By Charlie Pogacar
Brian Lewis is known amongst Atlanta foodies as the man who created an unbelievable burger. But Lewis is now becoming known nationwide as one of the new wave of independent pizza makers elevating frozen pizza to new heights.
In August 2024, Lewis opened Bocado Pizza, a small, upscale dine-in restaurant in the northern reaches of Atlanta. The name, Bocado, belongs to a brand Lewis founded and established in Atlanta, first as a bistro-style restaurant, Bocado, and then, later, at the casual eatery spin-off, Bocado Burger.
Bocado Pizza focuses on clean, better-for-you ingredients. Its signature sourdough crust goes through a 72-hour fermentation process—perfect, Lewis said, for both a dine-in experience as well as the frozen pizza segment.
Related: Pizza Power Report 2025: Venturing Into the Frozen Segment to Create a National Pizza Brand

“Sourdough is a big buzzword in our marketplace right now,” Lewis said on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “It’s naturally leavened… Our flour is nutrient-rich, more digestible and causes less inflammation. There’s a lot of demand for what we’re doing. I think people are really catching on to that.”
Lewis first opened Bocado, the burger spot, in the Westside neighborhood of Atlanta in 2009. The restaurant was a hit with locals, but the popularity of its double-stack cheeseburger took on a life of its own. So much so that Lewis launched his spin-off, Bocado Burger, in Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta. The burger was so locally iconic that when Lewis announced the opening of Bocado Pizza, he was questioned incessantly: Will you be serving the burger? (The answer: maybe occasionally).
When Lewis decided to launch Bocado Pizza, he did so with a vision to have both a brick-and-mortar restaurant as well as a line of frozen pizzas. The frozen pizzas start at $19 for a Margherita and range up to $22 for specialty pies. At that price point, Bocado is competing less with the DiGiornos of the world and more with upscale brands like Genio Della, founded by Anthony Mangieri of Una Pizza Napoletana in New York City.

“We conducted our own study and found that 92% of Americans eat frozen pizzas at least once a month,” Eunice Carter, marketing director for Bocado Pizza, said on the podcast. “The majority of those are eating [frozen pizza] four times per month. But there’s a certain type of audience that wants pizzas of a certain level with a certain amount of quality that Brian puts into it from an ingredients perspective.”
According to Carter, those consumers include wealthy, professional athletes and folks simply looking for a more healthy way to enjoy America’s favorite food: pizza. Bocado has reached many of these consumers via ads on social media that plug the preservative-free nature of Bocado’s products, which exclude things like sugar and seed oils.
“DiGiorno will never beat my product,” Lewis said. “Because [ours] is done by hand. I think anybody who is willing to make those types of [artisanal] commitments will win down the road. And what we’re already seeing with our reorders and repeat business is that the market is open and it’s only going to see more people like ourselves.”
To hear the full interview with Lewis and Carter, check out the latest episode of Peel at one of the following links: