Today we’d like to introduce you to Marc Kubushefski.
Hi Marc, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
This whole business started out of my kitchen in 2020. A lot of restaurants were closed. Almost all of them did offer a vegan pizza. During the pandemic I taught myself how to make vegan cheese for my home made pizzas. I started sharing pictures of them on the instagram and someone asked if they. could buy one. So I froze the pizza and vacuum packed it and sold it to them on my porch. They must have told some friends because a few days later another person asked to purchase a few pizzas. This person told me I should make an instagram account to show case the pizzas and offer them to people. So that’s exactly what I did. I would post once a week that I had preorders open for frozen pizza for pick up the follow week. With in a month, I had another fridge and freezer in my kitchen, a huge mixer and a prep table in my kitchen to keep up with demand. After about a year of making frozen pizzas, I decided to switch to selling fresh hot pizzas once a week from my garage. It was still a preorder event with limited pizzas but it would sell out in minutes. As the demand begin to seem like more of a missing part of the vegan community, I began to search for a pizza shop for lease. In late 2021 we found a spot. We signed the lease and opened in march of 2022. Business was far what we had expected. Unfortunately, in February of 2023 we suffered a fire in the early hours of the morning. A freak accident when no one was in the building resulted in a total loss. We transitioned into a food truck to keep the brand alive while the building was being rebuilt but after about a year and the renovations being continuously paused, we got out of our old lease and began looking for a new place. In August of 2024 we signed a new lease at our current location of 125 e 3rd st in Bethlehem. We thought we would be able to build the space out in a few months but we experience set back after set back. A long delay in our permit approval. A contractor that took a huge down payment and the decided to not do the job and keep the money. A change in inspectors with the city causing even longer delays. All of the delays and stolen money really impacted our budget and we needed to set up a go fund me for some community support but we made I through and reopened our doors in November of 2025.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Very bumpy!
Fire
food truck
pop ups
constant pivots
delays
stolen money
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am proud to have taken a concept and small passion out of my kitchen and turning it into a recognizable brand that has huge community support.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Taking the risk to open a restaurant is huge. Taking the risk to open a vegan restaurant almost seems like a recipe for failure. Every restaurant has the same competition and caters to the entire local population. As a vegan restaurant, we only canter to a small percentage of that population. It still costs us just as much to build out our space, pay our employees, price of ingredients, etc. We just have to fight a lot harder to keep people coming in the door. A lot of vegan restaurants only last a few years at best. We have accepted that risk and view it as a challenge to prove people wrong. That you can be a successful vegan business by creating really good food that just so happens to be vegan.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://paranormalpizza.com
- Instagram: @paranormalpizzacompany
