Michael Lindsey is currently unable to use the pepperoni slicing option on his pizza robot at the newest Old Hag’s Pizza location, in Lewisville. The Picnic Pizza Station is segmented into modules conjoined by an assembly line. As the dough glides through, one module dispenses a smooth disc of sauce, one blizzards out cheese, and one slices a log of pepperoni to the tune of 200 medallions per minute.
The problem is that Old Hag uses 100% beef pepperoni, which, according to Lindsey, is bizarrely difficult to find in log form, and the pizza robot only rapid-slices the logs, so human hands still top the pizzas once the bot’s finished saucing.
The Lewisville restaurant is currently the only independently owned restaurant in Texas with a Picnic Pizza Station, says a representative from Seattle-based Picnic Works, which makes the automated system. The pizza station is designed to make up to 100 pizzas per hour with only a single kitchen employee operating the station.
Lindsey, 46, has been making pizzas in Dallas since 2018, when he opened Old Hag’s Pizza in Oak Cliff.
He moved to Texas from Seattle that year and worked for Liberty Mutual’s Plano office for two weeks before getting axed in a round of layoffs.
“I’m too old. I’m not starting over,” he says he told himself at the time. The idea for a pizza joint settled in after months of research into a new gig. “I never ever thought I’d be opening a pizza place,” he says. It was an unprecedented step in his family. They’re an Irish-descended group from Riverside, Calif., with exactly zero restaurant business experience.
A few years and many round-the-clock shifts later, Lindsey has two pizza joints that are named, lovingly, after his mom. The new Lewisville location is a spit-shined, stuffed-with-technology pizzeria in one of the city’s most popular neighborhoods.
Lindsey’s goal is to cook a pie in 10 minutes flat. His first Oak Cliff location was adapted from an older pizza joint, literally called Oak Cliff Pizza, and was made for lightning-fast pizzas. The idea was to use ingredients that don’t suck, charge a little bit more, and stay open around the clock. Also, it’d be icing on the cake to beat Domino’s at fast pizza — he delivered pizzas for the mega-chain as a kid. Lindsey curates Old Hag’s ingredients list, employing blind taste tests with his staff to ensure the good stuff tastes better than others.
“Some people are going to be happy with Little Caesar’s. That’s fine, there’s a market for that,” he says.
While the Oak Cliff location reduced its hours in June, the new Lewisville spot offers a menu available 24/7. Do you need baked ziti at 4 a.m.? You do. You’ll also find 24/7 hot wings, loaded fries, meatball subs, and a pizza named “The Constipator.” It has quadruple the amount of cheese of a normal pie and requires two linings to the box to contain the grenade of grease.
The Lewisville location is light years more modern than other pizza joints. In the kitchen, Lindsey makes the smaller pies in an Insignia air fryer, which cook with astronaut precision and give off so little heat that often Lindsey will flip off the old-school ovens to avoid the summer kitchen night sweats. Old Hag’s upcoming full-service dining will have options like tri-tip steak and their five-layered lasagna. An Italian beef sandwich might be in their future, too.
Old Hag’s Pizza and Pasta is now open in Lewisville at 359 Lake Park Road, Suite 132, and is open 24/7. Old Hag’s in Oak Cliff is still open at 1315 W. Davis Street, and is open from 3 p.m. to 4 a.m. oldhagspizza.com.