Everyone loves a pizza party. It all starts when we’re kids. Whether your class did well on a test, your team won the game, or your friend had a birthday, the pizza party was always the go-to choice to mark the happy event. As you get older, there’s Friday-night pizza, dorm room pizza, thanks-for-helping-me-move pizza, and countless other pizza-themed celebrations.
With all those good-time feelings attached to the pizza parties of the past, it’s no wonder that the office pizza party became such a staple. Pizza just makes people smile.
Pizza Catering: Easy and Always a Win
Pizza is one of the easiest foods to order for a group of any size. You can quickly figure out how much pizza to order per person with a simple equation: the average person eats 2 to 3 slices, and the average pie has 10 slices, so that’s one large pizza for every 3 to 4 people. Pizza math—it’s simple! (Or, you can go the individual-sized pizza route for a super easy 1 pizza:1 person ratio.)
Pizza is also awesome for groups because there is literally something for everyone, and it’s easy to cater to a variety of preferences—traditional toppings, no toppings, adventurous toppings, vegetarian, gluten free, thick crust, thin crust—the choices are almost endless.
As one of America’s favorite foods, it’s no surprise that we have designated multiple days to honor this most perfect food. In fact, if you really wanted to, you could pay homage to pizza all year round:
- National Pizza Day Feb. 9
- National Deep Dish Pizza Day April 5
- National Pizza Party Day May 20
- National Cheese Pizza Day September 5
- National Pepperoni Pizza Day September 20
- October is National Pizza Month
The Origins of a Legend
While pizza is as ubiquitous as sliced bread, it’s origins are a bit of a mystery. Some people say it was invented by the ancient Greeks who doctored up their bread with oils, herbs, and cheese. Others claim that the Romans were the first, though their “pizza” was topped with cheese, honey, and bay leaves. We’re guessing that was an acquired taste.
Jumping ahead in time, Italy is the undisputed birthplace of the modern pizza. Even so, nearly every country in the world likes to lay claim to having the most “authentic” pizza. America’s love affair with the pizza pie dates back to the turn of the century—1905 to be exact—when Lombardi’s pizzeria became the first in the country (opening, appropriately, in New York’s Little Italy). Today, there are some 9,000 pizzerias in the state of New York, and more than 70,000 across the country.
An Ongoing Love Affair
Our national love of pizza knows no bounds. In 2015, The Washington Post reported that Americans eat 100 acres of pizza every day. That translates to 3 billion pizzas each year (roughly 46 slices for each person in the country). Since then, the numbers have risen. In a piece that named pizza the “restaurant hero of 2020,” The New York Times highlighted the astronomical increases in pizza delivery during the pandemic, “Over the first nine months of 2020, the combined revenue of Domino’s and Papa John’s grew so much that it was roughly equivalent to their selling about 30 million more large cheese pizzas than they had the year before.”
We really love our pizza.
The Next-level Office Pizza Party
There’s nothing wrong with a good, old-fashioned, traditional pizza party. Truly, any kind of pizza catering is almost guaranteed to get a thumbs up from your team. But sometimes you want your office pizza party to have a little more … um … pizzaz. Lucky for you, there have been plenty of pizza innovations over the years.
To bring a little extra excitement to your pizza party, you might try different flavors or different pizza-inspired delicacies.
On the flavor side of things, the sky’s the limit. The classics—cheese, pepperoni, meat lovers, and so forth—are always a solid choice, but there are so many other kinds to try.
For instance, Papa John’s offers a Philly Cheesesteak Pizza and an Extra Cheesey Alfredo Pizza along with a half dozen gluten-free options. Or maybe some of the pies from Mellow Mushroom might tempt you: the Funky Q Chicken Pizza with BBQ chicken, sharp cheddar cheese, caramelized onions and applewood-smoked bacon; or the Holy Shiitake Pizza with roasted shiitake, button and portobello mushrooms, caramelized onions, mozzarella and MontAmore® cheese on an olive oil and garlic base.
You can also go healthy or sophisticated. Take the Nutty Tuscan Pizza by Crazy Dough’s Pizza and Pasta—a white pizza with plum tomatoes, caramelized onions, roasted garlic, pine nuts, Gorgonzola, basil, and pesto. Yum.
No matter where you live, there’s a pizza catering option that can fulfill your wildest pizza dreams. And if you need help picking which types of pizzas to order, let our list of the 10 Most Popular Types of Pizza Around the Country inspire you.
On the other hand, you might want to try pizza in a different format. Sort of a pizza 2.0, if you like. Plenty of restaurants have come up with their own twist on the classic pie. The Calzone, for example is a pizza-inspired favorite that comes in almost as many flavors as the original pizza pie. Don’t get us started on dessert pizzas…
The bottom line: There’s no excuse to always choose the same old-same old. Make your next office pizza party something to talk about. Give people a chance to stretch their horizons and try something new.
Getting started is easy. Just visit our pizza catering page to see all the options available.