Pizza time: New locations for Snap Custom Pizza; &pizza gears up for Center City
Peace A Pizza retrofitting its Rosemont shop as it opens in Newark, Del. And Center City Philadelphia will get a D.C. import.
A few updates in the pizza realm:
Peace A Pizza has wrapped up its 18-year run in Rosemont as owner Pete Howey and crew are retooling that location into a Snap Custom Pizza. It is expected to be open around Thanksgiving. (Hope's Cookies next door is unaffected by any of this.)
Snap, meanwhile, just opened its fourth location - at 44 E. Main St. in Newark, Del. (302-737-6766), also a former Peace A Pizza, near the University of Delaware.
Snap's thing is design-your-own-pie-for-one-price, which extends to salads. (When the idea is floated as "make your own pizza," the Seinfeld wisecracks come out. Unlike Kramer's idea, though, Snap employees do the work. Sigh. Now cue the Poppie's jokes...)
Also new in that realm is Blaze Fast-Fire'd Pizza, which is a few weeks from opening at 3400 Lancaster Ave., near Drexel University. There's a Blaze already at 11th and Montgomery, near Temple University.
Meanwhile, the D.C.-based chain &pizza is setting up pretty much around the corner from the Center City Snap location. &pizza will open Thursday, Oct. 13 on 15th Street south of Walnut Street, in a space beneath the Cheesecake Factory and across the alley from the Applebee's.
The shtick at &pizza is customizable pizza, house-made sodas, and ampersand-tattooed staff. It will give away pies to the first 215 guests in line on opening day - 215, as in area code.
The first five guests to request the signature ampersand tattoo will receive their tattoo, gratis, and free pizza for a year.
On Friday, Oct. 14 and Saturday, Oct. 15, &pizza will do its Buy One, Give One campaign. For every pizza sold on these days, customers will be able to donate a pizza to the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program or the Attic Youth Center.