A Slice of New York was created to bring a New York comfort food to the Bay Area. ASONY was co-founded by Kirk Vartan and Marguerite Lee. Today, ASONY is a pizza shop that is also focused on implementing structural and social change around worker co-operatives and employee ownership.

As a native of Manhattan, Kirk had pizza all the time. When he moved to San Jose to work at Cisco, he did not find anything that he felt honored what he grew up with. The original location was modeled after the typical pizza shop in NYC (small, counter seating), has lots of fun NY visuals that are from real NY icons, and is kept very clean.

There were three main goals in opening up the first location in 2006:

1. Create a slice of New York for displaced east coasters to feel at home
2. Allow for customers to see the work and quality on how this craft is done
3. Raise the expectation people have for pizza

The Bay Area has been so supportive and gracious. ASONY has been able to expand its operation to Sunnyvale, opening their second location on January 1, 2011. Expanding the vision, the Sunnyvale location is much larger than the original San Jose shop. It has tons of parking, lots of seating, beer and craft sodas on tap, can accommodate parties, and supports corporate catered lunches.

Both shops are easily accessed via main arteries. San Jose/Santa Clara is serviced by Stevens Creek next to the Stevens Creek Surplus store (near Santana Row and Valley Fair) and Sunnyvale is on El Camino Real (off hwy-85, near 101 and 237) in the BevMo Plaza. Both shops serve by the slice or whole pies, along with other items like strombolis, calzones, garlic knots, meatball parm sub, chicken parm hero, cannoli, tiramisu, NY Cheesecake, and even Drakes (Devil Dogs, Ring Ding, Yodels, Funny Bones, and Coffee Cake)! They also offer a 10" personal gluten-free crust (Venice Bakery in Venice, CA makes this) and a vegan cheese (from Daiya Foods). All food is made to order and everything is made in house from scratch.

On July, 1, 2017, A Slice of New York became the first brick-and-mortar worker cooperative in the South Bay, making employee ownership a reality in Silicon Valley. As of May 2022, there are 15 equal owners in the co-op, including Marguerite and Kirk.