This truck will become Brickology Pizza, offering standard and specialty pies with that crispy touch. Image via Jay Hopper

There might have been a time in the past when getting brick oven pizza meant going to a restaurant and picking one up or having one delivered.

But now that it’s 2020, that fiery furnace will come on wheels.

A new food truck, Brickology Pizza, will make its debut next month in Fresno, hopes owner Japheth “Jay” Hopper.

Brickology will feature the standards, but will also have a unique offering every month such as Mexican pizza or seafood pizza.

“We’re going to do the standard pepperoni cheese pizza, the veggie, the garlic chicken, Hawaiian.” Hopper said. “But also we want to throw in something different.”

For his pizzas, Hopper says a conventional oven just wouldn’t do. Cooking over an open flame gives pizza its crispy crust and keeps it from collapsing in the middle.

“Conventional ovens, you don’t get that crisp flavor,” Hopper said. “Conveyor ovens are more doughy, like a Pizza Hut, Little Caesars type, compared to a brick oven where you get that crunch. You can grab that pizza, walk around, and it doesn’t fall like having a conveyor-oven style pizza.”

Hopper weighed the costs of leasing space in a brick-and-mortar, and decided a food truck was the way to go.

“We weighed everything out where if we got a building, it’s really costly,” said Hopper.

He has already spoken with people at Gazebo Gardens who host food truck nights on weekends, and he said they were excited because they don’t have pizza options.

He also wants to make appearances at the ApCal music festival and at farmer’s markets.

Hopper considered buying a used truck, but retrofitting one with a brick oven wasn’t cost-effective, he said. He went as far as Arizona to speak with a company that makes custom trucks and ended up contracting with Fresno-based company California Custom Concession Trailers for a new truck outfitted with a brick oven.

Hopper will start out working the truck with his fiancé, Maria Hernandez.

They’ll serve pizza by-the-slice as well as calzones.

“Having a building, we can’t move it and try to make money,” he said. “With a food truck, you can go to all the venues. It puts your name out there.”