NFL camera operator growing Indy pizza business

Jeff Miner has a job just about every sports fan in America would really envy, running the SkyCam following NFL quarterbacks on game day. But the COVID-19 pandemic opened up an opportunity for him to pursue a passion he’s had since he was eight years old – pizza. The Indianapolis entrepreneur has turned that passion into a business: Sam’s Square Pie, which is now operating out of Indy’s kitchen on the city’s near north side.

Miner told Around INdiana Reporter Mary-Rachel Redman the COVID lockdown allowed him to try something new, and he settled on pizza.

“I started digging into some recipes online to see what I like to make and what I was going to cook,” Miner said. “The Detroit pan was one of my favorite pizzas because of Blue Pan Pizza in Denver and Prince Street Pizza in Manhattan. So I googled their recipes, and I started looking at dough and reading about dough and started making and experimenting to try to get that nice fluffy crust and then that frico edge, and then trying to figure out how to do it.”

Miner said he would make about 10 pizzas out of his home kitchen, and people would pick them up off of his porch. He decided to keep making them after receiving “exemplary” feedback.

“And then it just kept growing, and my Instagram following kept growing,” he said. “And then it became kind of a mystery. How do you get one? And that was kind of part of the fun too because…if anything, COVID taught us that not everything’s promised and that you have to work to get some things that are out here.”

But it was the death of his brother Ron Miner, also known to many in the community as DJ Indiana Jones, that inspired Jeff to really pursue pizza making.

“We all go through periods of our life where we lose people we love, and it’s what you do with that sorrow. And so that sorrow turned into planting a seed of pizza crust and pizza sauce and pizza, pizza, pizza. So, you know you use that sorrow and propel yourself forward.”

Sam’s Square Pie was born, and Miner decided to put his pizza up against some of the best in the world at the Pizza Expo. His pizza earned 5th place in the pan division of the International Pizza Expo.

Miner, who still works full-time as a camera operator for the NFL and XFL, says he plans to continue making his Detroit-style and Sicilian-style pizzas out of Indy’s Kitchen on Thursdays and Fridays, and he is looking another possible pop-up location in Indy.