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Since opening in Midtown in 2022, Austin-based Home Slice Pizza has become one of Houston’s favorite places to grab a slice of New York-style pizza. But until now, it wasn’t accessible to vegans (or anyone else avoiding cheese).

Home Slice Pizza, the popular restaurant known for its thin crust, crispy bottom and simple slice service, is now courting a new type of customer with vegan mozzarella. The new style of pizza launches today, July 1.

Customers can add vegan cheese to any pie, at any of four locations, including three in Austin: 1415 and 1421 South Congress Ave. and 501 E. 53rd St. It’s unclear whether this game-changer can be applied to items beyond pizza, like 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 arm of the company is called Selfish Cow, and it 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 pre-shredded and melts well, as seen in photos from Home Slice and online recipes from Selfish Cow. The release’s name is a nod to Tony Gemignani, a “pizza industry leader” who is a 13-time world champion pizza maker and also loves this vegan cheese brand. It also includes a behind-the-scenes look at the arduous process of choosing the right cheese.

“We’ve been looking for a vegan cheese that meets our standards since we opened in 2005, and our customers have been waiting a very long time for us to find one. We’re thrilled that the wait is over,” Home Slice founder and owner Jen Strickland said in a press release. “It took a true cheese company that cares about artisan cheese to produce a vegan mozzarella that we’re proud to serve to our customers.”

It definitely took a while to find, but people who have purchased vegan cheeses know that sometimes they bear only a vague resemblance to the food that inspired them.

“We were looking for a vegan cheese that wasn’t gooey, tasted great, and melted like real cheese,” said Charles Corprew, director of kitchen operations at Home Slice. “We’ve tried 100 vegan cheeses over the years, and none have stuck until now.”