Eat Pizza. Be Watched. Break Record

Roughly 150 ​“stewards” will be watching you next Friday to make sure you eat two slices of Big Green Pizza Truck cheese pizza within a fenced-in area on the New Haven Green between 4 and 7 p.m.

An ​“adjudicator” flown in from Florida will then decide if you and thousands of fellow ah-beetz fans have followed those rules — before, if all goes well, recognizing that New Haven has thrown the world’s largest pizza party.

Taste of New Haven founder Colin Caplan described that goal, and the logistics of getting there, during a Thursday morning press conference held at the southwest corner of the New Haven Green near Chapel and College streets.

Standing alongside Mayor Justin Elicker, Connecticut Cycling Advancement Program (CCAP) Executive Director Brian Wolfe, and a handful of other city officials, business boosters, and pizza makers and fans, Caplan was there to promote the 10th annual New Haven Grand Prix cycling race and Apizza Feast street festival.

That cycling-and-pizza event will take place downtown on Friday, Sept. 12, from 4 to 10 p.m.

Wolfe said that around 300 bike riders — professionals and amateurs alike — are expected to participate in Grand Prix’s eight races, which cover a 0.7‑mile loop around the Green and Yale’s downtown campus. The fastest riders should reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. There will also be 50-plus vendors providing food and beer and other goods, a reggae band and a DJ, and up to 20,000 spectators.

The centerpiece of this year’s event, however, will be Taste of New Haven​’s bid to help break the Guinness World Record for the largest pizza party.

That title is currently held by Tulsa — ​“that’s a place in Oklahoma,” Elicker said on Thursday — which brought together 3,357 pizza eaters in 2023.

Caplan said New Haven is shooting to have 5,000 participating pizza partiers on Sept. 12 so that the Elm City can take that world-record crown.

But to set a world record, you have to follow rules. And, as Caplan explained for the Independent before the start of Thursday’s presser, there are a lot of rules to follow.

So. Here’s how it could/should go down:

• Participating pizza partiers have to buy a ticket to attend that part of the Sept. 12 festivities. Tickets currently cost around $17 for kids under the age of 18, and around $22 for adults. Elicker said that, as of around 11 a.m. Thursday, 4,172 people have registered to attend. The price of admission covers two slices of pizza, a bottle of water, and, for adults, a drink ticket. (By Friday morning, the number of ticket-buyers had jumped to more than 4,500, more than 1,000 of whom are Yalies.)

• Registered pizza partiers then have to show up to the Upper Green between the hours of 4 and 7 p.m. Once there, they’ll take turns being shepherded into one of four fenced in areas designed to contain roughly 100 people each.

• Once in the designated spot, participants will have to eat two slices of pizza. 

What does ​“eat” mean in this context? Do you have to consume the whole slice? Caplan said participating pizza-partiers do have to eat the whole slice — except they don’t have to eat the crust.

Guinness sets all these rules, Caplan clarified. ​“I ask for the rules. They set the rules.”

While there will be a host of different pizza makers serving up pizza at next Friday’s fest, the only pizza to be served to pizza partiers as part of this world-record endeavor will be made by Big Green Truck Pizza.

Big Green’s owner, Liane Page, said her business will have five pizza-oven trucks, two pizza-oven trailers, 21 employees, and four managers on the Green to make 10,000 slices of cheese pizza — standard mozzarella and tomato sauce — to serve to the pizza partiers. Seven employees will be responsible for making pizza, seven for running the ovens, seven for stretching and cutting dough.

Caplan estimated that each group of 100 pizza eaters will have 10 to 15 minutes to eat their two slices apiece before being ushered out of the designated areas and sent off to enjoy the rest of the festival.

• Roughly 150 volunteer ​“stewards” will be watching these pizza partiers to make sure they, well, eat two slices of Big Green pizza each while standing in the necessary spot. Caplan said 200 people have already signed up to volunteer as a ​“steward,” and New Haven needs only 50, but he expects around 150 to show up and help out.

These ​“stewards” will count the number of people eating the necessary amount of pizza in the necessary locations, and write down that information on a Guinness-provided paper form.

• All of those pieces of paper with all of that pizza-eating data will then be handed over to an official Guinness World Records ​“adjudicator,” who is flying up to New Haven from Orlando, Florida, and spending the night at the Omni, all to make sure New Haven follows the pizza-party rules. 

• At 7 p.m., the Guinness adjudicator, a ​“witness,” and Caplan — the impresario behind this whole event — will go through the various paper forms and add up all of the qualifying pizza-eater numbers.

Roughly 15 minutes after 7 p.m., Caplan said, the adjudicator should be able to announce whether or not New Haven has broken the pizza party world record.

“This is crazy. This is insane. Who would do this?” Caplan said on Friday. ​“New Haven would.”

Phew!

And wait. There’s more.

Elicker and Caplan said that the Boys & Girls Club in Newark, New Jersey, is now working to host a Guinness World Record-setting pizza party now, too! Their party is scheduled for Sept. 22, and they’re working with Papa John’s.

“They apparently are not getting the numbers we’re getting,” Caplan said. He’s still confident New Haven will emerge on top.