Knead plans to reopen its Midtown pizza shop.
A Harrisburg pizza shop soon will fire up its ovens again.
Owners of Knead Pizza told TheBurg on Friday that they would reopen their N. 3rd Street location this summer after being closed for almost two years.
Knead suddenly shut down its slice shop, as well as its location in the Broad Street Market, in August 2022, following efforts by its employees to unionize.
However, Knead owners Jennie O’Neill and Terry Hanley said that they have missed making and serving pizza in their neighborhood and decided to reopen, likely in early June.
“We are happy to be back,” O’Neill said. “One of the best things in the world is people sitting down together over food. Giving that food is amazing.”
O’Neill and Hanley will operate the shop without additional staff and plan to open only on Thursdays and Fridays, from 3 to 8 p.m. Patrons can expect pizza similar to their previous style, with possibly a few tweaks here and there, O’Neill said. However, this time around, only full pies will be available to order, and there will be no alcohol for purchase, as the owners sold their liquor license.
Prior to deciding to reopen, the owners sought to sell the business, but didn’t get any offers that matched what they were looking for. And then, several weeks ago, they decided they’d keep the shop and return to making New York-style pizza.
“We spent a little time in the shop and we were like, yeah, we like what we did here and what we could do here,” O’Neill said.
After Knead closed in 2022, workers and the union that they sought to join, Philadelphia-based UNITE HERE Local 274, filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that the closure was in retaliation to the unionization efforts.
According to Hanley, Knead has reached a proposed settlement for the National Labor Relations Board charge, but does not believe the case has yet been finalized. According to the NLRB website, the case is still open.
“We believe we’ve done everything we need to do,” Hanley said.
In the charge against the business, workers and the union claimed that Knead owners made coercive threats of store closure in response to unionization efforts. They also said that they weren’t being paid half-time pay for COVID-related store closures in retaliation to the union activity.
However, the owners said the decision to close was based on the fact that Knead was losing money, struggling to maintain a lunch crowd and couldn’t find employees to cover shifts when a staff member contracted COVID the same week that employees sought to organize a union.
“We felt our hands were tied. We had very few options,” Hanley said. “We are not anti-union in any shape or form.”
Prior to employees proposing unionizing, O’Neill said that they never heard any complaints about the workplace from staff. UNITE HERE Local 274 could not immediately be reached for comment.
While the owners expect that there may be some public concern about their reopening after everything that happened, they said that from those who know about the reopening, the response has been positive.
“We are going to figure it out as we go and take what comes our way,” O’Neill said. “We just want to make pizza.”
Knead Pizza will be located at 937 N. 3rd St., Harrisburg.
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