SF Pizza, Bagel & Beer Festival Returns; Tony’s Debuts At SFO

by Joe Bonadio

With no question, the West Coast pizza game has truly arrived. As a self-identifying foodie and longtime pizza lover, it has been amazing to see the change in California pizza culture over the past three decades. It might be difficult for some to imagine, but when I first arrived in 1997, the SF pizza scene was barely on life support. North Beach Pizza won Best Of The Bay every year like clockwork, and with a few notable exceptions (Hello Tommaso’s), the 7×7 was a veritable pizza desert.

Of course San Francisco is all about the kitchen, so things slowly began to change. The steady flow of travelers between SF and New York meant there was a demand for excellent pizza here. So when Tony finally opened the doors at his little North Beach pizzeria in 2009, the city was ready. It took a lot of work, but the crew at Tony’s Pizza Napoletana dug in its heels—and San Francisco eventually opened its arms. The pizzeria thrived, and with the advent of Tony’s International School of Pizza, became a fulcrum for the sea change that was coming to the West Coast pizza industry.

Fast forward to 2023, and Tony would bring a long-percolating idea to life: a pizza festival that would celebrate West Coast pizza properly. And this would be a pizza fest like no other: there would be bagels at this party, with the city’s best makers represented. And better yet, there would be beer, poured by the Bay’s best brewers.

Tony had never created a festival before, but along with the invaluable help of his friend Nick Figone of the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club, he managed to pull it off in grand style. In its first outing, the SF Pizza, Bagel & Beer Festival was an unqualified success, attracting revelers from every corner of the city.

On Saturday, August 16th, the festival returns for its third year, and knowing Tony and Nick, it’s going to be better than ever. I had the chance to sit down with Tony to talk about the young festival, and another recent benchmark: the opening of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in the San Francisco airport. Lightly edited for length and clarity, our conversation is below.

JB: So Tony! The Pizza Bagel & Beer Fest has its third year coming up.

Tony Gemignani (TG): Yeah, it’s exciting. It’s gonna be bigger, with even more pizzerias. Some new pizzerias, like Truly out of Dana Point, who just got ranked one of the top 10 pizzerias in the US.

JB: Really?

TG: Yes. Chris Decker, Michael Vakneen, John Arena and their partner Donna Baldwin will be coming out and cooking.

JB: Truly is theirs?

TG: Yes, that’s their spot. Also Juan Robles from Triple Beam is coming out from L.A. That’s Nancy Silverton’s pizzeria.

JB: She has Mozza down there also, right?

TG: Yes, and her head pizza maker at Triple Beam is coming out.

JB: I always liked that place.

TG: And then there’s Hot Tongue Pizza, they’re also in LA. This guy has a great pizzeria….and a podcast, actually.

JB: Hot Tongue, that’s a great name.

TG: You like that, huh? Alex Koons is the guy’s name, he’s got a really popular podcast in the industry. So he’s coming out. Also, OG Papafern is coming in from New York. He does a special Argentinian style of pizza that he’s known for.

JB: I read something about that guy.

TG: Yeah? So we have some great pizzerias from outside of the Bay Area coming for the first time, and then we have a few new local ones too. So people can expect more participants at this festival, and it’ll be slightly busier this time around. Also, Sierra Nevada is a sponsor this time, so it was nice to get a beer sponsor this year. Meanwhile, we’ll still have approximately 20 breweries here, with a couple new ones joining.

Another new thing, Graffeo is going to be doing coffee this year. We’ve never highlighted coffee before, so we’re happy to have them coming in. They’re right here in North Beach.

JB: Those guys are great, I love their coffee.

TG: There’s also a cookie company coming in this year that’s local,  I met them almost a year ago at an event, and I loved their cookies. When I spoke to them, they said they had volunteered at the pizza festival. So I said “Oh, do you want to have a booth?” That was kind of cool.

So we’re gonna have cookies, and we’ll have coffee. Pepsi is also a new sponsor this year, and they’re going to have two booths. There will be a kid-friendly booth doing dirty sodas, and there will be things like that for both kids and adults. Of course, our headliner sponsors are still BiRite and DoorDash.

And another first this year, we’re going to have a kids pizza-making section, so that kids get a chance to make their own pizza in an Ooni oven. And it’s all included in the kids ticket.

JB: That’ll be great. I’m pretty excited about the event—I understand you guys were able to work out a second entrance this year, too.

TG: Yes, there’s going to be a second entrance, that’s the one on the Filbert side I guess you’d say, and then one on the Stockton and Union side. So one entrance right across from Tony’s, and then the other one is right across from Victoria Bakery. We realized last year that a lot of people were stuck in line, so we added another entry point.

JB: Smart, that was probably the only sticking point last year. I understand you have a new foundation that you’re fundraising for this year.

TG: Yes, and we’ve got a new foundation that we’re giving monies to: the John Arena Foundation, which is for Parkinson’s research, and tied to the Cleveland Clinic and the Ruvo Center in Las Vegas.

The John Arena Foundation is the newest charity of the five charities we’re supporting with the festival: the Salesian Boys & Girls Club, the North Beach Business Association, the John Arena Foundation, the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club Foundation, and the Saints Peter & Paul Church.

JB: Are you doing the Ooni contest again?

TG: Yes. We’ve got 15 contestants this year, so we added a few more spots—and it’s already sold out, which is cool to see.

JB: So how many pizzerias total?

TG: Somewhere around 40.

JB: Whoa! I’ll start working out now.

TG: One new pizzeria this year is Rose, from Berkeley.

JB: Yeah, they’ve been getting a ton of attention.

TG: Yep. DoorDash is gonna have a booth this year, and they’re highlighting Rose.

JB: Yeah, those guys have gotten some national press. They’re giving Laura some heat over in the East Bay.

TG: I saw them at Top 50 Pizza in New York, they were there. They were number 50. I met them there, and they told me they were excited to be at the festival.

Oh yeah, we’ve also got a different lineup of bagel shops, because a couple of them aren’t able to make it this year. We had six last time, but this year we have seven: Bageltopia, Dago Bagel, Bagel Macher, Forgotten Bakery, The Laundromat, Kaz Bagels and Drewish Deli/Healdsburg Bakery.

JB: That’s a great lineup. I’m also curious how everything is going at the airport.

TG: (Laughs) It’s insane.

JB: The space looks really good.

TG: Thanks. It’s easily one of my busiest slice concepts, if not the busiest. Put it this way, it’s my busiest concept that sells slices. Because we have no third parties, and we barely sell any whole pies. It’s almost 99% slices, and the numbers that we’re doing there are bigger than anyplace I’ve sold slices at. From casinos to ballparks to brick-and-mortar stores. It’s insane.

JB: So after all the anticipation, this thing has exceeded your expectations.

TG: Oh, yeah. It’s slices from 6am to 10pm, unless we’re sold out. I think the biggest factor is that at SFO there are three gates that fly to the East Coast. And if you’re coming in on a 6am or 7am flight, it’s really 9 or 10 o’clock your time. So having a slice at 6 or 7am isn’t absurd or weird, right?

JB: Yeah, makes sense.

TG: You’re hungry, and there it is. Plus you’ve got kids, and they’ll have pizza anytime. Then you have that next wave between 8 and 10am, and 9 o’clock here is lunchtime on the East Coast. So you have three gates within Terminal One. I’ve had more East Coasters come in: I’m from Jersey, I’m from New York, I want a slice before I go.

Over there, you’re used to getting a slice every day. It’s not like that so much in San Francisco, but in New York, people are used to having a slice every day, that’s just what it is. So really, it’s perfect for us. It’s incredible.

It’s like pizzas all day. I’ll walk up, and holy shit—there’s a line at 6:30 in the morning. So we’re building a bigger walk-in there now.

JB: Already??

TG: Mm-hmm. We’re running out of room. It’s doing big volume.

JB: So you’ve been open how long?

TG: About a month?

JB: And you’re expanding. That’s awesome.

TG: I was just there for the ribbon cutting, it was great, because we did one with everyone: Equator Coffee, Kitava, Napa Farms, Pacific Cocktail Haven. Also Perry’s is across from us, and they were part of the ribbon-cutting, because they opened before us and didn’t have one then. So Perry had a chance to talk.

JB: He’s still around?

TG: Yes, he’s still around. He said some really nice things about me: that Tony’s is such an iconic brand and a San Francisco institution, while I’m still a pretty young guy. Of course, Perry’s older now. You know, that place has been around for almost 60 years. It was interesting listening to him, I had never met him before. Equator Coffee said some really nice things about us too.

We all had a chance to go up and speak a little bit about coming to SFO. It was the official grand opening and ribbon-cutting, and it was our biggest day of sales ever that day.

JB: That’s great, man.

TG: But we’ve been running out of dough! They’ve been closing early. So now we’ve been adding more dough, and figuring out the refrigeration, and we’re building a new bigger walk-in.

JB: That’s just crazy.

TG: Yeah, we’re gonna be able to do a lot more, and handle a lot more business. It’s exciting. But it’s been very hard to train there. It was just a lot of volume, fast. And all the patterns are backwards. At SFO, your Mondays can be busier than your Saturdays. So it’s not like it’s slow on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday….not at the airport.

JB: It’s just passengers, so it’s never going to be like typical hours.

TG: Yeah….it’s interesting. We also have some retail items that are selling, we’ve got my books, and we’re selling lots of flour and my hot pepper oil. So the retail side is going well too, which is great. I have a spice mix, we’ve got all sorts of stuff. And that’s ideal at the airport, because people always want to grab a souvenir.

JB: Congratulations again, Tony. I’ll see you at the Pizza Fest!

SF Pizza, Bagel & Beer Festival
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Starts at 12:00 Noon
For Tickets And Details, click here