Catching Yeast & Slinging Pies: The Underground Story of Uncle G’s Pizza (with George Gilliam)Catching Yeast & Slinging Pies: The Underground Story of Uncle G’s Pizza (with George Gilliam)
APC Recovery Cafe
George Gilliam talks about getting sober, leaving a draining healthcare role, and building Uncle G’s Pizza from pandemic kitchen experiments and gig work. The conversation blends pizza talk with candid reflections on honesty, mental health and what recovery looks like in everyday life.
42:45•29 Oct 2026
From Wild Yeast to Real Honesty: George Gilliam on Pizza and Recovery
Episode Overview
- Sobriety prompted George to reassess a lifetime of choices made to please others and focus instead on honest self-expression.
- Gig delivery work during the pandemic showed him the appeal of working for himself and valuing his own time.
- Experimenting with sourdough and pizza at home became a creative outlet in early recovery and eventually a business idea.
- Health department rules pushed him from an informal home setup toward a fully compliant mobile food operation funded by Kickstarter.
- George sees openness about addiction and business struggles as key to supporting staff, customers and his own ongoing recovery.
“I never loved drugs. I loved the relief that I felt after I did them.”
What are the common struggles and victories in addiction recovery? This chat at APC Recovery Cafe brings together pizza, pandemic life, and sobriety in a way you probably haven’t heard before. Host Nichole Dawsey sits down with "Mr Pizza" himself, George Gilliam of Uncle G’s Pizza, to talk less about crust thickness and more about how a sober life led him from healthcare into gig work and, eventually, to running one of Birmingham’s best‑known pizza brands.
George describes quitting his low‑paid assistant counsellor role at a recovery centre, loving the freedom of grocery delivery during lockdown, and realising, "It was kind of like the first time you get high where you’re like, oh, I need this all the time.
This is what my life needs to be now." From there, you’ll hear how early recovery and pandemic downtime turned into kitchen "science experiments"—including catching wild sourdough yeast in a jar over 40 days and waking up at 8 a.m. to check dough balls. His home‑based barbecue and pizza side hustle slowly grew into a fully fledged business, pushed along by a Kickstarter and a lot of Birmingham Reddit buzz.
The heart of the episode, though, is George’s take on honesty in recovery. He explains that before getting sober in 2017, he spent his life doing things he thought other people wanted, rather than expressing himself: "I never loved drugs. I loved the relief that I felt after I did them." Sobriety, for him, meant learning to show up without a mask, to be open about being a former drug addict, and to run his business with that same transparency.
If you’re curious how someone can build a popular food brand while staying grounded in recovery and mental health awareness, this conversation might be the slice you need today.
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