Jersey pizza group has 100,000 members and wants to go up against NYC's best pizza joints
In 2021, when Guy Madsen started the Jersey Pizza Joints Facebook group, there were just 25 members and they happened to be his buddies.
Later that year he pitched the idea of having a best-of-New Jersey pizza contest.
Now, after four successful annual pizza contests, and 100,000 members on the Facebook group, it's clear he tapped into something special.
Great timing
As with most things, timing is key.
When COVID-19 shut down the world in March 2021, people gravitated to online groups to socialize. Jersey Pizza Joints was one of those groups where members could discuss their love of pizza and the day they would all be back out enjoying it in reopened restaurants.
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The overall tone of the group, unless you had the temerity to admit you liked pineapple on your pizza, was overall positive. In fact, Jersey Pizza Joints employed a dozen monitors to police the site and toss out, they call it whacking, anyone knocking pizza purveyors.
"We wanted to support the local mom and pops, the small businesses," Madsen said. "These people work incredibly hard, sometimes seven days a week."
Madsen should know. While he went into sales, he grew up around food. His father was a restaurateur who worked at lots of storied restaurants including Pegasus at the Meadowlands Racetrack and Crowes Nest in Hackensack.
He didn't want the group to be used to hurt the restaurants or the people's livelihood.
"There's Yelp for that," he said.
He also didn't want to be like Dave Portnoy, creator of Bar Stools whose "One Bite" pizza reviews are incredibly influential.
Madsen said he's satisfied with the role Jersey Pizza Joints plays, which is to give the thousands of little pizzerias across the state a chance to shine.
Northjersey.com's food writer and social media star Kara VanDooijeweert said she's not surprised with Jersey Pizza Joints' success.
"We are in an age of social media, where people are more willing to get their food content on social networks than in traditional papers, and online food accounts are blowing up with followers," she said. "Food is better portrayed visually than described in words, which could explain the explosive popularity of the Jersey Joints Pizza group, as well as my Instagram account @northjerseyeats."
Pizza bowls
In 2021, Jersey Pizza Joints held its first Pizza Bowl in New Brunswick where it crowned the first champion.
Winner of the first Pizza Bowl trophy, Scott Rafferty, said people from all over made their way to his Pizza Terminal restaurant in Verona. The other winners, Seaside Heights Maruca's, already a star in Jersey, Coniglio's in Morristown, another pizza legend and most recently Vinnie's Mootz of Lyndhurst, said the contest raised their profiles.
Even the restaurants that were finalists in the Pizza Bowl say they have been extra busy from the mention. Marcello Segura, who owns Grumpy's in Saddle Brook told Northjersey.com/The Record that the contests greatly help his bottom line.
More: Our Elite Eight finalists are here: Vote for your favorite North Jersey hot dog
A new contest in the works
Madsen's group has acquired enough critical mass to try new things.
A few years ago the group lead to two spinoffs, Jersey Sandwich Joints and Jersey Hotdog Joints. The sandwich group has almost 90,000 members and the more recently created hotdog group is seeing rapid growth. A new NYC Pizza Joints group has also been created.
"Hotdog joints have been getting 1,400 new members per week," Madsen said.
The success has attracted some much-needed sponsorships, Madsen said.
In the past, Madsen said he lost some money to get the Pizza Bowl off the ground, in part because a portion of each ticket sold gets donated to the Tunnels to Towers Foundation. The group looks after fallen and wounded veterans and first responders. The Pizza Bowls have donated more than $45,000 to the charity.
Jersey Pizza Joints is in talks with Ferraro Foods, a sponsor of the recent Pizza Bowl IV, to back a bake-off between Jersey's pizza makers with those from New York City and Brooklyn. The hope is to pull together another high-profile event in Brooklyn this fall.
Winners would be selected by Madsen's people involved with his NYC Pizza Joints.
The plan is to get a number of New York's most revered pizza makers to face off against the four winners of Jersey Pizza Joints' Piazza Bowl champions. It is still, Madsen said, in its early stages.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Jersey pizza group started during COVID now has 100,000 members
