Hard work, passion and creativity are must-haves for launching a remarkable pizza brand. These operators have all of that in spades, plus marketing savvy, strong values and dedication to their communities. So raise a slice to 15 amazing pizza brands and keep building yours—you might make the list in 2026!
(P.S. You can also download the FREE report here if you made the list and want to show it off to friends, customers and family! If you didn’t make the list, download it anyway!)
San Diego’s Mr. Moto Pizza is a hip, high-spirited, New York-style brand with a mischievous sense of fun and razor-sharp branding. Founded in 2015 by Gibran Fernandez, the seven-store company will debut two new locations in Orange County this spring, with two more on the way. Delivery boxes feature Fernandez himself sporting a comically oversized mustache, a message on the lid signed, “With love, Mr. Moto,” and an urgent plea on the inside: “Use our app! Stop wasting $$ on 3rd party apps.” In April they’re focused on Autism Acceptance Month, including a partnership with the National Foundation for Autism Research (NFAR) on the 2025 Superhero Race for Autism (April 12) and donating 30% of Wednesday sales to NFAR. Plus, the company sports some of the coolest branded cars on the road today.
Miriam Weiskind, founder of The Za Report—a pizza pop-up—is bringing her renowned neo-Neapolitan pies to the brick-and-mortar space with the launch of Yum’s of PDX this spring. The former New Yorker gained recognition teaching with Scott’s Pizza Tours, appearing on Food Network’s Chopped and baking over 5,000 pizzas during the pandemic to help those in need. Her pop-ups in New York and Portland built a devoted following, ultimately leading her to choose the latter for her first brick-and-mortar location. But the journey wasn’t easy. After facing 58 investor rejections, she secured funding from five aligned backers to launch Yum’s of PDX. According to Weiskind, it will embody her commitment to quality, creativity and the joy of “breaking crust” together.
Lynn’s Chicago Pizza started as a simple date-night experiment and evolved into a deep-dish pizzeria in Chicago’s South Side. Founded by Lynn Humphreys and Brandon Bruner, the restaurant brings a much-needed pizza option to an area dominated by soul food. With Bruner’s 15 years of culinary expertise, they crafted a lighter, more digestible deep-dish pizza using semolina, 00 and bread flour. After launching as a virtual brand in May 2023, Lynn’s quickly gained popularity via social media and word-of-mouth. By September 2024, the couple opened a brick-and-mortar shop in a food desert in the Woodlawn neighborhood—the closest restaurant, Humphreys estimated, is about a mile away. The menu features pizza, wings, salads and more, but it’s streamlined to make the operation easier to run. To attract customers, they leverage local media, community events and local influencers. The duo’s goal is to expand, but for now, they’re focused on making an impact in Woodlawn.
Yancey Carapico’s two-year-old carryout-only pizza shop won our hearts with its imaginative pies and clever theme: Every pizza is named after a “captain,” famous and not-so-famous. Captain Kirk, Captain America and Captain Hook? Duh, of course. Other pies honor war heroes (WWII Italian submarine officer Salvatore Todaro), athletes (Roquan Smith of the Baltimore Ravens), and even fictional mobsters (Manny Ribera, Tony Montana’s right-hand man in Scarface). Carapico makes up for the lack of a website by consistently posting strong pizza pics on Instagram, collaborating with local farmers and chefs, and routinely tagging PMQ to keep our attention. Aye aye, Cap’n!
Sisters Ardiana Gashi and Zana Kaloshi have made spinach on pizza a thing at Spinachio Pizza. They named the shop after their grandmother’s Spinachio Pizza, a recipe that hasn’t changed for 30 years. Razor-thin, bar-style “skinny pizzas” feature prominently on the menu, while the Spinachio Exclusives boast a top-secret spinach blend as the base. The brand’s so hot, the sisters welcomed two influencers on the same day in February—and one of them was Dave Portnoy, who stole the show from Jessica Romano of Instagram’s
@twogirlsoneslice. Portnoy rated the Skinny Cheese Pizza a strong 8.1, while Romano raved about the Skinny Spinachio and the Mosaic (a four-section 16” combining various specialty pies). Anthony Pizzi, who manages Spinachio’s social media and online ordering, says Portnoy’s timing took the team aback. “We’ve been dreaming of the day he’d show up at the shop. Even that day, we were talking about him, and boom. He showed up….And since the review dropped, we’ve been extremely busy!”
There’s seldom a slow day at Jamie Culliton’s multi-style hotspot, The Nona Slice House. He’s a two-time gold medalist at the World Pizza Championship in Parma, Italy, but the dude knows his dough, too. NONA’s Detroit, Sicilian, New York, Chicago tavern and Olde World styles appeal to nearly every taste, and Culliton has won countless national awards for his culinary skills. He wowed Dave Portnoy in March 2024 with a trio of pies, including the Detroit Red Top, leading El Presidente to proclaim, “You won’t find a better Detroit.” Before launching NONA, Culliton spent years opening Grimaldi’s Pizzeria stores around the country, but he’s an indie pizza guy at heart. And an entertainer, too. When Culliton and his squad break out their dough-spinning dance moves, customers get dinner and a show.
Chef Renato Viola looked to the stars to create pizzas that no one can forget. Now he’s a luminary in his own right. Viola opened the first Mister O1 location in a Miami office building with no signage or windows. But his star-shaped masterpieces, like the Star Luca and Star Michele, quickly earned him fame. Within a decade, Mister O1 had 15 stores across Florida. That number keeps climbing—now at 22—and his franchise brand keeps spreading, with five stores in Texas, two in Georgia, one in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and one in Madrid, Spain. Viola named his company for the prestigious O-1 visa that allowed him to immigrate from Italy to the U.S. due to his “extraordinary artistic ability.” He’s one pizza star that’s on the verge of going supernova.
How many pizza entrepreneurs are also published poets? Just one that we know of: Emily Hyland, whose 2024 collection of poetry, Divorced Business Partners: A Love Story, was featured in The New York Times last year. She’s also the co-founder of Emmy Squared, which launched in Brooklyn in 2016 and has since burgeoned into a Detroit-style company spanning a dozen states. Divorced Business Partners delves into the heartache of, well, divorcing your business partner—namely, executive chef Matt Hyland—while growing a restaurant concept to nearly 30 locations. The marriage might not have lasted, but customers fell in love with the brand—and the frico-crusted pies—that came out of it. And CEO Troy Tracy says his team has just begun to tell its story. “We’re very committed to our model, our growth, our food and our hospitality,” he told Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast in early January. “We just haven’t let everyone know about it.”
Rajesh Selvaraj never ate pizza until his early 20s. Now he’s the co-founder and chief pizza officer of Pizza Karma, a fast-growing chain redefining how pizza is made. Pizza Karma uses tandoor-fired ovens—an ancient cooking method typically used for naan—to create its light, flavorful crust. After a quick bake, the crust is topped with one of the brand’s seven signature sauces and finished in a conventional oven. Founded in 2018 in Eden Prairie, Pizza Karma has four locations and three food trucks. Selvaraj partnered with the late James Beard Award-winning chef Raghavan Iyer to craft a menu blending Indian flavors with pizza, offering mouthwatering options like Butter Chicken and Paneer Tikka. As Pizza Karma expands through franchising, Selvaraj envisions a nationwide brand introducing more people to globally inspired, tandoor-fired pizza.
Auggie Russo, a former film editor, began experimenting with pizza during the pandemic. In 2021, he officially launched his pop-up, Tiny Pizza Kitchen, and what started as a hobby became his true calling. “I never thought I’d be good at anything,” Russo memorably told PMQ. “And that’s not artifice—it’s just true.” Russo’s inventive pizzas proved otherwise—like the ever-changing Miss Betty White and A Farewell to Figs—blending unexpected flavors with creative flair. His fennel-bourbon candied chilies even caught the attention of Stephen and Evie Colbert, who featured the recipe in their cookbook, Does This Taste Funny? Thanks to champions like the Colberts, food critic Pete Wells and Scott Wiener, Russo’s profile skyrocketed. But for Russo, success isn’t about accolades—it’s about making people happy with his food. “If I can do that while staying true to myself, then I’m already winning,” he says.
Veteran chef Rachael Jennings opened Boogy & Peel in 2022 because pizza is the food she craves the most. While she describes her style as “bastardized Neapolitan,” Bon Appétit, which praised Jennings as one of eight U.S. pizzaioli who are “reimagining the craft,” calls it “cheeky.” The pies’ names reflect her rascally sense of humor: Harambe Loved Big Macs (the inspo here is obvious); the @kschifanorealtor (we have no idea what that means); and a Buffalo chicken number called the Bird Reynolds. To ensure her employees a “respectable wage” and health insurance, Jennings tacks on an 18% service fee to every order in lieu of tips. For a good belly laugh, don’t miss her video series, “Walk-In Chat,” where “you come in the walk-in and I tell you about the dumb s— that you’ve said on our Instagram page.”
Founded by Steven De Falco and Trey Wilson, Pizza Baby quickly expanded from its first shop in the Wesley Heights neighborhood to a second in Elizabeth—on the other side of “Uptown” Charlotte—each with its own identity. Pizza Baby West, as the Wesley Heights restaurant is known, specializes in Americana-style pies and curated wines, while Pizza Baby East serves Roman-style Pizza alla Pala by day and 12” Americana pies by night. Eventually, the duo added Roman-style rectangles to West’s menu, but each location still reflects the vibe of its neighborhood. Beyond pizza, Pizza Baby has embraced bread as a revenue stream, selling to customers and other businesses—a nod to the Old World, where pizzerias often doubled as bakeries. In 2024, its dedication to quality landed Pizza Baby on 50 Top Pizza’s list celebrating the best pizzerias in the U.S.
Tulane University grads Mike Friedman and Greg Augarten hail from New York, but they didn’t know a thing about making pizza when they decided to launch Pizza Delicious as a pop-up. That was 2010. Once their brick-and-mortar shop opened in a nondescript warehouse on Piety Street in 2012, they made sure it lived up to its name. Two years later, Eater New Orleans honored Pizza Delicious as Restaurant of the Year—no small feat in the Big Easy. Nowadays, Friedman and Augarten are on a roll again. In 2024, Pizza Delicious claimed a spot on 50 Top Pizza’s list of the best U.S. pizzerias for the second straight year. The duo even provided 50 pizzas to the NFL Commissioner’s Party over Super Bowl weekend. Despite all the acclaim, Pizza Delicious remains a hometown joint that awards a free pie every week to fans who tag three friends in a post on Instagram.
A native of Hong Kong, founder Candy Yiu grew up poor. But, as she told Women in Pizza recently, “I’m a person who believes in dreams, and trying is free, so what’s the worst case if you fail? You just go back to where you are, and you don’t lose anything. I was already at the bottom.” Not anymore. Readers of The Oregonian voted The Turning Peel as the best pizzeria in Portland last year, giving Yiu the nod over spots like Ken’s Artisan Pizza and Pizzeria Otto. As the pizzaiola, Yiu turns three-day leavened sourdough into Neapolitan-style gems like the Delicata (roasted delicata squash, Italian sausage, fresh sage and fior di latte) and the Pear Chorizo (roasted pears, chorizo, oregano and fior di latte), to be enjoyed inside or on the gorgeous outdoor patio. As a child, Yiu often went hungry, so she lets nothing go to waste at The Turning Peel: Leftover dough is made into bread and given away for free.
Spinato’s has been around for half a century, but it has aged so gracefully—and wisely—it’s still a brand to watch in our book. We especially love Spinato’s for its social mission and kindness campaigns. The family created the Kenneth A. Spinato Foundation, focused on children’s causes, in 2009. In 2023, they stuffed “kindness bags” with toiletries, snacks and water and asked customers to buy them for $5 as giveaways to people experiencing homelessness (proceeds went to a nonprofit combating homelessness and food insecurity). And last Christmas, Spinato’s Nice List Holiday Kindness Challenge celebrated locals who go “above and beyond to spread kindness and joy.” For most restaurant brands, growth is top priority. Not so for the six-store Spinato’s, which put the brakes on new openings. As CEO Anthony Spinato told PMQ, “How do you grow and do it well? After 40 years, we looked at our core values and realized we just love making people’s lives better. That’s our advantage—you can’t manufacture that.”
