Startup The Pizza Cupcake is a lesson in pandemic adaptability

The upstart: The Pizza Cupcake

On their rst date, Andrea Meggiato and Michelle Jimenez-Meggiato made pizza. ree years later, in 2018, they canceled their honeymoon at the last minute after learning they had been accepted to Smorgasburg—the popular city food market—where they would have a chance to o er their new snack food invention, the pizza cupcake.

Now, the 2-ounce treat, which features pizza toppings on a aky sourdough-brioche base, is sold in the freezer case at more than 1,900 supermarkets across the U.S., including Walmart and Wegmans, and, in the Northeast, Whole Foods Market.

In a world saturated with pizza o erings, Meggiato and Jimenez-Meggiato’s creation stands out, thanks to its adaptability. You can also nd pizza cupcakes in stadiums, at corporate events and in school cafeterias. But it took some doing.

“Michelle and Andrea put in a tremendous amount of work to not only change the core business, but also the formulation and creation of the product itself so as to shift to a scalable e-commerce model,” says Neal Batra, an early-stage investor who helped fund the startup, named e Pizza Cupcake.

e Pizza Cupcake, headquartered in the couple’s Jersey City o ce and operating with just a handful of employees, is a tiny operation. But the founders say they sold an estimated 2.9 million pizza cupcakes in 2022 (at a suggested retail price of $9.99 for a pack of six), and are on track to double sales this year.

The reigning Goliath: General Mills

Minneapolis-based food industry giant General Mills is the maker of Totino’s Pizza Rolls, the leader in the frozen pizza snack category. Totino’s Pizza Rolls come in eight avors, including “triple meat.” Sales approached a reported $800 million in 2021.

How to slay the giant

When they met, Jimenez-Meggiato was running a boutique talent management agency representing social media in uencers. Her husband, who grew up in Italy, worked as a chef and then as chief operating o cer of a luxury jewelry brand. e two started making pizza cupcakes—Meggiato’s invention—in their home kitchen and were soon catering parties for friends and family. ey applied for a Smorgasburg slot in hopes of going big. e Smorgasburg exposure opened doors. In 2019 they were invited to sell their treats at Citi Field and began catering corporate events. ey sold 148,000 pizza cupcakes their rst full year in operation. en the pandemic hit. No more parties, no more stadium events, no more Smorgasburg.

“We just knew that was just where all the foodies went,” Jimenez-Meggiato says. “We felt like if we could make an impact at Smorgasburg, it would give us the visibility, and we could see if we actually had a business.” e treats were a hit at the market. ey sold out the rst day, and folks lined up at the kiosk week after week. e success was due in part to the product’s clever name, Jimenez-Meggiato says. Folks were eager to try a snack that combined their two favorite foods and curious whether it would be sweet or savory.

Meggiato worked at the Smorgasburg stall baking pizza cupcakes while Jimenez-Meggiato manned the register and chatted with customers. “I interacted with every single customer that we sold to and got real-life, real-time feedback on what they liked,” she says. While they initially o ered a half-dozen options, including soppressata and zucchini, for example, they learned to keep things simple and pared down their selection to the margherita and pepperoni options, which accounted for the most sales.

Moving fast, they redeveloped their snack as a frozen item for customers to bake in an oven or air fryer. ey launched online ordering through their website, o ering local delivery to households in the city and shipping to customers throughout the Northeast in boxes lled with dry ice.

“Andrea and I hand-packed everything,” Jimenez-Meggiato says.

At the end of 2020, they gave up their rented commercial kitchen in Queens and outsourced manufacturing to a co-packing plant in Brooklyn. is increased production from less than 400 to more than 6,000 cupcakes per hour. It also reduced the per-piece cost from 95 cents to 48 cents—without the need to raise funds to build a plant of their own. e Pizza Cupcake’s big break came with a February 2021 appearance on Shark Tank (the founders made a deal with Lori Grenier). After the show aired, the couple sold more than $1 million worth of pizza cupcakes online, boosting its cupcake sales count that year to 1.45 million. ere was a problem with selling online, however; it’s expensive to ship a frozen product. Customers were paying $38 for a 12-pack, which limited the appeal. It was time to go retail. anks to their sales data, the founders could approach supermarket buyers with proof that their product was already popular with locals. e Pizza Cupcake launched at Wegmans in the fall of 2021; Walmart began carrying the rm’s product nationwide a year later. e company expects to nearly double its store count this year, and the founders are looking into expanding the product line with new toppings—perhaps moving beyond pizza entirely.

The next challenge e Pizza Cupcake is now returning to its roots in food service, supplying stadium concessions and schools, including 81 private and charter schools in the city. It has developed a new whole grain crust variety to meet National School Lunch Program standards.

Among its food service partners is Butter Beans Kitchen in Long Island City, which provides meals to schools and summer camps throughout the tristate area.

Flora McKay, the company’s director of community and nutrition, says Butter Beans chose e Pizza Cupcake because the high-quality ingredients and portion size align with its own food standards.

“When they are on the menu, there is a tangible buzz in our schools,” she says. “We often hear the students e usively say, ‘Yay, yay—it’s pizza cupcake day!’ ” ■

Anne Kadet is the creator of Café Anne, a weekly newsletter with a New York City focus.