Naked Pizza, an all-natural New Orleans-based restaurant, will open a new location in the Foggy Bottom area in late May.
The business, focused on serving up healthy pizza options, will open a store at the Winston House at 2140 L Street, along with five other D.C.-area locations expected to open up in the coming months.
Naked Pizza is a newer chain, but it is quickly expanding.
“We started in 2006 right after [Hurricane] Katrina in a 500-square-foot building,” Ellen Altamirano, the public relations and marketing coordinator for the company, said.
Altamirano said Naked Pizza has no current plans to incorporate GWorld, but added the program is an interesting idea and the company may look into joining in the future.
Jeff Leach, the co-founder of the company, wanted to “take something we eat every day, like pizza, and make it better for you than what you can get at Domino’s or Papa John’s,” Altamirano said.
Naked Pizza uses all-natural ingredients, no preservatives and no added sugar to make what it claims is “the world’s healthiest pizza.”
Altamirano said she sees Naked Pizza as “a social media company that sells pizza and incorporates a social media facet” for interacting with customers.
The business uses Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo to reach customers. The company saw this as “a new concept – running a business through social media,” Altamirano said.
Many Naked Pizza stores are located in areas with colleges, such as San Diego, Calif., and New Orleans, as part of Naked Pizza’s mission, Altamirano said, especially with “a lot of students who are very interested in living green and all-natural.”
Freshman Chelsea Curcio said she’s “into the all-natural thing,” and would give Naked Pizza a try.
The first store in the D.C. area, located in McLean, Va., is slated to open the week of April 18. Naked Pizza is also expanding internationally, and is set to open a store in Dubai over the next few months.