It’s funny—and rather mysterious—how one slice of pizza can change your life.
Joe Powers still recalls stumbling onto a food truck, called the O.G. Wood Fire, at a Buffalo Bills game. It was owned at the time by pizzaiolo Jay Langfelder, who would soon go on to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant called Jay’s Artisan Pizza.
“Me and my dad just walked up to the pizza truck and had his pizza for the first time and were kind of hooked after that,” Powers recalled to WIVB back in 2023. When Langfelder opened Jay’s in 2017, Powers landed a part-time job at the Kenmore, New York pizzeria, ultimately dropped out of college, and, with Langfelder’s backing, attended a 14-day course with AVPN in Naples.
Powers was just 22 when Langfelder handed him the keys to Jay’s in 2020 and moved away to open Pizzeria Florian, with partner Amanda Jones, in East Aurora, New York. As Jay’s new owner, Powers proved a worthy successor. A few years later—2023, to be exact—50 Top Pizza ranked Jay’s Artisan Pizza No. 8 in the U.S. and No. 28 in the world.
Powers was floored by that honor. “It doesn’t really sink in at all,” he told WIVB at the time. “I think about it once in a while, and I’m like, wow, [No.] 28. If you think about it, 28 on planet Earth…when you say that, it’s like, whoa, this is kind of crazy.”
Since then, the accolades have kept pouring in. For the 2024 world ranking, Jay’s held on to its No. 28 spot while also moving up to No. 6 in the U.S. For this year, Powers holds the No. 4 spot in the U.S., and 50 Top Pizza’s latest world ranking will be announced on September 8 in Naples. Will Jay’s Artisan Pizza make the list again? Recent history makes that seem very likely.
In its 2025 USA guide, 50 Top Pizza described Jay’s as “a neighborhood pizzeria with a contemporary spirit, where pizza research is expressed with personality and consistency.”
The Italian pizza guide heaped praise on Jay’s two distinct pizza styles: Neapolitan and Detroit. “The dough is well-hydrated, long-leavened and highly digestible, with consistently precise cooking. Excellent options include the ‘Nduja, intense yet balanced, and the Speck & Parmigiano, with a refined taste. There is a great attention to ingredients, with DOP cheeses and local vegetables. The Detroit-style also impresses with its structure and crispiness, with versions like the Hot Cherry Pepper or the more original Viva Mexico.”
It should be noted that Langfelder’s current eatery, Pizzeria Florian, has enjoyed its own remarkable success, claiming 50 Top Pizza’s No. 44 spot in the USA last year and jumping to No. 39 in 2025.
Meanwhile, Powers has wisely forged alliances with local and regional suppliers—all of which he name-checks on his pizzeria’s website—to keep the ingredients at Jay’s Artisan Pizza fresh and flavorful. His mozzarella and ricotta come from the family-run Sopra Cheese in nearby Bath, while he buys fresh basil and microgreens from Gro-Op, an aquaponic vertical farm in Buffalo. There’s also organic produce from Plato Dale Farm in Arcade and Thorpes Organic Family Farm in East Aurora as well as mushrooms from Flat 12 Mushrooms in Buffalo. He buys his cured meats from Tempesta Artisan Salumi in Chicago and, as 50 Top Pizza pointed out, sources some DOP-labeled products from Italy as well.
That AVPN course in Naples opened Powers’ eyes to the tantalizing magic of fresh, homegrown ingredients, as he explained to Visit Buffalo Niagara. “It flipped a switch for me,” he said. “It was more than just the food. It was seeing the farming practices and understanding how [Italy’s] food supply is so local and regional.”
“You’re only as good as what you put out on a daily basis,” Powers told Visit Buffalo Niagara. “We just keep doing what we’re doing. We have fun with it, too. I don’t know what the perception of Jay’s is, but we enjoy each other, we care about what we do, and we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
Powers also knows that age, if you’ll pardon the cliché, is just a number, not a defining characteristic and certainly not a limitation. “No matter what age you are, if you dream it you can accomplish it,” he once told WKBW. “And if you really want to work for it, you can do anything.”
