Story by Tracy Morin | Photos courtesy of Robert’s Pizza and Dough Co.
Dana Hokin, co-founder and CEO of Robert’s Pizza and Dough Co., and her husband, Robert Garvey, know how to throw a party. But when it comes to planning their popular Dinner Series, it’s not just business—or business as usual.
“The inspiration for our dinners comes from something deeply personal,” Hokin says. “When Robert and I hosted dinners at home, we would serve what we called a ‘pizza flight’—a progression of pizzas moving from lighter to richer flavor profiles. That informal tradition ultimately evolved into our structured multicourse dinners.”
Hokin (pictured below, front left, with her guests at the Orient Express dinner in 2025) recently sat down with PMQ Pizza to discuss how they orchestrate the dinners at Robert’s Pizza and Dough Co.—and what makes these ticketed events such a smash success.
Related: How Robert’s Pizza Became One of 50 Top Pizza’s Best Pizzerias in the World
PMQ: What was the inspiration behind your ticketed events, and how do you plan them for maximum sales and attendance?
Dana Hokin: Prepaid ticketed events are still relatively new for us, and we’re still figuring it out. We’ve always leaned into celebratory moments like the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo with special restaurant-wide menus, but we hadn’t structured those as ticketed experiences.
For a smaller, formatted experience, our move into ticketed events began with the introduction of our Dinner Party Series. This one-seating format helps us differentiate it from regular service. From a marketing perspective, it helps to elevate the special nature of the dinner, and from an operational perspective helps us know how much prep is necessary. We generally pick a Thursday night. The event isn’t designed to sell out the restaurant—rather, it allows us to create a different experience within the restaurant while regular service continues.
Dinners run from 20 to 40 seats max. They are set up as community tables, so it’s a curated five-course pizza dinner party designed to take guests on a culinary journey through pizza. Each dinner is theme-driven and features new pizzas paired with wine or spirits. We currently host three per year: December (Holiday), February (Lunar New Year) and April (Spring). We intentionally scheduled these during slower seasons—winter and early spring—which allows us to offer something unique during a quiet time and challenge our creativity.
These dinners directly support one of our core philosophies: Eating pizza is a journey. We’ve always believed pizza should unfold as an experience. The Dinner Series allows us to express that idea in a more structured, immersive way.
A great example was our Orient Express dinner, where the evening was designed around the romance and progression of travel. Rather than simply creating themed dishes, the courses unfolded like stops along a journey, from Paris to Istanbul. This structure shaped everything—pacing, flavors, pairings and guest expectations—transforming dinner into a fully realized experience.
Related: Every Month’s a Moneymaker at Robert’s Pizza: A Deep-Dive Q&A With Robert Garvey and Dana Hokin
PMQ: How do you approach choosing themes and then building menus appropriate to the theme?
Hokin: Theme development always begins with one guiding question: What story do we want to tell? Once the narrative is defined, the menu becomes an extension of that idea. The goal is a cohesive dinner, ensuring ingredients, courses and pairings feel connected and intentional.
For the Orient Express dinner, the concept of travel naturally dictated the progression. Lighter, more delicate flavors appeared early in the meal, while richer, more indulgent courses followed. This mirrors how we believe pizza should be enjoyed: as a thoughtful journey through flavors and textures. This philosophy also informs how we think about dough.
We often say we strive to “love dough responsibly,” meaning we respect its versatility and avoid treating pizza as something static or one-dimensional. For example, we made dumplings and bao buns from the same dough for our Lunar New Year of the Fire Horse dinner this year.
PMQ: How can these events be used to boost slower periods of the year?
Hokin: Ticketed events give us the ability to create energy and drive business into a need period—in this case, our slower months. Instead of waiting for traffic, we create a reason for guests to visit.
Beyond revenue, these events act as creative incubators for our kitchen. They generate excitement for the team, strengthen guest relationships, and attract diners seeking something distinctive and experiential. We hope that our narrative-driven dinners can help reposition pizza in the guest’s mind—not simply as casual fare, but as a format capable of delivering a refined, multicourse experience.
PMQ: How far in advance does planning begin, and how do you approach that process?
Hokin: This is something we continue to refine. Ideally, menus would be conceptualized months in advance so you can start marketing to your guests early. Our goal is to eventually offer the Dinner Series as a subscription-style program. We like the idea, during the depths of winter, to invite our guests to three different culinary experiences with pizza.
PMQ: How do you ensure staff buy-in and successful execution?
Hokin: Collaboration is essential. We involve our team early in the creative process—menu development, pairings and execution strategy—which builds both ownership and enthusiasm. Because these dinners differ from normal service, they often carry a celebratory, almost party-like energy. That excitement becomes part of the guest experience and contributes to the overall success of the event. It brings in new techniques and food and flavors that they get to work with, which is exciting.
PMQ: How do you price these ticketed events while managing food costs and guest expectations?
Hokin: Our margins are less on the dinner, because we want to create an experience, particularly for our regular guests. It keeps the restaurant exciting, helps further develop our culinary chops in the kitchen, and helps to inform and create special pizzas that we may put into rotation during the year. A $125 ticket includes multiple courses, curated pairings and highly composed dishes. When guests understand the scope and intention of the event, the value becomes clear. And since we limit the size of the event, it helps us manage costs—we don’t overprep.
PMQ: How do you promote these events to both new and existing customers?
Hokin: We use a multichannel strategy, including:
- Social media storytelling
- Email campaigns
- Website features
- In-restaurant materials
- Outreach to residential buildings
- Partnerships with hotel concierges
We also take advantage of OpenTable’s Experiences feature—customers can purchase a ticket and confirm their reservation. They can also call us directly.
Because these dinners are experiential by nature, visual identity plays a major role in our promotion. We intentionally created a distinct look and feel for the event collateral, including check presenters, postcards and menu formats.
While the designs draw from our existing brand elements, we developed a cohesive look and feel that gives the Dinner Series its own identity. This helps signal to guests that these events are something different from regular service—more immersive, more curated and more experience-driven.
For us, ticketed events are ultimately about more than tickets—they are expressions of our identity. They allow us to celebrate pizza as a dynamic and evolving experience. Whether through multicourse storytelling, reinterpretations of global flavors or creative uses of dough, these dinners embody our belief that pizza is a journey—and dough is the vehicle that makes that journey possible.
Tracy Morin is PMQ’s associate editor.
