The Minneapolis community is rallying around a Black-owned pizzeria after a fire closed it down.

Two weeks after the walk-up style pizza shop Slice opened on Oct. 2, a fire started along the side of their building around 9 a.m. on Oct. 19, causing more than $11,000 in damages.

It is the first Black-owned pizzeria in Minneapolis, situated between Hennepin and Central avenue. You will find it in the heart of Northeast Minneapolis.

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“I’m blown away,” one of the owners, Adam Kado, told WCCO. “Just imagine something you work so hard for, you show up, and it’s scorched.”

In a city that has seen so much over the last few years, including national attention from protests sparked by several police shootings of Black men, residents decided to support this pizza company in a positive way.

“We put up a GoFundMe for $25,000, and it got filled within like 4 days,” co-founder Hosie Thurmond added, “That really fed our fires and that really showed that we have the community’s support, and however that happened as far as the fire, it’s very much an outlier to what the community feels about us.”

For the co-owners, the fire was the least of their worries. They were more worried about their employees who were forced to be laid off as a result of the fire.

“More so, the employees and everyone else that was out of work and lost revenue. It was probably the most problematic thing I would say about it all,” said Kado.

Since they made more than they needed from the fundraiser, the co-founders are paying their employees who were temporarily laid off.

The rest of the money is going towards renovating the outside by adding permanent benches and table sides ahead of summer 2022 when they expect to have peak foot traffic for their walk-up business.

“We kind of see it as a melting spot of the Northeast for people to come and eat pizza, but also to have a community space where people can connect,” said Thurmond.