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Since opening in Midtown in 2022, Austin-based Home Slice Pizza has become one of Houston’s most popular spots for a slice of New York-style pizza. But until now, it wasn’t available to vegans — or others who avoid cheese.

Home Slice Pizza, the popular eatery known for its thin crust, crispy crust and easy slice-by-slice service, is now appealing to a new type of customer with vegan mozzarella. The new pizza flavor launches today, July 1.

Customers can add vegan cheese to any pizza at all four locations, including three in Austin: 1415 and 1421 South Congress Ave. and 501 E. 53rd St. It’s not yet known if this groundbreaking innovation can be applied to dishes other than pizza, such as the excellent chicken or eggplant parmesan sandwiches or the Caprese salad.

Interestingly, this vegan cheese doesn’t come from a predominantly vegan company, but from a company called Cheese Merchants, which specializes in hard and Italian cheeses. The plant-based “branch” of the company is called Selfish Cow, and uses a blend of coconut oil, potato starch, tapioca starch, sunflower oil, and chickpea protein to make its mozzarella, which appears to be its only product so far.

It appears to be already shredded and melts well, as seen in photos from Home Slice and online recipes from Selfish Cow. The publication name drops “pizza business capo” Tony Gemignani, who has won 13 world pizza-making titles and also loves this vegan cheese brand. Plus, there’s a behind-the-scenes look at the laborious process of choosing the right cheese.

“Since we opened in 2005, we’ve been searching for a vegan cheese that meets our standards, and our customers have waited a very long time for us to find one. We’re excited that the wait is over,” said Home Slice founder and owner Jen Strickland in a press release. “It took a true cheese company that values ​​artisanal cheese to create a vegan mozzarella that we can be proud to serve to our customers.”

It certainly took a while to find it, but people who have ever bought vegan cheese know that sometimes it only bears a passing resemblance to the food that inspired it.

“We were looking for a vegan cheese that wasn’t rubbery, tasted good and melted like real cheese,” said Charles Corprew, executive chef at Home Slice. “We’ve tried probably 100 vegan cheeses over the years and none have made it yet.”