While still taking his “fancy pizza” to new levels, Naples restaurateur Chris Jones permanently closed his Industry Pizza & Slice Shop on Friday, the last day of June.
The local pizzeria operated since May 2019 on the northeast corner of Pine Ridge Road and Yahl Street in a North Naples retail center bookended by Bonjour and Chinatown restaurants.
During its four-year run, Industry Pizza’s pinnacle perhaps took place two years ago when Dave “El Presidente” Portnoy made a surprise visit to the local pizzeria. During one of his popular One Bite pizza review videos, the founder of Barstool Sports rated Industry’s The Plain Cheese Pizza a 7.7, a high ranking for Portnoy.
“This seems like kind of fancy pizza. This is almost artisan pizza,” Portnoy said about what he called “a special occasion pizza” created with mozzarella, caciocavallo and shaved Parmesan cheeses.
Industry Pizza capitalized on the special occasion by creating a thin-and-crispy bar pie named El Presidente Pizza in Portnoy’s honor and printed “Fancy Pizza” T-shirts. With Industry Pizza closing, Jones is not retiring his “fancy pizza.” He’s simply rolling it into a new concept called PizzaJones! that he’s launching at his former local barbecue joints.
The Industry Pizza crew will move to Bayfront of Naples this week to the former Industry Beer & BBQ at 449 Bayfront Place, which will relaunch Thursday or Friday as PizzaJones! The BBQ Shop that operated in North Naples reopened in late May as PizzaJones! — dubbed “a LowBrow joint.” Jones’ flagship restaurant remains LowBrow Pizza & Beer, which he created five years ago in East Naples.
It’s the second reboot and rebranding of the Bayfront unit in the last few years. Southern Latitudes transitioned into Industry Beer & Barbecue in early 2020. Its impressive row of beer taps will stay, of course.
“The idea is for people to come sit at our bar downtown and enjoy one of our 72 taps of local craft beer and eat some good pizza,” Jones said. “I’m going to invest in some more TVs and we are trying to build a little bit more of a sports bar feel there. We get a lot of requests for that. With the pizza, I think it all kind of works together.”
Jones’ team has been working on different pizzas, too. “We’re going to be messing around with Roman style,” he said. “We’re going to be offering bar pies — the East Coast style of bar pie — so it will still be cut into slices, not squares. But it’s thin and crispy, and it’s baked in a pan and it’s a perfect single-serving pizza for people that like to have a pint or two.”
What would Portnoy think about PizzaJones? “Well, I think this is his style,” Jones said. “And, you know, we’ve been kind of chasing that and wanting a pizza that has that eating quality. It’s crisp, it’s light, it’s thin, it doesn’t weigh you down. And it’s naturally leavened so it’s good for your belly, you know. You’re not going walk out of the restaurant going ‘I need a nap.’”
In making his latest move, Jones is leaving behind the ovens at Industry Pizza & Slice Shop. “The potential new owners are pizza people,” he said.
The future tenant remains unknown for that Orange Pine Plaza space at 2075 Pine Ridge Road.
