The Pizzeria expanding to 8th location

The Pizzeria can’t stop, won’t stop. The 5-year-old chain has signed the lease for a new location in Yaphank that partner Paul Saccocio said will hopefully open early next year.

Yaphank had not been on the team’s radar but when they saw the property at The Boulevard in Yaphank — a residential-commercial development just north of the Long Island Expressway — "we all started smiling. This is a home run."

The 4,3000-square-foot restaurant will occupy a new freestanding, one-story building across from Southpaw Brewing Company. Right now, the structure "is a shell," but Sacoccio expects the build-out to be similar to the largest Pizzeria (5,000 square feet), which opened in Babylon last year.

According to Sacoccio, who owns the company with his brother, Dan Saccoccio, and childhood friend Cliff Weinstein, there has been a groundswell of enthusiasm for an eastern outpost. "Our food distributors, parents from my kid’s soccer team, especially people from Manorville — they’ve been screaming, ‘Come out east.’ And this development, people keep saying, ‘We go to that brewery, we go to the Home Depot, that’s where we get our hair cut.’ "

The Pizzeria got its start in 2020 as a 500-square-foot operation at Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove, but successive shops have gotten bigger and bigger: Bayport (800 square feet), Islip, Lindenhurst and Bay Shore (more than double that) and Babylon (5,000 square feet). In April a 3,000-square-foot Pizzeria opened in Smithtown’s Branch Plaza.