Our Dad's Legacy
Carlo’s Pizza is the Accardi Brothers’ & our Mom's loving tribute to our Dad. Carlo Accardi opened the doors to his first business, which he named Johnny’s Pizza after his father, in 1985, and began making pizzas at the corner of 17th St and Surf Ave, Wildwood, NJ - just a few blocks away from the World Famous Wildwood Boardwalk.
Our Mom and Dad met at the pizza shop, and soon were inseparable - working together on long summer nights as the perfect pizza making duo. While working at the shop, they also started building a family together. In total, Mom and Dad raised seven children at the shop. There we learned how to recreate Dad’s pizza, and also learned to emulate the qualities that made us and customers alike love Dad so much.
Dad’s memory is shared, celebrated & continued through both his children and his pizza. We hope you enjoy dining with us in our pizza shop here today, as much as we enjoyed growing up in our Dad’s all those years ago.
Now That’s Amore!
The Jersey Boys of Atlanta
Four brothers under a streetlamp with it all still ahead of us.
When moving to Atlanta, us brothers found employment as servers and bussers at one of the best restaurants in the city, TWO Urban Licks. It is there that we worked and saved up for what would become our first step towards being our own bosses - our first piece of equipment, a used hot dog cart.
TWO Urban Licks is located directly on the Atlanta Beltline. Every shift we looked out at the foot traffic of the Beltline, and were reminded of the Wildwood Boardwalk. We had to be a part of it.
We knew it would be a long road to saving up for our future pizza shop, so we started with what we thought was the most affordable start-up business: Hot Dogs.
Every corner of both the Wildwood Boardwalk and the Atlanta Beltline provides an Instagram-worthy backdrop, and we wanted our food to match. While a traditional hot dog can be great, we knew we wanted to give it a vibrant, bold twist to match the city of Atlanta.
Taking inspiration from both our home in Wildwood, as well as the existing businesses and artwork surrounding the Beltline, we created Atlanta's Favorite Hot Dog, "The King of The Hot Dogs", Kaiju Dogs!
Kaiju Dogs
As kids in our Dad's pizza shop, we watched a lot of movies and TV, and always looked forward to TV marathons - the classic Star Trek series, Zorro, the Twilight Zone, but our favorite by far was Godzilla. Fourth of July in the Accardi house meant pizza, fireworks, and Godzilla movie marathons. Every year that was our tradition. And so, in memory of those great times together, we opened Kaiju Dogs on the Fourth of July 2018.
After purchasing the hotdog cart, our next move would be to save up for what would make our spot a landmark on the Atlanta Beltline - a 13-foot-tall, weather-proof, smoke-breathing, Instagram-worthy Godzilla. (Click the gallery to see photos of the big guy.)
When we opened Kaiju Dogs, the food and concept was an instant success and developed a strong local following in the Old Forth Ward District of Atlanta. We are truly blessed that our work ethic and creativity was recognized right away and led us to our next step forward!
Carlo's Pizza
The success of Kaiju Dogs in its first year presented us brothers with an opportunity to achieve what we had always wanted - our own pizza shop making our Dad's Boardwalk-Style Pizza.
We set up shop in Atlanta's Historic Sweet Auburn Municipal Market, and in our 400 square feet, we recreated the Wildwood Days of our childhood. Bit by bit we acquired the equipment needed to expand our business and our menu - later offering ice cream, hoagies, Grandmom Accardi's meatballs, as well as our Dad's pasta fazool in the winter months.
It is a blessing to work together as a family, serving Atlanta's Downtown community in the very heart of the city.
The Portnoy Effect
In March 2020, like every small business in America, we closed our doors in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. When it became apparent that the initial "15 days to slow the spread" had become lockdowns with no end in sight, we quickly had to shift our business model to survive.
We began experimenting with an idea that we otherwise would never have tried - freezing our pizzas. We started by just shipping to family members and close friends, but our cousins, Sammy and Matt, recommended that we send out the biggest Hail-Mary pass, and ship a pack of our pizzas to Dave Portnoy, who's address had just leaked on one of his Lockdown Unboxing videos.
If you're here, then you already know what a good review from this guy means. Nothing could have prepared us for the incredible response we got from the fans of Barstool and Dave Portnoy. In just 24 hours, we had orders for over 20,000 pizzas, and by 72 hours that number had grown to over 50,000 pizzas to be shipped nation-wide, and just kept climbing from there.
It was an incredible thing to be a part of - people from all over the country wanting to connect with each other through the shared experience of the One-Bite Review. One of our favorite things to see while we were working to pump out the initial wave of orders was when families and fans of Barstool would post their own One-Bite Review videos. The Portnoy Effect got us through the worst of the pandemic, allowing our business to stay alive until we could resume in-person dining.
Carlo's Pizza Skyview Atlanta Pop-up
When first moving to Atlanta, the Skyview Ferris Wheel was one of our first stops because it reminded us of home - anyone who's been to the Wildwood Boardwalk knows the iconic ferris wheel at Morey's Mariner's Landing Pier.
With local mandates barring in-person dining lingering beyond the end of the Portnoy Effect, and with warmer weather on the horizon, we began planning ahead for the summer months - looking for outdoor dining opportunities within the city. We were thrilled when an opportunity arose to open a pop-up pizza shop directly under one of our favorite Atlanta landmarks.
We are incredibly grateful to our friends at Skyview for welcoming us into their family for a season!
