By Charlie Pogacar
Laura Meyer was once best known as Tony Gemignani’s longtime protege. Meyer met Gemignani when she was just 17 years old, working at Paisano’s Pizza in the Bay Area. Upon graduating high school, she began a career as kitchen manager at Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco.
This, of course, obscures what Meyer has accomplished on her own. In 2013, Meyer became the first American—as well as the first woman—to win the Pizza in Teglia (pan pizza) division of the World Pizza Championships in Parma, Italy. It was her first-ever pizza-making competition, and Meyer was just getting started. The following year, Meyer won Best Non-Traditional Pizza at the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. In 2019, she won the Best American-Style pizza division at the Caputo Cup.
For more than 15 years, Meyer deliberately bided her time as it pertained to opening her own pizza shop. She was happily working alongside Gemignani in North Beach, honing her craft and forging her status as a standout member of the World Pizza Champions. But, as it was for so many people across the world, the pandemic lockdown became a time of reflection for Meyer.
“It made me seriously take a look at my trajectory and where I was going, and [ask myself], ‘Is this really what I want for myself?’” Meyer said on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast, specifically referencing a time period when she was considering opening up her own pizza shop. “I knew that if I was going to do this, I needed to do it sooner rather than later…especially because I also have the energy to do it. I’m still young—I can still work the 12-15 hour days, and it’s not really going to hurt me that much.”
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In 2023, Meyer opened Pizzeria Da Laura in downtown Berkeley, California, to rave reviews. One of those rave reviews comes from her close friend, Stephanie Swane, who has taken on an outsized role in the pizza industry herself over the past several years. Swane—who was named to PMQ’s 2024 list of top influencers in the industry—is the publisher of Modernist Cuisine, but she’s also well-known for her work as an ambassador for Women in Pizza. Swane has hosted more than 90 hour-long IG Live streamcasts for Women in Pizza and recently launched a spin-off series called Any Way You Slice It.
Swane’s entry into the pizza segment wasn’t an accident. When Modernist Cuisine began work on Modernist Pizza, its almost-Biblical guide to pizza published in 2021, Swane and her team embedded themselves in the pizza industry, learning about the craft from the best in the world. Part of that learning process included enrolling in pizza making classes across the country, which is how Swane met Meyer, who taught at Tony Gemignani’s International School of Pizza. Meyer soon learned that Swane doesn’t do anything halfway.
“When she loves something,” Meyer said, “she’s all in. And pizza is one of those things [that she loves].”
The two struck up a friendship and began spending more time together at industry events. So when Meyer recently had the idea to start up an organization that would boost the profile and repertoire of underrepresented folks in the industry—women, people of color and more—one of the first people she reached out to was Swane. The duo are undertaking the launch of that organization, Fork to Future, together, with intentions of holding tightknit community events in the near future.
“That goal [of starting Fork to Future] was, what can we do now with a larger goal in mind, geared towards women—and not just women, but other underrepresented groups in the industry—and not just in the pizza industry itself but all of the other industries that touch and collaborate with the pizza industry?” Meyer said on the podcast. “So really, it’s a larger goal. But, of course, pizza is what we know best because that’s who we are. So that’s where we are starting.”
To hear more from Swane and Meyer on this week’s episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast, check out one of the following links:
