Pizza For The People

Fast-casual chain &Pizza wants to become the most progressive fast-food employer in the U.S.

- Elizabeth Dunn

Michael Lastoria, chief executive officer of &Pizza, a Washington, D.C.-based chain with 36 locations up and down the East Coast, is tall, slim, and serene, with a full beard and brown hair that falls past his shoulders. When I meet him, on a warm spring day inside an &Pizza location in Manhattan’s NoMad district, he’s wearing a black silk shirt, a black cape, cropped black pants with long black socks, and a pair of black Wu Wear Wallabee boots: what Jesus might look like if he walked in a Yohji Yamamoto show.

Lastoria, 39, committed to an all-black wardrobe around the time the first &Pizza store opened, seven years ago (the name is pronounced “and pizza”—the ampersand chosen, Lastoria says, to convey values of unity and inclusivity). The uniforms at &Pizza stores are black, and black is the dress code for corporate staffers, too, meaning anyone can jump behind the counter. “It’s about making sure we’re not losing that connection to employees in pizza shops,” he says. Around us, the restaurant is mobbed by a Generation Z crowd, hunched over pies topped with spicy chickpeas or arugula while songs by Grimes and Drake boom over the sound system. From time to time, a customer holds a phone aloft, capturing the moment when they lift the lid of an eye-catching black-and-white rectangular pizza box to reveal their just-baked, personalized creation.