An Arlington-based pizza chain, now under a new CEO, has set its sights on further expansion in the D.C. area and beyond.
Jim Biafore, who became CEO of Pupatella last month, told ARLnow that the chain — which already operates 10 restaurants in D.C. and Virginia — is in “growth mode.”
“We’re actively looking for locations,” Biafore said. “In fact, we’re in a very enviable situation where landlords are calling us. They’re redeveloping properties and people are calling us and want us to be their pizza guy. So it’s a fantastic place to be, where we can actually field calls about if a particular development is right for us.”
Pupatella launched in 2007, when founder and Italy native Enzo Argarme began serving traditional Neapolitan-style pizza from a food cart in Ballston. The brand’s first brick-and-mortar location came three years later in the Bluemont neighborhood, and the company has since spread across much of the region.
A veteran of the D.C.-area restaurant scene, Biafore joined Pupatella in 2023 as the chief development and strategy officer — a role that saw him working directly with landlords to find and secure future locations. He oversaw the opening of a Chantilly location, which began serving diners earlier this year.
Most of Pupatella’s restaurants are based in Northern Virginia, with another in Old Town Alexandria expected to open by the end of this year. Another is coming soon to Columbia, Md., which would bring the company up to 12 locations.
Further in the future, Pupatella plans continued expansion in Maryland, as well as down I-95 toward the brand’s lone Richmond restaurant.
But that’s not to say the brand is going to jump at any available storefront. The right kind of relationship has to be there, Biafore says.
“I think where [landlords] really like us is we become a destination within their properties,” Biafore said. “People will seek us out for the quality of our food. Once they try it, they come back. We become that generator of traffic for them, and everybody’s aware of our growth, so they see us as the future of pizza in a lot of these markets.”
Arlington, however, will always be home for Pupatella — no matter where, or how, the brand grows.
“I think there are a lot of great companies that start in this area because there’s a great clientele in the area,” Biafore said. “The clientele that I find in that Arlington area, they’re high-end, they’re people who want good food, and they want food with the story — and that’s really what we provide.
“It’s quality ingredients done in a very simple way, but comes out with a really quality product. And that’s, I think, really emblematic of the clientele that we serve.”
