Grace Pizza & Shakes 30A

Grace Pizza and Shakes 30A occupies 38 Clayton Lane in Grayton Beach, inside the building that once housed the well-known Pickle Factory restaurant. The Santa Rosa Beach location opened with a grand opening celebration on October 29, 2022, as the brand’s second restaurant and its first outside Texas, expanding a concept that started in Alvin, Texas in 2021.

Adrian Hembree, who co-founded the original Grace Pizza and Shakes with business partner Vincent Nandlal, opened the Grayton Beach location together with his wife, Gina. The name reflects a period when both founding partners leaned on faith through hard times, including Hurricane Harvey relief work and volunteering after the Santa Fe school shooting, before turning that experience into a restaurant built around, in the owners’ words, fun, love, and grace. The brand’s guiding idea about pizza follows an old proverb, to each his own, meaning every pie is meant to reflect its own combination of flavors rather than a single house style.

The kitchen turns out coal-fired, brick-oven pizza made with local ingredients, and diners can build their own pie or order a house recipe like the aptly named Patton’s Pepperoni or a loaded Supreme. Local craft beer rounds out the drink list alongside the restaurant’s other calling card, its milkshakes. These go well beyond a basic vanilla or chocolate cup, running toward loaded, over-the-top builds like a cinnamon caramel crunch shake and a signature 30A Cake Explosion made with locally sourced baked goods folded right into the shake itself.

The Grayton Beach shop occupies a compact 1,000-square-foot space that nonetheless created 30 to 40 local jobs when it opened, a fact the ownership points to as evidence of the brand’s community focus alongside its charitable roots. The grand opening event itself raised support for the Ohana Institute, a nonprofit school built around project-based learning for middle and high school students, continuing the founders’ pattern of tying the business to local causes.

Grace Pizza and Shakes now runs two locations, the original in Alvin, Texas and this one on Clayton Lane, and the Grayton Beach shop was built specifically to bring the same pizza-and-shake formula to a beach crowd rather than to simply replicate the Texas store. Being on Clayton Lane puts it in direct company with Chanticleer Eatery just down the block and within an easy walk of AJ’s and The Red Bar, so a family staying in Grayton Beach can treat it as the low-key, kid-friendly option on a street otherwise known for later-night bars and live music. That positioning, quick counter service, a simple menu, and a room built for kids without feeling like a chain, is a big part of why it fills up on weeknights when other spots in town are still gearing up for their evening crowd.

Grace Pizza and Shakes 30A is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and closed Mondays, with both dine-in and takeout available and online ordering for anyone who wants to skip the counter. The restaurant leans family friendly, with a menu and pace suited to kids as much as adults, and its spot on Clayton Lane puts it an easy walk from the rest of Grayton Beach’s restaurants and the Gulf itself. Between the brick-oven pizza and the shake menu, it covers both a real meal and dessert without needing a second stop, which is part of why it has become a regular stand-in for family dinners along this stretch of 30A.