The Pizza Press plans Hamlin expansion

Horizon West is getting new press — but not the printed kind.

The Pizza Press is bringing its brand of build-your-own pizzas to Hamlin. Horizon West pizza lovers can expect to start publishing their own personalized pizzas at The Pizza Press by early- to mid-2019.

Joseph Schumacher, marketing coordinator for The Pizza Press, said the first restaurant opened in July 2012 in Anaheim, California — right across the street from Disneyland. He added founder and CEO Dara Maleki once worked in an import-export business and was inspired to open the restaurant by a printing press he was transporting.

“Our theme is one thing that makes us unique — our theme is the printing press,” Schumacher said. “There’s kind of a pun at play as well, because we press out the pizza dough in a heated press as part of the process of making the pizzas.”

The Pizza Press also will offer an extensive selection of craft beers. Additionally, pizza dough will be made fresh daily at the restaurant, which only adds to the customer experience, Schumacher said.

“We have the best craft-beer selection around,” he said. “One of the major things people like about our pizza is the crust. You can definitely taste that it’s been made fresh that day. We also prepare a lot of the ingredients, toppings and things like that fresh in (the restaurant). … Everything is fresh and made to order.”

Customers can build — or “publish” — their own pizzas and choose from more than 30 different ingredients. With a wide variety of ingredients and the ability to accommodate different dietary needs, The Pizza Press offers something for everyone, Schumacher said.

“As we like to say, if (customers) want to ‘publish’ their own pizza, they have a choice of different base sauces — such as red sauce, white sauce, pink sauce (or) olive oil,” Schumacher said. “They can choose the cheeses. We have seven to nine different cheeses. Then they can choose their veggies and meats as well if they want any. We also are very adaptive to people’s dietary concerns. If they’re gluten-free, we have gluten-free crusts available. … We have vegetarian and vegan options. We have vegan cheese.”

In addition to personalized pizzas, customers can order from a selection of signature pizzas. Playing off the printing press theme, menu items at The Pizza Press are named after newspapers. 

“We name our pizzas after newspapers — not specific ones but common names for newspapers like ‘The Times,’ ‘The Tribune,’ and things like that,” Schumacher said. “Also, with the décor, we have canvases that show the process of newspapers being printed and some of our visuals in the restaurant have a similar visual appearance to a newspaper as well. Some of the wallpaper has old newspaper clips on them.” 

Although the restaurant doesn’t handle delivery in-house, The Pizza Press partners with companies such as DoorDash and Uber Eats for customers who crave personalized, published pizzas from home. The Pizza Press has more than 30 different locations nationwide and currently has a location in Celebration.