Naked City Pizza headed to Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Naked City Pizza has announced it will expand its operations to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where it has signed on to be the exclusive pizza concessionaire for all of the venue’s tracks. The news comes less than a month after Naked City founder Chris Palmeri announced the opening of the company’s fourth location, Naked City Pizza Express in the Blue Diamond Saloon.
The deal is a partnership with the speedway’s main concession company, Levy Restaurants. Naked City’s pies will be the only pizza served at all nine speedway tracks for all events except Electric Daisy Carnival and the Red Bull Air Race, which are run independently of the venue. Naked City, however, will be represented at those two events. And Levy will continue to operate other concessions, either itself or through partners, at all events.
Under the terms of the agreement, Naked City will supply food for more than 20 events this year. The first of those is expected to be NASCAR Weekend, which is March 10-12. Palmeri predicts his operation for that week alone will employ 150 people and include six concession stands. Employees will walk through the seats selling his product, and a dual-purpose building on the infield will offer pizza from one side and a full-service chicken menu from the other.
Infield dining will open on Tuesday for fans camped out in advance of the main events, most likely staying open 24 hours on the busiest days. While menus are still in the works, Palmeri expects to offer single slices, quarter-sheet pizzas and chicken dishes such as burritos and fingers.
Palmeri, who left an executive chef position on the Strip to sell hot dogs in a bar parking lot in 2009, says he was honored to be approached by Levy. “They told us they’ve been looking for a couple of years to have an exclusive (deal) with somebody, because they haven’t before,” he explains of how the partnership came about. “And they had pitches from all the major players, your national chains and everything. But they really wanted to find somebody locally. So it’s pretty cool. It’s a monster.”
Contact Al Mancini at amancini@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlManciniVegas on Twitter.
