By Charlie Pogacar

As one of the original New Haven-style pizza brands, Sally’s Apizza is well-known throughout the country. But up until December, when Sally’s opened a location in Woburn, Massachusetts, the brand never held a location outside of Connecticut. It was a big step for Sally’s Apizza—and also just the beginning of the brand’s expansion plan.

“We’re excited to spread the word of Sally’s Apizza,” said Ted Zizlsperger, chief operating officer of Sally’s Apizza, a role he’s held since August 2020. Zizlsperger is a longtime vet of the Union Square Hospitality Group who fell in love with the Sally’s brand and leapt at the opportunity to help build something even more special. “We want to bring the New Haven pizza market out to the world.”

Many pizza enthusiasts already know the story: Sally’s Apizza was started in 1938 on Wooster Street when Filomena Consiglio, sister of Frank Pepe, bought the building that Sally’s still resides in to this day. She tasked her son, Sal Consiglio, with running the pizzeria—something he did for over 50 years.

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In 2017, Sal’s two sons, Bobby and Ricky, sold the company. Ricky still works on the Sally’s Apizza team—you can often find him at the Wooster Street location chatting up customers—and has been an invaluable resource for Zizlsperger and others as they have begun to open additional restaurants. Sally’s opened a restaurant in Stamford, Connecticut, in 2021. The brand then added a location in nearby Fairfield, Connecticut, in 2022 prior to the fourth location in Woburn opening in late 2023. There are at least five more locations throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts that are coming soon.

The challenge for Sally’s Apizza is to replicate the magic of its 86-year-old restaurant on Wooster Street. That’s something Zizlsperger and his team take very seriously: They want each store to have the same vibe, while also feeling welcoming to the local population. The store in Woburn is a great example, where you’ll find old pictures of Sally’s lore plastered on the walls alongside photos of actors and artists who grew up in the Boston area.

“We had some great partners that helped us figure out how to take the essence of our Wooster Street location—that design and aesthetic—and capture it in our other restaurants,” Zizlsperger said. Chief among those considerations was recreating Sally’s famous coal-fired oven, which Zizlsperger said was a “painstaking” and financially intensive process. But it was also a pivotal part of growing the brand in an authentic way.

“That oven is the heart of the brand,” Zizlsperger said. “And each oven we build will be the heart of that location. We did all of that work because we know that, in order to succeed, we need the product coming out of each oven to be as close as possible to what it would be like coming out of the oven on Wooster Street.”

In that same vein, Sally’s Apizza recently named Bret Lunsford executive chef and director of culinary to help ensure the brand’s food is consistently great across locations. Lunsford and Zizlsperger worked together at Union Square Hospitality Group, where Lunsford held a variety of positions across a 10-year period, including executive chef at Blue Smoke, the group’s barbecue concept. While Lunsford hasn’t ever worked at a pizzeria before, his unique experiences—both in life and professionally—have prepared him for this. The chef even has a tattoo on his forearm of an oozing slice of pizza that is a nod to his Italian heritage and his time in New York.

“My mother swears the first food I ever ate was pizza,” Lunsford said. “She says that when I was about six months old, I crawled out of a high chair and grabbed a slice of pizza and started gumming it. I’ve been eating pizza every chance I could get ever since, and when I came out and tried Sally’s for the first time about a year ago, I was hooked at first bite. It was a gamechanging moment for me.”

He was immediately taken by the sauce-forward tradition of Sally’s, calling the relationship between the sauce, the dough and the light “mootz”—or mozzarella—as a “beautiful dance” that encapsulates “Italian food at its core.” While other brands hide behind toppings, Lunsford said, Sally’s lets the ingredients speak for themselves. That’s something he cherishes.

“One of the best things about this job is that a lot of the work is done for me,” Lunsford said. “It’s been doing great apizza since 1938: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I don’t need to tinker with the sauce, the dough—Sally’s is the king of those things. That’s a sacred cow that I’m never touching.”

Instead, Lunsford wants to tap into opportunities in areas like the entrees menu or, potentially, with seasonal pies. He also noted that all of Sally’s new locations have an impressive and fully stocked bar—the beverage menu features craft cocktails—where the original Sally’s only offered wine and beer. The goal of all these changes is to drive repeat visits by giving customers variety.

“Sally’s will always be apizza at heart,” Lunsford said. “But I want us to be so much more than that. The challenge for us is, how do we be creative to have something everyone can be a part of?”

As Sally’s continues to expand, so, too, does another New Haven legend, Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. Both brands are facing that same challenge, the one that’s become an open question it feels like everyone is asking: Is the rest of the country ready for New Haven-style apizza?

“My answer to that is unequivocally yes,” Lunsford said, pointing to the excitement about Sally’s opening in Woburn: Lines wrapped around the block, and it seemed like the only bad reviews the new location saw were from those who couldn’t get a table. “Pizzas are flying out of there,” Lunsford added. “My goal—and my job—is to keep what’s so special about this brand alive.”

“New Haven is one of the styles that’s popping up sporadically,” Zizlsperger added. “But nobody is doing it at scale right now. A rising tide lifts all ships, and we support anyone and everyone who is trying to get New Haven-style out there because it benefits all of us.”