By Charlie Pogacar
When Mike Burns took over as CEO of &pizza in late 2023, he saw a fast-casual pizza chain that wasn’t living up to its full potential. Burns and his team spent a little over a year getting the Washington D.C.-based pizza chain’s operations in order prior to announcing, in March 2025, that it would begin franchising for the first time.
If those were deliberate, telegraphed moves, you could say &pizza’s latest bold move came out of left field. On Thursday morning, the company announced it’s acquiring the 95-location Tijuana Flats, a Tex-Mex fast casual chain, and forming Latitude Food Group, a new holding company that will oversee both concepts. Burns will serve as CEO of Latitude, which he says will allow &pizza to scale with “rocket fuel.”
“We’ve been kicking the tires on something like this for a while,” Burns told PMQ Pizza. “Both brands were probably underserved from a people standpoint. Now we’ve got the shared services in place—HR, finance, supply chain, IT, marketing—and both can grow unbelievably fast.”
Related: 350 Locations by 2030: After Recapturing Its Edgy Vibe, &pizza Set to Begin Franchising
Founded in 2012 by Michael Lastoria, &pizza has always thrived on its countercultural personality: a mission-driven ethos, an employee-first model and a visual identity that feels more record label than restaurant chain. Its pizza—oblong, customizable and fired in seconds—helped popularize the fast-casual pizza wave in the Mid-Atlantic.
But in 2025, &pizza began writing its next chapter. After the franchising announcement in March, &pizza signed its first franchisee in June and then announced four more franchise agreements in October, with new locations coming in Orlando, Atlanta, Charleston and Raleigh. Burns has said the goal is to reach 300 &pizza locations by 2030.
That franchising journey is now intertwined with Latitude Food Group. On paper, buying a Tex-Mex brand might seem like a distraction. But Burns said the acquisition gives &pizza the kind of scale and sophistication most emerging brands can’t afford on their own. Shared systems for technology, purchasing and marketing will free &pizza’s team to focus on what it does best: brand storytelling, product innovation and culture.
“It allows &pizza to have more support than it’s ever had,” he said. “They had three finance people—now they have nine. Marketing will have more juice. We can conserve cash and spend it on restaurants.”
The deal also gives &pizza a second home base outside of Orlando, where Tijuana Flats is headquartered. That’s timely, since the pizza brand is preparing to enter the state with its first franchise locations. The Orlando presence, Burns said, instantly gives &pizza a stronger operational footprint in the Southeast.
And the two brands aren’t as mismatched as they might seem. Each was built on bold design, social media personality and irreverent tone. Both lean into flavor and individuality rather than discounting and conformity. And—coincidentally—both brands had lost their way prior to being taken over by Burns and his team.
“[Tijuana Flats] is a brand that had huge legs, not too dissimilar from &pizza,” Burns said. “It’s quirky, it’s fun, it had this bold voice. At some point, they stopped leaning into that. Now we can turn that back on.”
The new holding company’s name—Latitude Food Group—was no accident. Burns noted that the word attitude sits inside latitude, and the initials, LFG, stand for a familiar rallying cry: Let’s [redacted] go.*
“That’s our mantra,” he said. “We’re going to move really, really fast.”
Latitude will serve as the growth engine for both &pizza and Tijuana Flats, and eventually, Burns hopes, more regional brands with strong local followings. He cites multi-brand players like Savory Fund, Kahala Brands and Craveworthy Brands as models for what Latitude could become—a house of purpose-driven, culture-forward restaurant concepts that share resources but keep their individuality.
For &pizza, the deal is a sign that its ambitions extend well beyond being a beloved East Coast brand. It’s about becoming a national force built on creative marketing, community ethos and operational rigor.
“We’re not slowing down,” Burns said. “This is the most pivotal move for us yet. We’ve got to get this one right—but when we do, it’s going to unlock everything that comes next.”
