About Iron Crust

Eddie Ruiz started delivering pizzas when he was seventeen. Not for any particular love of the job — he needed gas money and the place on Airport Highway was hiring. But somewhere between carrying boxes up apartment stairs in January and memorizing every shortcut west of Secor Road, he figured out that pizza was the thing he was going to do with his life.

He saved for years. Worked at three different shops, learned dough from a guy named Cal who'd been making it since the 70s, picked up oven technique at a place in Sylvania that's long since closed. In 2014, at 35, he signed a lease on a former sandwich counter at 2847 W Sylvania Ave, dragged a stone-deck oven out of a closing bakery in Perrysburg, and opened Iron Crust Pizza Co.

Twelve years later, it's still one shop, one oven, eleven staff. The menu hasn't changed much because the menu doesn't need to change. The dough is the same 24-hour cold ferment. The sauce is the same crushed San Marzanos. The cheese is the same low-moisture blend from a dairy distributor across the Michigan border. We buy from the same produce supplier we started with.

We deliver to west Toledo — everything west of Secor to the state line. We know the streets. Eddie still drives a few deliveries himself on busy nights when the board gets backed up. Not because he has to. Because he likes it.

The team

There are eleven of us counting Eddie. Four in the kitchen, four on deliveries, two on phones and counter, and Eddie doing a bit of everything. A few of the guys have been here since 2016. It's a small crew and most of west Toledo knows us by first name at this point.

We're not a franchise. We're not a chain. We're one family-owned pizza shop doing one thing well.