Just 10 days after New Haven claimed the world’s largest pizza party, a group of New Jersey teenagers came close — but not close enough — to taking the crown.A total of 3,357 pizza partiers gathered Monday in a 16,000-person arena in Newark, N.J., in an attempt to usurp New Haven's status as the host of the world's largest pizza party. The organizers, led by a group of Newark teenagers, fell 930 participants short of the Elm City's Guinness World record count of 4,525, but did raise more than $75,000 for local charit...
Just 10 days after New Haven claimed the world’s largest pizza party, a group of New Jersey teenagers came close — but not close enough — to taking the crown.
A total of 3,357 pizza partiers gathered Monday in a 16,000-person arena in Newark, N.J., in an attempt to usurp New Haven's status as the host of the world's largest pizza party. The organizers, led by a group of Newark teenagers, fell 930 participants short of the Elm City's Guinness World record count of 4,525, but did raise more than $75,000 for local charities.
The party was organized by the Boys & Girls Club of Newark, and led by a group of 20 teens, largely between the ages of 13 and 16, who came up with the party idea as a capstone project for a months-long "leadership academy" where they had been learning about the business of pizza franchises from a local Papa John's franchisee.
"It's not about the numbers that we were trying to reach. It was about bringing more community together and teaching our members to have fun," said Roselle Arenas, the director of engagement and volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club. "It's about showing that our kids, Boys & Girls Club kids, can impact a community with their vision."
While the Newark teenagers did not break New Haven's record, they did manage to eclipse the record they had originally been targeting: 3,357 pizza partiers set in 2023 at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa.
Taste of New Haven's Colin Caplan, one of the lead organizers for the New Haven "ah-beetz" party, admits he was "extraordinarily nervous" about the Newark party, worried it would take New Haven's crown after just 10 days on top. In victory, he was magnanimous.
"This is an amazing accomplishment that these kids from the Boys & Girls Club have set out to do," Caplan said. "I admire these organizers and kids for taking one of the highest and hardest goals you can achieve in putting something like they did together."
At the Newark event, attendees dined on slices of pizza provided by Papa John's franchisee Disrupt Foods, which is co-owned by former Philadelphia Eagles star Malcom Jenkins. Other sponsors included the City of Newark and the New Jersey Devils Youth Foundation, said Amanda Gonzalez, the director of development at the Boys & Girls Club. Two of the teenagers emceed the event, while others performed their own music and read slam poetry.
In the wake of the teens' organizing accomplishment, Caplan said he hoped to bring the group to New Haven to tour the "Rome of pizza," as he described it.
"I think it would be cool if our kids could do a pizza tour," Gonzalez said. "Just to see, do they do something different than Papa John's does, as it comes to marketing and even making the recipe?"
At the end of the day, Arenas stressed that the most important aspect was how the teens grew through the 16-week leadership academy, and left more prepared to enter the workforce. The party also raised more than $75,000 for the Boys & Girls Club, Gonzalez said, which will help fund both year-round and summer programming for children and teens in Newark.