship digs on the corner of East Quincy Avenue and South Buckley Road, Harris is currently working to open the soon-to-be chain’s second location on the corner of South Havana Street and East Iliff Avenue in early May.

Formerly the Apple Creek Restaurant and Grill space and shielded by loud, green-and-white-striped awnings, Harris says he believes the proximity of A-Town’s newest locale to the Aurora/Denver border will open the company up to a new demographic of consumers.

“Customers wanted me to go to Southlands or north Aurora,” he says.  “I want to be there and I will be someday, but I’ve got to go where the money is first, and that’s why I want to push into Denver.”

In order to tap into that new bracket of pie-lovers, Harris says he is planning on doubling down on his daytime business in an attempt to attract more lunchtime customers. Currently, A-Town generates only about 20 percent of its sales outside of dinner-goers, a number Harris aims to bring closer to the 50 percent mark at the new site on Iliff.

To achieve that wider daytime appeal, Harris says he believes a high daily traffic volume through the Havana Street corridor is one of the central factors that will drive his sales forward. The combined, daily automotive traffic count on the corner of Iliff and Havana tipped 48,000 vehicles in 2010, according to data collected by the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Despite expansion and increased traffic, Harris assures already avid A-Town fans they needn’t worry about the shop’s quality or customer service being spread too thin. On top of adding about 60 employees to his current staff of 30, Harris is equipping his new outpost with two Italian-imported Stefano Ferrara ovens, the same brand of wood-burning machines from Naples that have been hardening crusts at the Quincy Ave. location since it opened in 2013. And, just like the first time around, Harris will have to cure the two new pie roasters over several days to get them ready for near constant use.

“It’ll take a few days to slowly cook all that water out of that concrete,” he says of the uber-specialized machines.

And although his process is refined — he’s drastically diminished the average wait time for a pizza from 45 minutes down to about 20 minutes — the pies in the new ovens will be the same Neapolitan-style pizzas made with the simple ingredients with which A-Town has made a quick name for itself. It’s nothing new-fangled or fancy; just San Marzano tomatoes, house-made mozzarella and Italian flour dough — none of which is ever frozen.

“The most important thing is the dough and letting that Italian flour, water, salt and yeast shine through,” Harris says.

A former pharmaceutical representative in California and University of Colorado at Denver graduate, Harris says he always imagined owning his own business, but never thought A-Town would expand at the rate at which it has.

“I always thought I would be best served running my own show, but I didn’t see myself opening a second store when I first opened A-Town,” he says. “I didn’t have a time table set for myself, but I feel like I have a good set-up around me now — friends, family and staff have given me great pointers along the way.”

That tight, strong network founded in the community in which he grew up is what Harris believes has helped to set his operation apart.

“Sometimes (Aurora) gets bad press amid some of the crime and recent tragedies, but that’s not Aurora to me,” he says. “Aurora to me is suburban homes and families. I mean we’ve had people forget to pay for their pizza and then come back half an hour later to pay up — I mean where else does that happen?”