Prince Street Pizza loads up each Spicy Spring with thick-cut pepperoni.
When Lawrence Longo partnered with Prince Street Pizza to do a Los Angeles pop-up for National Pizza Day in February 2019, he had no idea that it would change his life. He obviously understood that the New York pizzeria’s Spicy Spring – thick pepperoni cups and fra diavolo sauce on a Sicilian square – was popular. But what he saw at Prince Street Pizza’s West Hollywood pop-up was astonishing.
“It was insanity,” Longo says. “I’ve never seen a line so long because I wasn’t around when the first Star Wars movie came out.”
He immediately realized that Prince Street Pizza was a business that could thrive in Los Angeles. So he made a deal to open a permanent hip-to-be-square West Hollywood location in 2020.
Before Longo expanded the brand, Prince Street Pizza only had one location, in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood. Last month, on February 15, Longo opened Prince Street Pizza in Pasadena. With Longo leading the charge, Prince Street Pizza now has 11 locations. And there are extensive expansion plans beyond that, including a forthcoming pizzeria in Costa Mesa.
In Southern California, you can now eat Spicy Springs and sweet-marinara Sunset Squares and spicy-vodka Naughty Pies in Downtown LA, Studio City, Venice, Malibu and San Diego. There’s also a location of Prince Street Pizza at the new Durango casino in Las Vegas. Longo has opened Prince Street Pizza in Miami as well.
He’s also thinking a lot about international expansion. He’s already debuted Prince Street Pizza in Toronto. He’s looking at Korea and London. He’s had people from Dubai come by.
Irv's Burgers just opened in Newport Beach.
Longo isn’t limiting himself to pizza. In 2022, he teamed up with Irv’s Burgers owner Sonia Hong to resurrect the iconic burger stand at a new West Hollywood location. Irv’s, which dates back to 1946, had been closed for four years.
Longo wanted to celebrate the idea of mom-and-pop burger stands. He brought in formidable chef Armen Piskoulian to dial in the menu, but the ethos of Irv’s didn’t change.
“The essence of a burger stand in California was that fresh meat, that fresh produce,” Longo says. “I like the idea of options. All these other burger spots are, ‘This is the way we do it. This is the only way we do it.’ I want it to be like, ‘No, let’s go back to a burger stand where I can order different things and make the burger I want.’ Irv’s makes the just-for-you burger. That was the real element.”
Longo now runs five locations of Irv’s Burgers. He just had the grand opening party for Irv’s Burgers at Newport Beach’s Balboa Fun Zone on Thursday. You can also get a just-for-you burger at Irv’s on La Brea, in Malibu and at Durango in Las Vegas.
“Premium fast food, that’s what I do,” Longo says.
What does he look for in quick-service brands that could expand?
“I have to love it, and it’s got to have a craveable element to it,” he says.
Prince Street Pizza knows its audience in Pasadena.
Then he takes an existing formula, shores up the infrastructure behind it and uses his expertise in brand-building to do things like a collaborative pizza with legendary rock band Kiss that celebrated the band’s final show at Madison Square Garden.
“Our culture right now is collaborations,” Longo says. “We created a Kiss pizza box, and the Kiss army is real. Those boxes went like hotcakes.”
Inside each box, some of which are now listed on eBay, was an extra-spicy Spicy Spring with Calabrian chilies.
‘I believe in tapping into new markets,” says Longo, who adds that the Kiss collaboration proves that something not normally associated with hypebeast culture can go viral if you do it the right way. “If Martha Stewart asked me to do a collaboration, I would do that because she has her own market. Everyone eats pizza. I can fit into every audience, right?”
For Prince Street Pizza’s West Hollywood opening, Longo partnered with streetwear creator MadHappy.
“We did a line of T-shirts and sweatshirts, and they've got a huge hypebeast crowd,” Longo says. “All of a sudden we’re getting written up on Complex and not just in food media. So there’s now two different audiences that are seeing Prince Street Pizza. The best thing about the collabs is marrying audiences.”
At the Balboa Fun Zone in Newport Beach, you can play video games and get a just-for-you burger.
One successful collaboration at Irv’s was The Menu burger.
“The best thing about the movie was this burger at the end,” Longo says "This chef made all these insane foods that nobody could understand or relate to. But the thing that gave him the most love was the burger. It was a simple double cheese, double meat, grilled onions on a sesame soft bun. So we collabed with the movie and we launched that burger with the exact ingredients from the movie.”
Longo previously learned a lot about marketing when he created his Off the Menu app and worked with restaurants to put together members-only dishes and exclusive experiences. (The Prince Street pop-up was an Off the Menu event.) But marketing doesn’t matter if the food isn’t delicious. So for Longo, of course, it starts with finding something he wants to eat again and again.
“For Prince Street, I really think it’s the components of all of its parts, the crust, the sauce, the cheese,” he says. “We care about all of it. We try to use the best ingredients. We make everything in-house. And for Irv’s, it was the story of the burger stand and my love for burgers. I saw that burger stands were dying. Irv’s never should have died.”
Longo, a true burger lover who ate a burger every single day of 2018, is in discussions to open another Irv’s in Las Vegas. This one will be on the Strip.
Lawrence Longo is focused on "premium fast food."
“I really want to focus on honing the operations and make sure it’s run properly, " he says. “But when opportunities come, I’m there. As you open up more and as you do better, more opportunities come. I plan on really tapping into the Nevada market next and will continue opening in Southern California. I’m going to open one in Pacific Beach. And then I've got a couple other opportunities in Pasadena.”
He’s also optimistic about expansion beyond the West Coast.
“I want Irv’s to be the scaled version of the mom-and-pop burger stand in America,” he says.
Meanwhile, he’s looking at Arizona and Texas for Prince Street Pizza, which might grow to 15 locations this year. And he says he might not be done until there’s a line for a Spicy Spring in every major city in America.
“Wherever there's a baseball team, we could have a Prince Street,” he says. “And in New York, LA and some other markets, I think we could have more.”
