Pizza Chef Tony Gemignani Preps Super Bowl As Stadium Presence Grows

When officials wanted to upgrade the pizza experience at the home of the San Francisco Giants over a decade ago they turned to famed local pizza chef Tony Gemignani. Now 13 World Pizza Championship wins later, Gemignani has franchised his Slice House concept across stadiums in San Francisco and Las Vegas as he readies for the Super Bowl and World Cup in 2026.

What started at Oracle Park has grown to include Gemignani concepts at all three major San Francisco-area sports venues—the Slice House at Oracle Park and Levi’s Stadium and Tony G’s at Chase Center—along with multiple concepts at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, including the Slice House.

Sports was a part of Gemignani’s youth, so taking a 30-plus-year pizza career into stadiums was something the Bay Area-native was focused on. “My dad was big into sports, and we went to games all the time,” Gemignani tells me. “Being able to be in a stadium meant the world for me. I hustled to get it.”

Known for his New York-style, Gemignani also crafts Sicilian and virtually every variety of pizza at his restaurants, often with nonstop lines out the door. He can bring those styles into stadiums, giving the Slice House concept—or other Gemignani-made pizza concepts—a unique feel. As the Slice House brand continues to grow outside of stadiums, he expects it to pop up in more venues across the country, even as he readies new recipes for the 49ers season and both the Super Bowl and World Cup coming to Levi’s Stadium in 2026.

“This is not one of these things where you plan it three months out,” he says about the marquee events. “[The concessionaires] don’t think about it the day before, they think about it way ahead. They really dive deep and try to figure out something cool for the fans.”

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For this year’s NFL season that means a different pizza recipe each game, depending on the opposing team— Gemignani recently crafted a Carolina short rib pizza for the Jaguars and an Italian beef recipe when Chicago came to town—and highlighting fun tie-ins, such as a Purdy Pizza at Levi’s Stadium in honor of Brock Purdy and the new WNBA’s Valkyries team color purple inspiring a purple potato pizza at Chase Center.

Still, though, the most popular slice across all stadiums remains pepperoni. “America is totally a pepperoni town,” Gemignani says. “Cheese would be next.”

Every pizza served ties directly to Gemignani’s famed San Francisco restaurants, using the same ingredients. From day one at Oracle Park, Gemignani says that while he’s proven he’s willing to adapt to any venue—he cooks pizza in wood-fired, coal-fired, gas or electric ovens—the non-negotiable is the ingredients. All dough is made in-house, even at stadiums, activated by his own starters. He uses a specific flour and requires Grande cheese. While it happens to be one of the most expensive on the market, Gemignani says the common New York cheese melts great.

“There were certain ingredients,” he says were required. “This is what separates us from other ballparks and arenas. We were one of the first ones back in the day to do dough and starters, and every stadium came and wanted to see the pizza operations.”

All the attention to detail was about creating a high-quality product. “My dream was to see a dad and son walk up and grab a slice bigger than the kid’s head,” Gemignani says. His first day at Oracle Park, tucked in what was once a break room high in the stadium, he made pizza on an imported Cuppone electric-deck oven with dough made on site with his starters. “Here we are,” he says, “we build it and get everything I wanted and the first customer on opening day was a dad walking up with his sone and they got a cheese slice. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

Slice House then grew into multiple locations within Oracle Park before the 49ers came calling. And then the Warriors. And the Raiders.

Gemignani went from paying a marketing fee to get into Oracle to having teams craving his brand and inviting him in (it helped that Joe Montana and the owners of the 49ers were all regulars at his restaurants).

Typical restaurant owners can have a steep learning curve dealing with the rush and volume of stadiums. Gemignani says he’s been dealing with that from the start of his pizza business, so understanding the operations side wasn’t a giant leap. “There is a lot to it,” he says, “being at a high quality, but at the same time being super-fast. I was used to that kind of busyness.”

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Having worked with a wide range of concessionaires—the three San Francisco venues are all operated by a different company— Gemignani says he simply focuses on being a good operator and making fans happy. “The thing about sports, sometimes you just need to do a damn good cheese and pepperoni,” he says. “Do we do chef-driven pizzas? We do, but when you got to a stadium you want a great slice and sometimes fans aren’t looking for the truffle pizza that is $15. You want to sell and move and make fans happy. Fans are happy with great food.”

Of course, the clamoring for world-class pizza doesn’t stop on the concourses. Gemignani also cooks for players and team staff, proving that kids wanting a cheese pizza slice as big as their head at their first big-league game grow up seeking a top-choice slice, especially when available at their home stadium.

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