Sep 3, 2026 · 38 min
Lawrence Longo turns persistence into a premium food empire
Lawrence Longo: CEO of Prince St. Pizza, Irv's Burgers, & The Master of Premium Fast Food
Longo’s path from Hollywood and publishing to restaurants shows how persistence, strategic pivots, and operational discipline shape ambitious hospitality businesses.
- 1Longo parlayed persistence across Hollywood, publishing, and side ventures into the Off the Menu food-tech platform.
- 2Reviving Irv’s Burgers and launching Prince Street Pizza required balancing brand history, expansion, and product consistency.
- 3Restaurant growth brings pressure beyond the dining room, including cash flow, lawsuits, hiring, and the founder’s difficulty celebrating wins.
Don't miss
Longo recounts eating and reviewing one burger every day for a year, a personal experiment that helped lead him to Irv’s Burgers.
The brief
Lawrence Longo grew up in Toronto around Italian food, played high-level hockey, and moved to Los Angeles chasing filmmaking after York University shut down during a strike.
Hollywood taught Longo persistence and work ethic, but a producer’s death redirected him toward comic books, graphic novels, children’s books, and side ventures that barely paid the bills.
His food-tech pivot began with Off the Menu, which used secret menu items, events, and partnerships to build restaurant traffic before Facebook’s algorithm weakened customer acquisition.
A year of eating one burger daily led Longo deeper into Los Angeles’s burger scene, eventually helping him revive the historic Irv’s Burgers rather than launch an entirely new brand.
Longo then expanded Prince Street Pizza and Irv’s Burgers while adding The Bar Next Door, confronting the cash flow, lawsuits, quality control, and team pressures of rapid growth.
His central lesson is persistence without rigidity: pursue meaningful work relentlessly, pivot when necessary, and build a team that can protect the product.