Alumni Feature: Sean Spurlock (PPE ’14)

Sean Spurlock (PPE ’14) came to King’s from Cincinnati, Ohio and returned home after graduation to work in his family’s restaurant business. He and Zach Greves, his best friend from elementary school, are now co-founders of a new restaurant in Mason, Ohio called Two Cities Pizza Co. The idea behind Two Cities is to cultivate the best of the New York and Chicago pizza-making traditions, bringing them out of rivalry and into culinary harmony under one roof. We recently spoke with Sean about his pizza, his calling, and his time at King’s.

How did you find out about King’s, and how did you decide to attend?

One of my high school teachers told me I should at least visit, so I came up for an Inviso visit weekend. One of the student ambassadors, from the House of Churchill, really lured me in. I stayed with Churchill guys and got to know Luke Smith, who I worked for during my first year at King’s. Those first meetings and experiences proved to be lasting: I was admitted into the House of Churchill and lived on the same floor as the guys who sold me on coming. We explored the city, had Nerf gun wars together—the men of Churchill were central to my college experience.

The school was in the Empire State Building at that time, and I was fascinated with the idea of New York City, as I still am. I love to be in places that have a strong sense of history. In New York, there are 200- or 300-year-old buildings and even businesses. That kind of longevity brings depth to a community.

What was the most significant effect that your time at King’s had on your life?

One thing I learned is that my life is all about community. King’s doesn’t offer every major or every opportunity, but it does offer and emphasize a vibrant community through its small size and the House system. A lot of graduates in my class feel like we had a wonderful combination of a small college and close community with a huge city full of great opportunities.

I got to know almost all of my professors on a one-on-one basis. We’d go out and talk over my experiences and studies, and what to do after college. An independent study with Brian Brenberg on the theology of work, an internship at the UN, and my thesis project with Anthony Bradley on Winston Churchill and the Great Man Theory of history were especially instrumental in shaping what I wanted to do with my life.

Going into King’s, I wanted to do some kind of work in government or think tank advocacy, but my interest shifted to entrepreneurship as I spent time at King’s and got to know the business faculty.

How did you decide to return to Ohio after graduation, and what was the path that led you to become a restaurateur?

It’s been a bit of a winding road. I’ve always loved my family, which is really large and all based in Cincinnati—the family has always been together, so that was a really important factor in deciding to come back. I also wanted to get in touch with the small business entrepreneurship scene, and I knew I couldn’t do that in New York. I didn’t want to go to graduate school, and I didn’t want to go the think tank route. So doors opened at home, and I walked through them.

My family hadn’t been in the pizza business for about 15 years, but after I came home, a pizzeria owner I had worked for as a kid passed away from a heart attack. His wife didn’t want to run the business anymore, so my dad and my best friend Zach Greves and I resurrected the store. We put our emphasis on customer interaction and started making everything fresh on site: dough, sauce, dressings, croutons, and a lot of appetizers. We worked there for about two years, and in fact we still run that pizzeria. But Zach and I also knew that we wanted to do something else and go into business together. We recognized that most restaurants don’t have a strong concept or identity, so we worked really hard on creating one for ours. We both love New York City and Chicago—Zach almost went to King’s too, actually. So the inspiration for Two Cities was the idea of these distinct urban pizza traditions, and innovative cuisines in general. Our food is very artisanal, very fresh, and all handmade.

We have one distributor in New York City and one in Chicago, so our ingredients are either things that are available in big cities that aren’t available in our markets, or they are very authentic to the two cities our restaurant is named for. When we discovered that nobody else was combining these two traditions under one roof, we couldn’t not pursue it.

What is your space like?

We are on the ground floor of what used to be the Mason City Hall. It’s an Art Deco building that’s number one on Mason’s historical registry. The entryway feels like the lobby of the Empire State Building, which was built around the same time; it has steel, marble, terrazzo tile, and exposed brick. Over the years it’s housed the fire department, a jail, and the mayor’s office. When we were looking for a space, the first floor was for rent. It had been kind of run down for a long time, but an architecture firm bought it and invested in it, and they have their offices on the second floor. We wanted people to feel like they were in a restaurant in New York or Chicago, to help make the difference between being a gimmick and offering something genuine. The city of Mason was really excited that we were here because when they saw our plans, because they agreed that we weren’t just going to preserve the space—we were going to enhance it.

How do you see your work as a calling?

I believe really strongly in the mission of King’s, but it looks different for everybody. It’s not always think tanks and New York City.

Because of the theology of work study that I went through with Professor Brenberg, I think what matters about work is why you’re in it and the spirit in which it’s done. In the restaurant industry there’s a lot of negativity and pessimism—and yes, you can sometimes see the worst of people. But we want to build our business on hospitality: not as a buzzword and not just with our customers, but also with our staff. We’ve had people tell us, “This is so different from anywhere I’ve worked before.” For instance, the pay in food service is better if you’re serving than if you’re in the kitchen, because servers also get tips. But we’ve had staff at Two Cities who were planning to move on to other work because they weren’t in the position they wanted, and they’ve changed their minds and decided to stay because they love the culture here and the people they work with.

In my independent study, Professor Brenberg introduced me to the life of Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century monk who spent most of his life on kitchen duty. He said, “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” So if my calling is to peel potatoes like Brother Lawrence, I should peel them perfectly for the glory of God. In business, you’re with people all day long, and it matters how you interact with them. At Two Cities, we want to be a joy to everyone around us.