Lawrence Longo describes himself as a “just a hustler” before he bought into and began to build Prince St. Pizza.
He was a “failed TV and movie producer” living in Los Angeles in the 20-teens, he said. He had launched an app called Off the Menu spotlighting secret restaurant menu items. That lead to the creation of food festivals, like the Burger Showdown with Uber Eats, pairing burgers with celebrities like Paris Hilton and Matthew McConaughey; and Tender Fest, where attendees paid $100 to compare chicken tenders across all the chicken tender brands.
One day New York Ranger Sean Avery told Longo to check out Prince Street Pizza in New York, a (primarily) by-the-slice concept launched in 2012 by father-and-son Frank and Dominic Morano.
Prince St. served a square Sicilian-style pie with spicy pepperoni in every bite and sauces made in-house. They believed if sauce was good enough for pasta, it was good enough for pizza. A top seller is the Spicy Spring, with fra diavolo sauce and heavy with pepperoni. The pepperoni-per-bite is astonishingly high.
When Longo did try Prince St., he said, “It was a punch-me-in-the-face kind of [experience], like holy crap. It was like nothing I’d ever tried before.”
Longo got a menu item from Prince St. on his app and built a friendship with Dom Morano, later convincing the family to do a pop-up in Los Angeles.
For three days, people lined up for hours in pouring rain for a slice. “We caused two car accidents,” said Longo (though that’s not hard when it rains in LA).
It was a sign, Longo said, that the brand would do well there. So he convinced Frank Morano to let him open a Prince St. in Los Angeles, in partnership with the family.
“I didn’t have a lot of restaurant experience, but I think he saw I had a good soul and I was hungry, and that I wouldn’t let him down,” he said. (His Calabrian roots didn’t hurt, he noted.)
Cut to today.
Longo is now the majority owner of Prince St., which has 18 locations in New York, California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Florida and Canada. Six more are expected to open this year, including new markets like Nashville, Charleston, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
All existing units are company-owned in partnership with local operators, and the brand boasts celebrity investors, like the actor and entrepreneur Shay Mitchell (“Pretty Little Liars,” “Baywatch”) and actor Nick Turturro (“NYPD Blue,” “The Longest Yard”). Prince St. even created a YouTube series called “Delivering Happiness” in which Turturro delivers pizzas to various celebrities.
Perhaps most significantly, however, is Longo’s strategic partnership with another guy named Lawrence.
Lawrence Kourie was a founding franchisee of Dave’s Hot Chicken and is now the brand's largest franchisee, with 35 units across the country and rights to up to 100.
Dave’s Hot Chicken, of course, has been one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains for several years, and last year was acquired by Roark Capital in a deal valued at $1 billion. That brand went from parking lot pop-up to 10-digit valuation in only eight years.
So what Longo might lack in knowing how to bring Prince St. to its next phase of growth, Kourie brings to the table.
“I know how to grow these brands in multiple states and keep consistency of product,” said Kourie. “Everything we do is best-in-class practices.”
In fact, the two Lawrences are emphatic in their praise for each other.
They’ve been friends for about six years after Kourie slipped into Longo’s DMs, saying he loved the pizza. At the time, Kourie had just opened his first Dave’s location. Since then, he became somewhat of a mentor to Longo.
Later, when money was being raised for growth, Kourie became an investor and full-on partner.
Longo has “created the best culture I’ve seen in the pizza business,” Kourie said. “He treats everyone with utmost respect, starting with his employees. It’s a people-first company.”
Of Kourie, Longo said, “I like to work with people who are smarter than me, so I can learn.”
But Prince St. Pizza and Dave’s Hot Chicken are very different brands.
One big difference is the role of franchising.
The nearly 400-unit Dave’s is an almost all-franchised brand. Its growth was propelled by a deep bench of experienced franchisees after an early investment by Bill Phelps, of Wetzel’s Pretzels and Blaze Pizza fame.
Prince St., on the other hand, is not franchising, the two Lawrences say.
At least not yet.
Longo said the company is setting up franchising disclosure documents, but all of the existing units are partnerships.
“I really don’t want the narrative to be that Prince St. Pizza is franchising,” Longo said. “I’m not going to have 100 different partners. I hope to have one or two.”
And there’s no private-equity funding, he noted.
“I feel like that could be the downfall of my business,” Longo said.
The pizza space more broadly has been challenged since the pandemic. Pizza once dominated delivery, but now just about anything can be delivered, which has hurt national pizza chains, like Pizza Hut and Papa Johns.
Prince St., meanwhile, is averaging $2 million in annual sales in its slowest stores, with top units hitting $8 million, Longo said. Prince St. locations range between 1,500- to 3,000-square feet, and the ratio of off- to on-premise varies by location.
Though whole pies can seem expensive at around $40, slices range in price from about $5 to $7. The slices are dense and filling.
“Go to McDonald’s and see if you can get out of McDonald’s paying that,” said Longo.
Prince St. Pizza interior in Dallas. | Photo courtesy of Prince St. Pizza
Kourie said Prince St.’s expansion will be “smart and disciplined.”
Other pizza chains have cannibalized themselves (and each other), but Prince St.—like Dave’s Hot Chicken—will be more selective about choosing the right opportunities at the right time, he said.
“Our goal is to be the best pizzeria in America,” said Longo.
“In the world,” corrects Kourie.