By Rick Hynum
Gibran Fernandez, owner of Mr. Moto Pizza, is through clowning around.
The social media virtuoso built his six-location brand, based in San Diego, around an oversize black (sometimes red) mustache, loose-limbed dance moves and a goofball persona. But he’s far more serious about the pizza making craft—and the pizza business—than he seems. He takes it so seriously that, for the most part, he’s stashed the wacky ’stache that endeared him to his 17,000-plus Instagram followers for years. The “Mr. Moto” character, wildly colorful and over-the-top funny as he is, has served its purpose.
Mr. Moto, the pizzeria, has evolved into something else entirely.
Yes, the marketing tone is still lighthearted, and that mustache still features prominently in the caricature-style logo on every pizza box. But Fernandez has bigger and better things in mind for Mr. Moto Pizza, which is poised for rapid growth in the coming months. As its founder and driving force, he might be known for delivering pizza in his jammies and a bathrobe (for Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day in 2024) and the lavishly produced “Mr. Moto Pizza Holiday Musical” (which promoted online ordering with a polished song-and-dance number). But the real creativity happens in the kitchen. And that’s where he’d rather be, anyway.
After all, Fernandez has developed an artisanal menu that was inspired by the best pizzerias in New York while holding true to his West Coast roots and passion for experimentation. He’s proud of his food. And he has the growth mindset of a business major—that’s his college degree—who won’t slow down until he has conquered his corner of the vast, sprawling West.
(Editor’s note: Mr. Moto Pizza was one of PMQ’s “Pizza Brands to Watch” in 2025. Download the Free Report Here.)
Stopping the Scroll
PMQ Pizza caught up with Mr. Moto Pizza during a transition period for the brand. The company first earned our attention in early 2024 with its imaginative Reels and TikTok videos: sci-fi adventures like “Pizza Hunter,” featuring a leather-clad, gun-toting heroine who rescues the hapless Mr. Moto from interstellar baddies, or a catering promo that brings together a band of ravenous Vikings for a pizza feast.
More recently, Fernandez has dialed back the silliness, linking directly to customers’ taste buds rather than poking their funny bones. Instead of dancing a merry Christmas jig in a bow tie and beret, he’s more often seen these days guiding fans through the pizza making process—weighing the shredded cheese, counting out the whole-milk mozz slices (exactly 15), crisping up wings in the oven, measuring dough temperature, and showing off his sauce with juicy tomato chunks spread to every pie’s edges.
“I wanted to make it less gimmicky,” Fernandez says. “I’m seeing other pizzerias do what they’re doing, I see the following that they have, and I think I need to focus on our food. I can still be Mr. Moto, but I don’t think I need to be [fighting battles] on spaceships and coming up with characters like Bad Pizza George, or having people throw food at me and eating it like a dog. I think it’s hilarious, and it’s different, but I don’t think it’s really going to impact my sales or bring more people in. I needed to redirect the focus onto something more tangible than just me, you know, being a funny dude.”
When Fernandez launched Mr. Moto Pizza in 2015, he’d already banked five years of experience working at a pizza shop owned by his uncle. Fernandez had big dreams for that restaurant—bigger than his uncle’s—so when the opportunity to purchase and rebrand an existing New York-style pizzeria in Pacific Beach came along, he jumped on it.
“I never thought I was going to be in the pizza business,” he recalls. “It was never a passion of mine. But the more I learned about it, the more I became intrigued about how I could make pizza better every time. It’s funny how that works. It’s become very much a passion now, and I’m very excited, day in and day out, to make it better.”
Fernandez’s mother helped him buy that first store, and both of his parents, along with his brother, pitched in to get it off the ground. Fernandez toured the New York pizza scene and taught himself the style’s particulars. Meanwhile, he set out to build a captivating, uniquely funky brand through his digital channels. For that, he needed a memorable character that would stop the scroll. Hence, the outlandish Mr. Moto was born.
He’s a far cry from your run-of-the-mill pizzeria mascot. “Everybody has that typical Italian character, so I thought, what could be better than the actual owner—me—being Mr. Moto? And, you know, I consider myself humorous at times,” he wryly adds. “So maybe I could play the part. I grew the mustache and the sideburns, put on the golf hat and became Mr. Moto. We started doing big-production videos and very well-thought-out marketing, entertaining people with our content and shining some light on our stores. And we kept doing it for many years, and we’d see more likes and views every time.”
In that respect, Fernandez was ahead of his time, capitalizing on the cinematic potential of social media marketing at a time when most pizzerias were still posting food pics and leaving it at that. But he knew a wild and crazy character could only take the brand so far. Comedy creates buzz, but it’s superior food that keeps guests coming back.
Stuffed Knots and Whatnot
And Mr. Moto Pizza’s food is what Fernandez loves to talk about. His Stuffed Knots, for example, which are more akin to croissants—soft on the inside, crispy on the outside—and create his own twist on standard garlic knots, minus the twisted knots.
He hit upon the idea of stuffing garlic knots with bonus taste and texture nine years ago. One variety features pepperoni and jalapeños, and another boasts spinach and ricotta. He tested them on the menu and scored a hit. “Suddenly, people were ordering and ordering them, and they were loving them. Now it’s probably our most ordered item. Just imagine spinach, ricotta and mozzarella on the inside. The dough is proofed for 48 hours, so it’s soft as a pillow. You wrap them up and bake them to perfection. We flip them to the side so they’re evenly cooked. Then we sauce them with a mix of extra-virgin olive oil, parsley, garlic and rosemary. On top of that, we’ve got a housemade ranch that’s a home run, too. Put them together, and it’s just a blast of flavor.”
Related: Think You Know Your Dough? Take the PMQ Pizza Dough Quiz and Prove It!
The same can be said for the 11 specialty pies on the menu, including white pizzas like the Mamma Moto (burrata, truffle oil, parsley and cherry tomatoes), plus red pies like the Mission Blvd. (spinach, roasted tomatoes, garlic, artichokes and caramelized onions) and the Rocky Mountains (meatballs, ricotta, spicy honey and chili oil).
Another top seller is the Piece of Art, Fernandez says. “It’s like a more innovative or modern way of doing slices,” he notes. “We garnish them after they’re reheated. It has pepperoni, then we top it off with burrata. We put on shaved Parmesan and basil, and, at the end, we’ll add a drizzle of spicy honey. It’s very fresh, lots of flavors—you get the salty taste from the pepperoni, a little sweet heat from the spicy honey, and the creaminess from the burrata. Then it starts to melt with the heat of the cheese on the bottom, and it’s something that’s more out-there, more unique. And that’s what Mr. Moto is always trying to do.”
Always Quirky, Never Cookie-Cutter
Fernandez is always trying to expand Mr. Moto’s footprint, too, although that’s becoming more of a challenge lately. He planned to open four new stores this year—two in Irvine, one in Orange and one in Costa Mesa—but red tape has slowed him down. He also plans to open another location in San Diego soon.
Every store is company-owned, he points out. “I had two franchisees, and I did not like the experience with them. So, moving forward, I’ve just decided to grow internally so I can have more control.”
Above all, Mr. Moto Pizza must never feel like a corporate brand, Fernandez adds. Every current location has its own personality, aside from the brand’s core elements. Always quirky, yes, but never cookie-cutter. He hates cookie-cutter. “When people think [Mr. Moto is a franchise company]—which some already do, unfortunately, because they know we have so many locations—it sucks and hurts your credibility.”
Mr. Moto started as a neighborhood pizzeria, and a neighborhood pizzeria brand it shall remain, no matter how many neighborhoods Fernandez moves into. “The signs, our pizza displays, and our menus are always going to look the same. There has got to be some structure. But can I play with different tile colors? Yes. Can I play with the furniture a little bit? Yes, why not? Can I play with [artwork for] the dining room walls? Yeah, it keeps my creative juices flowing—as long as it fits that Mr. Moto feel and the experience that I want to maintain.”
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At the same time, ensuring consistency in the food’s quality from store to store is a must. Every station in every kitchen has printed guidelines for weighing and portioning key ingredients like dough, cheese and sauce. “It’s either by weight or it’s a count,” he says. “For example, the fresh mozzarella is a count—10 or 15, depending on the pizza size. There’s also a garnishing guide that explains exactly how many lines of honey drizzles we need, how many basil leaves per slice, how much marinara, and whether it’s a half scoop or a full scoop of burrata. We make sure that the delivery of our product is always on point.”
Assuming all goes according to plan and permits finally get approved, Mr. Moto will soon boast 11 stores in Southern California—nearly doubling its footprint in a few months. And Fernandez is just getting warmed up.
“I do eventually want to retire,” he says, “and I do want to build it out to sell. As a realistic goal, if I can get 20 more locations in the next 15 years—which I think is possible—I think I’d be ready to sell at that point.”
Until then, Mr. Moto Pizza will remain, at its core, a Fernandez family affair. “It’s a 100% family business, but the dynamic has definitely changed,” he says with a grin. “When we first opened, both my mom and dad were more involved in the sense that they would help me out in the operations. My dad would help me wash the dishes, and my mom would make the salads. But now they’re both in the dining room, just talking to people and having some beers…playing the part of Mama Moto and Papa Moto.”
SIDEBAR
Pizza Dough: Give It a Rest!
It’s no secret that longer ferment times will take your dough to a higher level—if you’ve got the patience to wait. But Gibran Fernandez, owner/founder of Mr. Moto Pizza, also swears by another trick of the trade. “We’re concentrating on leaving our dough outside of the walk-in fridge for longer periods of time before we stretch it,” he says. “It proofs longer and gets fluffy. So, when we’re stretching it, the dough is screaming at us, telling us to stretch it. It’s ready to go. A longer rest period makes a big difference in the flavors, the crunch, how the borders rise.”
But that extra proofing also makes the dough trickier to handle, he notes. It stretches more quickly and can thin out in the center before you know it. The kitchen team has to pull smaller batches more often to keep it from overproofing. “It’s complicating [the process] and adding a little more hardship,” Fernandez admits. “You don’t have a lot of margin for error. But we’re taking that step to, again, elevate our product.”
