Love is in the air (and the oven): Heart-shaped pizzas rise in popularity

Pizza Marketplace, the industry publication that covers trends, operations, and innovation across the pizza business, reported on the rising popularity of heart-shaped pizzas with East Village Pizza as a central example. Frank Kabatas introduced the heart-shaped pizza in 2019, and his account of what happened next is consistent across every interview he has given: it was an immediate and overwhelming hit.

The heart-shaped pizza concept is not complicated in theory. Take the dough, shape it into a heart rather than a circle, and build the pizza from there. In practice, getting a heart shape to bake evenly — to maintain its form through the heat of a commercial pizza oven without losing the definition of the shape or compromising the crust texture — requires more skill than the description suggests. Kabatas and his team refined the technique to the point where the heart-shaped pizza at East Village Pizza looks exactly as it should and tastes exactly as good as the round equivalent.

What Kabatas did differently from many operators who offer heart-shaped pizza seasonally was to make it a permanent menu item, available year-round, not just for Valentine's Day. The decision was driven by customer demand — people were calling and ordering heart-shaped pizzas for anniversaries, birthdays, Galentine's Day, date nights, and simple occasions that did not fit neatly into a holiday calendar. Making it a year-round offering was the obvious response to that demand, and it has paid off consistently.

East Village Pizza currently offers heart-shaped pizza in four varieties: classic cheese at $27.99, white at $29.99, pepperoni at $29.99, and Margherita at $31.99. Each is available for pickup and delivery throughout the East Village, Lower East Side, Union Square, and surrounding Manhattan neighborhoods. The heart shape is hand-formed for each order rather than cut with a mold, which means every pie has the slight variations of something genuinely handmade rather than the uniformity of a machine-produced shape.

Pizza Marketplace's coverage of the heart-shaped pizza trend noted that the category was growing across the industry, with more operators adding seasonal or permanent heart-shaped options to their menus. East Village Pizza's position as an early adopter who committed to year-round availability gave it a head start in building a customer base around the product. By the time other Manhattan pizzerias were experimenting with heart-shaped options for Valentine's Day 2025, East Village Pizza had been perfecting the execution for six years.

The response from customers has been documented extensively on social media. East Village Pizza's Instagram account, which has grown to 1.7 million followers, regularly features heart-shaped pizza content that generates engagement far above average — not because the content is produced with elaborate production values, but because the product itself is visually compelling and emotionally resonant in a way that very few pizza items can claim.

For anyone interested in ordering a heart-shaped pizza, East Village Pizza is at 145 1st Ave, open daily from 11AM until 3AM and until 5AM on Fridays and Saturdays. Order online or call (212) 529-4545. No special occasion required.