&pizza is officially heading west.
The fast-casual pizza brand announced it will open a location at Rio Hotel & Casino Las Vegas in Spring 2026, marking a geographic and symbolic milestone for a brand that has spent the past two years repositioning itself for national growth. The Rio location—owned and operated by the resort—places &pizza inside one of Las Vegas’ most visible revitalization efforts, and gives the Washington, D.C.-based chain its first foothold beyond the eastern half of the country.
The move is the latest step in a rapid-fire expansion sequence that began earlier this year when &pizza launched franchising for the first time in its 13-year history. After years of operating only company-owned restaurants along the East Coast, the brand has now signed multiple franchise agreements, announced dozens of future locations in markets like Orlando, Atlanta, Charleston and Raleigh, and acquired the 95-unit Tex-Mex chain Tijuana Flats to form a new multi-brand platform called Latitude Food Group.
Related: Scaling With ‘Rocket Fuel’: Pizza Brand Buys Tex-Mex Brand in Its Boldest Move Yet
In other words: Las Vegas is not a one-off. It’s part of an ongoing strategy.
When Mike Burns took over as CEO, the story was about getting the house in order, Burns told PMQ in March. That meant reorganizing the menu, restoring signature items (like the Farmer’s Daughter pizza), cutting prices to improve value perception and rebuilding the brand’s countercultural voice.
That groundwork seems to be paying off. The Rio opening gives &pizza immediate exposure to a high-traffic, high-visibility environment without the risks of traditional market entry, the brand said via press release. Instead of launching with a local franchisee or building a regional infrastructure from scratch, &pizza enters Las Vegas through a hospitality partner that already understands scale, staffing, real estate and demand volatility. The brand joins other fast-casual brands, like Egg Slut, as part of the Rio hospitality portfolio.
“We’re excited to welcome &pizza to Rio Las Vegas as part of our ongoing transformation,” said Patrick Miller, President and CEO of Rio Hotel & Casino, via press release. “The brand’s creative approach to fast-casual dining aligns well with our focus on expanding bold, guest-driven food and beverage offerings.”
It also places the brand alongside a curated, experience-driven dining lineup — a natural fit for a concept that has always leaned into personality as much as product. From its loud music and irreverent marketing to its oblong pies and playful naming conventions, &pizza has positioned itself as something unique. Vegas, with its appetite for spectacle and novelty, offers a stage that aligns with that DNA.
Behind the scenes, the Las Vegas move is enabled by Latitude Food Group, the holding company Burns and his team created after acquiring Tijuana Flats earlier this fall. By centralizing HR, finance, marketing, IT and supply chain across multiple brands, Latitude gives &pizza access to infrastructure most emerging chains don’t have—effectively turning what used to be a single brand’s overhead into shared growth fuel.
“Marketing will have more juice,” Burns said in November. “We can conserve cash and spend it on restaurants.”
Las Vegas is simply the first place west of the Mississippi where that new version of &pizza gets to show up in public.
