Armed with an untouchable family recipe and masterclass marketing, CEO Lawrence Longo has taken Prince St. Pizza from a local NYC secret to a rapidly expanding North American phenomenon.
Photo: Prince St. Pizza
August 13, 2026 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Connect Media
Prince St. Pizza isn’t just selling premium Sicilian squares; it’s scaling a lifestyle. Since its founding in 2012 as a gritty neighborhood slice shop in New York City, the brand has evolved into a pop-culture juggernaut under CEO Lawrence Longo. From winning a Clio Award for a Disney partnership to an upcoming media deal with TikTok and iHeartMedia, Longo is weaponizing modern marketing to fuel the brand’s North American expansion.
Yet, despite the celebrity hype and rapid growth, the core strategy remains relentlessly simple: protect the recipe, partner only with elite operators and never, ever serve traditional ranch.
Prince St. Pizza in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo: Prince Street PizzaThe origins of a NYC staple
Prince St. Pizza was started in 2012 by father-and-son duo Frank Morano and Dominic Morano, who set out to serve a quality pizza to the neighborhood. Frank Morano was originally in the jewelry business but got fed up with the technicalities of selling jewelry. He’d always wanted his own pizzeria.
Frank Morano was going to buy the original Ray’s Pizza — anyone who’s been to NYC knows there’s a ton of Ray’s Pizza in the city — but the brand was going to charge him an exorbitant amount to use the Ray’s name. Instead, Frank refused and decided to call his pizzeria Prince St. Pizza.
Using old family recipes, such as putting pasta sauces like fra diavolo or vodka sauce on pizza, Frank would stand out on the street handing out slices for free to get customers through the doors. It wasn’t until he introduced a Sicilian square pizza with thick-cut pepperoni — the kind that hadn’t been popularized yet in pizza culture — making sure each bite had a pepperoni slice, that the brand truly took off.
That pizza is known as the Spicy Spring Pizza, which Longo said looks good from every angle. “It’s the Brad Pitt of pizza, you know?” he said in a phone interview with Pizza Marketplace. “Even when it’s messy, it still looks good.”
So good, in fact, that the pizza brings in some familiar names like Steven Tyler, Kim Kardashian, Ice-T and more.
Going west: The pop-up that changed everything
Prince St. Pizza has expanded from its original namesake spot to 20 locations across the U.S. and Canada. It’s now under the umbrella of Best Buddy Hospitality with Longo at the helm. Longo met Dominic Morano through a mutual friend who happened to be a hockey player. Longo had been operating an app circa 2015, and three years later he asked the Moranos to come to Los Angeles to set up a pop-up pizzeria for National Pizza Day.
“That kind of changed the trajectory of our business, where we went from this New York-known institution to almost becoming nationally known,” Longo said. “There were lines for three hours. It looked like the opening of Star Wars. It ran four blocks down Sunset Boulevard. There were two car crashes in front of the pizzeria because people were just looking like, ‘What the heck is going on?'”
The pop-up served just two pizzas: the Spicy Spring and a cheese. Longo said performer Childish Gambino waited in the rain for a slice, as did actor Elijah Wood.
The next week, Longo flew to New York City to talk to the Moranos about opening in L.A., and a second store was born. The brand officially opened in Los Angeles in November 2020.
“There were lineups for this pizza in two zip codes,” Longo said. “It went from West Hollywood all the way to Beverly Hills.”
Longo convinced the Moranos to let him continue to open Prince St. Pizza locations in California, and eventually in Toronto, which is where Longo was born and raised.
Photo: Prince St. PizzaCulture and collaborations
Over the years, Prince St. Pizza has done many collaborations with celebrities, including Machine Gun Kelly and Dana White of the UFC.
Its marketing is a big component of its success. The brand won a Clio Award, an international prize given for creative excellence in advertising, design, and communication. You might have heard about it in the news: Prince St. Pizza collaborated with Disney to recreate “Little Nero’s Pizza” and the lovely cheese pizza that Kevin McCallister — played by a young Macaulay Culkin — ate in the limousine in the film Home Alone 2. The brand actually turned its Studio City location in California into a real-life Little Nero’s.
The brand’s pizza boxes are works of art as well, and Longo and his team have created a YouTube series called “Delivering Happiness” starring actor Nick Turturro. Turturro serves as a pizza delivery driver and delivers pizza to the stars.
The secret ingredient: New York water?
Pizza purists argue pizzaiolos can’t replicate New York pizza outside of New York City without the water the city is so famous for. How does Longo ensure that a slice tastes the same in Los Angeles as it does in Las Vegas?
The brand utilizes a company called New York Watermaker.
“Basically, every time I sign a lease, I send a bottle of water to the New York Watermaker,” Longo explained. “They test the water, and they send me filters that help me turn whatever water that city I’m in into New York water. So, one of the things that I was told when I opened up in L.A. from the founder was, ‘You have to use the water.’ Because even though you and I might say it’s a myth, there are still hardcore New Yorkers that believe it’s not a myth. And my partner is one of them.
“I said to him, ‘Well, I’ll figure out a way.’ I was thinking, ‘How am I going to ship water? That’s going to be way too expensive.’ And lo and behold, there’s this company that created a system to be able to turn any water around the world into New York water.”
Longo is also a proponent of keeping the menu simple and doing a few things exceptionally well. Resisting the urge to over complicate the menu, he does like to tap into local markets, such as adding a Chicago-style pizza with giardiniera and sausage in Chicago.
And ranch on pizza? That’s where Longo draws a line in the sand. He recognizes people like dipping sauces, and he doesn’t want to alienate potential guests by not serving them. The result? Not Ranch, a product that’s a little less ranch-y and a little more aioli.
Protecting the soul of the brand
Part of Prince St.’s magic is the feeling of stepping into a gritty, authentic New York slice shop. As Prince St. Pizza scales to 20 locations and counting, preserving that specific emotional connection and soul is important so it doesn’t feel like a sterilized corporate chain.
“If you go into Prince St. Pizza New York, it isn’t well-designed, but it’s charming as hell,” Longo said. Although they could probably afford better flooring, they like to use penny white tile and try to recreate the same hundred-year-old ceiling found in the original Prince St. location.
Choosing good locations and replicating that New York environment is a tough challenge, but Longo said it’s one they happily take on if it means expanding. What’s the methodology for selecting new cities for a Prince St. Pizza?
Longo said he’s still trying to figure that out in all honesty, but his logic is that he’d like to open up in cities with two sports teams and an Apple Store. The reasoning? You find Apple Stores in affluent neighborhoods, and Prince St. Pizza is a premium product. And sports teams? There’s proven density.
In Nashville, where the brand recently opened a pizzeria, Longo said he’s still hearing locals thank him for opening, as there aren’t a lot of premium pizza products in the region.
As a high-profile brand that frequently goes viral, Prince St. Pizza has its fair share of critics and copycats. It’s hard not to take it personally when he hears people hating on the brand.
“But I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older not to focus on your competition, focus on you,” Longo said. “Focus on being the best you can be, and everything else will fall into place.”
About Mandy Wolf Detwiler
Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the Pizzamarketplace.com and QSRweb.com editor for Connect Media. An award-winning journalist, Mandy brings more than 20 years’ experience covering food, people and places. Mandy has been featured on the Food Network and has won numerous awards for her coverage of the restaurant industry. She has an insatiable appetite for learning, and, yes, she can tell you where to find the best pizza slices in the country.
