Prince St. Pizza was born and bred in Manhattan before branching out to about 20 stores around the U.S. and Canada. Its latest location—this one in Nashville—is also its largest yet. But can this cult brand evolve into a national chain without losing what made it a cult brand in the first place?

Prince St. Pizza is reported to be a favorite of celebrities like Adam Sandler and Kim Kardashian. Recently, it developed several specialty pizzas in a collaboration with rock bands Avenged Sevenfold and Good Charlotte and collaborated with comedian/Internet personality Hannah Stocking on a dessert pizza called the Black Currant Big Apple.

All of which is well and good, but the further away from New York a pizza brand moves, the less name recognition it has. So Prince St.’s Sicilian-style square pies and signature pepperoni-heavy slices had better be worthy of the city where the brand was born.

As Fox Business recently reported, Prince St. Pizza remains laser-focused on the quality of its dough in part by using a water filtration system that claims to replicate New York City’s water. Whether NYC water is genuinely superior to all others for pizza applications remains open to debate, but Lawrence Longo, Prince St. Pizza’s CEO, is leaving nothing to chance.

“I think it’s important to stay close to the principles that made it special in the first place,” Longo told Fox Business. “And that comes down to the quality of the product.”

“Every time we sign a new lease, we get the water from that city, and we send it to the lab, and they create a filtration system that turns our water into New York City water,” he said.

“The idea is that when you walk into a Prince St. Pizza [location], you should feel like you walked into a pizzeria in New York City,” Longo added.

Longo believes that the Sicilian style “hasn’t really been done right at scale across America.” Prince St. Pizza aims to change that, although it’s sticking with larger metro markets like Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago for now.

“How do you scale a cult brand?” Longo said in the Fox Business interview. “You really stay true to what made it successful in the first place.”

In real-world terms, that means it will come down to the quality and consistency of the food plus systems and processes engineered to deliver the same customer experience whether the store’s in Soho, Malibu or Nashville.

On the other hand, a dining room filled with celebrity guests won’t hurt, either, and Nashville has famous folks in spades. But they’ll get the same treatment as anyone else, according to Longo. “Whether you’re a celebrity or just a regular customer, we love everybody,” he said.

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