Franco Pepe

The Climb

Public reputation in pizza can come from scale, but Franco Pepe built his from continuity: the same town where he first worked, the same baking lineage, the same insistence that place still matters in a finished pie. His own description of that lineage is plain and specific: "I represent the third generation of a family of bakers." The line explains the work without ornament. It places the craft inside a family practice and frames his career as an extension of inherited technique rather than a departure from it. Caiazzo did not serve only as a starting point. It stayed central as his practice developed, giving technique a local grammar and keeping the work tied to memory, routine, and the daily discipline of the oven. That same continuity runs through the later institutions built around his name. Pepe in Grani (since 2012), founded and owned by Franco Pepe, and Pizza Hub (since 2022), created by him, extend the work without breaking from its base. The arc is additive: family bakery, pizza maker, restaurant identity, then a broader platform. What changes is the scale of expression, not the underlying craft. Across those stages, the thread is not reinvention but refinement. The career reads as a gradual sharpening of pizza practice, then a deliberate widening of its reach. The result is a body of work that stays legible to the trade: technique grounded in place, built from lineage, and developed over time.

Today

Pizza, in Franco Pepe’s hands, is built through collaboration as much as individual authorship. His own description is explicit: "I created a team with an agronomist and some nutritionists and together with farmers and producers, we try to provide a product that's not only good but healthy too." That approach places the craft inside a wider chain of expertise, where agronomy, nutrition, farming, and production all sit inside the final decision about what the pizza should be. That chain also shows how the work is organized around responsibility rather than surface effect. The product is shaped before it reaches the oven, through relationships with growers and producers who determine what quality can mean at source. In that sense, the pizza is not treated as a fixed formula. It is the outcome of coordinated work, where land, ingredient, and method all remain visible in the final bake. He also describes that work as a way of moving territory outward. "I'm putting a whole territory and its gastronomic excellence on my pizza and I make it travel through Italy and abroad." The claim is practical rather than poetic: a local vocabulary carried into wider circulation without losing its origin point. That balance between rootedness and reach is central to the method.

Signature

Franco's signature dishes include MARGHERITA SBAGLIATA, SCARPETTA, CRISOMMOLA DEL VESUVIO, and CIRO (2 Pezzi). The list reads like a working vocabulary rather than a set piece: names that signal range, regional reference, and a willingness to push against expectation while staying inside the pizza form. The effect is precise and grounded, with each item adding another register to the same craft language.

In Their Words “I created a team with an agronomist and some nutritionists and together with farmers and producers, we try to provide a product that's not only good but healthy too.” “I'm putting a whole territory and its gastronomic excellence on my pizza and I make it travel through Italy and abroad.”