Fini Pizza, a New York-style pizza joint, makes its mark in Utah

VINEYARD — The beloved Fini Pizza made quite the impact during its debut in Vineyard's Utah City.

Just days after opening, the pizza joint sold out of everything by 5 p.m. on a Monday. The demand for the delicious New York-style pizza was higher than expected.

Owner Sean Feeney and the rest of his team worked late into the night to prep for the week, building pizza boxes, slicing pepperonis and doing all they could to prevent that from happening again.

Feeney said he has three goals with Fini Pizza:

1. "Make something that is excellent and delicious and cravable."
2. "Do it in a way where you're making others feel like they matter and you want their days to be better."
3. "How do we then go outside of these doors and really show people how proud we are to be a part of this neighborhood?"

For the first time, Fini Pizza also opened up Fini Cafe, a charming little cafe that serves up bagels, sandwiches, coffee and pastries.

"You can start your days with us," Feeney said. "And we can start our day together on a good foot."

Choosing Utah

This is the first location of Fini Pizza outside the New York City area. Why did Feeney choose Utah? It goes all the way back to his childhood.

Feeney visited the Beehive State to participate in the AAU National Basketball Championship at 11 years old in Salt Lake City. During that trip, he met Jazz legend Frank Layden and former players, like Luther Wright and John Crotty. He also said he "fell in love with Utah" on his first visit.

His family kept coming back to the state they fell in love with, and Feeney said he always wanted to plant some kind of roots in Utah.

"I just resonated with the family-first values-driven environment," Feeney said. "When I visit Utah, I feel like there is a strong sense of family. There's a very values-driven environment that I just love. I think about the mountains. I think about the active lifestyle people live here."

So when a friend showed him some renderings of plans for Utah City, an up-and-coming neighborhood in Vineyard, he figured this was how he could bring Fini Pizza to the state he loved so much.

"I saw the mountains, and I got very excited about building a community from the ground up. And we start with pizza," Feeney said.

A history of Fini Pizza

Plans for Fini Pizza started taking shape at the end of 2020.

"I've always loved pizzerias," Feeney said. "I grew up in New Jersey, and most of my greatest memories of meals and birthday parties, and after soccer practices or even after funerals and wakes, we would go to our local neighborhood pizzerias growing up."

Feeney had already found success with two Italian restaurants and decided it was time to try out his pizza dream. He noticed at the time that his neighborhood in Williamsburg in New York City was getting more and more polarized. He thought, why not open a pizza place to bring people together?

"I thought that would be an exciting thing to try to do and add a pizzeria that was really focused on bringing people together and delivering good days," Feeney said.

He opened four more Fini Pizza establishments in Brooklyn over the span of six years.

Now, in the Utah City cafe, illustrations of the four restaurants decorate the walls, reminding customers of the history of the place.

"I thought the concept of Fini would resonate with just kind of what I love about Utah," Feeney said.

Growing up around food

In New Jersey, Feeney grew up having the dinner table as an important part of his days. His mom is Italian and his dad is Irish, and he recalls having their entire families come down to their house on the Jersey Shore.

"We would have these big Sunday suppers and cookouts," Feeney said. "And I saw my Italian aunts and grandma and my mom and her sisters cooking all day and everybody else just having the best time. And I would get to see my dad be so proud to host everybody in his backyard."

His family also made the restaurant experience special for him and his siblings. His dad would make reservations for the family at "incredible restaurants" in New York City, and then he would study up on them and share the history of the restaurant and what to order.

"It was all ingrained in me from an early age," Feeney said.

In 2003, Feeney moved to New York City from New Jersey to work in finance. He loved trying out new restaurants after work, and he would take clients, friends and coworkers out almost every night of the week.

"Over the course of 16 years doing that five nights a week, sometimes six, I started becoming just really great friends with people in the industry," Feeney said.

He became friends with a neighbor who was a chef, and they ultimately decided to open a restaurant together — Lilia in Williamsburg. Two and a half years later, he left his day job to pursue the restaurant industry full time.

Feeney said the hospitality industry "kind of found me. I just kept feeding the passion for it. And then it turned out that the people I loved most were like, 'You should do this. You seem really happy, and you love it.' And I haven't really looked back since."

Fini Pizza giving back

Fini Pizza offers 25% discounts year-round to firefighters, police officers and educators. They also have a program where children under 17 can read three books, share the title and two sentences about the books, and then receive a free pizza for them and their family.

"I just wanted to continue to find creative ways to invest in the community, make the neighborhood more together, more stronger, and more connected," Feeney said.

Another way Fini Pizza is getting involved with the community is through a program called Fini Hoops.

The Fini Hoops program hosts basketball teams on its own court — he tried it out in New York and loved it, so the Utah City location is also getting its own court, which is currently being built up. It will open up in June.

At the court, Fini Hoops will host basketball tournaments, camps and clinics to get more kids playing ball, and then afterward, they can enjoy some pizza. Winners of the Fini Hoops tournaments receive free pizza for life.

"I just wanted to create moments for youth in basketball and connect it to pizza as well," Feeney said.

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