By Charlie Pogacar
Decades ago, Tony Gemignani received a prophecy of sorts that seemed hard to believe. Gemignani had been putting in years of work at his brother’s pizzeria and had dreams of opening his own. A rep with one of the shop’s vendors told him about a client who owned multiple pizzerias and made a lot of money but was constantly busy.
“And he said, ‘One day, kid, you’re going to wish you just had one [shop],” Gemignani recalled. “And I didn’t even have one [shop] at this point. I was like, I can’t wait to get one. And then, when I did have one, I couldn’t wait to get two. And now, once in a while, there are days when you think, yeah…it would be nice to just have one.”
Of course, this is not how Gemignani rolls. The accomplished pizzaiolo and businessman has gone on to open the critically acclaimed Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, one of the highest rated pizza restaurants in the world. He’s opened multiple locations of Pizza Rock, known for its diverse menu consisting of multiple unique pizza styles. His successful shop, Capo’s, specializes in Chicago-style pizza—including both thin, cracker-crust and deep-dish pizzas. Lately, Gemignani has been growing his slice-shop concept, Slice House, into a national franchise brand.
Related: Inside Tony Gemignani’s Dive Into the World of Pizzeria Franchising
But there’s a message here: Gemignani wants others in the pizza business to understand that it wasn’t always this way. Before he became perhaps the most successful independent pizzeria operator in the country, he, too, had dreams that felt impossible. He had a vision that nobody took seriously. If somebody time-traveled 30 years into the past and told Gemignani where he’d be in 2025—at the age of 52—he would have been “blown away,” he said on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast.
“I think we all dream a lot,” Gemignani said. “People look at me now, and they say—and I’ve said this on podcasts before—they think that I’ve always had this. No. I was this guy that worked for 17 years for my brother and didn’t go to college…I wanted to open a place of my own, but I had no business plan. I didn’t have an attorney at the time…and then I went from one store to two stores, and things started to evolve.”
Gemignani credits a lot of his success to the business partners he’s made along the way, including George Karpaty, Trevor Hewitt and Bill Ginsburg. But he also points out that his own sweat equity drove his profile—and respective businesses—forward. Beyond the hours he put in at the pizza oven, he also grew his fame by competing in events across the world and winning 13 different pizza championships.
“I was around a lot,” Gemignani said, detailing the videotapes he sent around the country to various news outlets and potential investors, loaded with clips of his performances in competitive events. “I was around operators that wanted to learn, wanted to be better, and I wanted to be better and to make my pizza better.”
This aspect of the business has changed, Gemignani observed, with social media giving modern pizzaioli a fast track to name recognition. “Coming from that time to seeing what it is now, somebody can become an overnight success very fast,” Gemignani said. “But, for me, I was very [much from the] school of hard knocks.”
One of the early hurdles Gemignani had to overcome was with his own family. His brother and dad encouraged him to stay the course in the family business and to stop worrying about when he’d get his own shop. To other aspiring pizzeria operators, he offers encouraging words about ignoring external and internal pressure and staying focused on your long-term goals.
“When you’re an independent [man] or woman in the industry who wants to do something, I think it can be very challenging,” Gemignani said. “Sometimes you don’t have the confidence when people don’t understand [your own vision]. I call it the ‘whys’ and the ‘whats’: ‘Why do you want to do that? What do you want to do that for?’ I think encouragement is important, and when I teach my students, I say, hey, do what you want to do. Here are some other options.”
Gemignani offered one more piece of advice: You have to learn how to lose. When people look at him, he said, they often see the successes, but they don’t always see all of the ups and downs he endured along the way, including when he had to shutter his original Pizza Rock location in Sacramento during the pandemic.
“People say, ‘Oh, he’s a 13-time champion,’” Gemignani said. “I’m like, yeah, do you know how many times I competed? They don’t see the losses, and I don’t advertise all of the [other stuff] I deal with every day…I try to be positive, but there’s always things going on in my life that suck, just like everybody else. But people think, ‘Everything is just dandy with him.’”
All that said, when Gemignani looks back at his career so far, it doesn’t sound like there’s much he would change. He didn’t skip steps to becoming successful, and this has made him a more well-rounded operator. Again, it goes back to the idea that losing is a lot harder than winning—but you have to deal with the losses in order to eventually win.
“It’s not like I’m saying I want to get rid of [the success],” Gemignani said. “There are days that you’re like man, this is great, everything’s rolling, everything is good. But once in a while you just say, you know, man, life went fast. I think it’s always challenging, but you push yourself [through the hard times].”
Charlie Pogacar is PMQ’s senior editor.
