Pizza Jawn’s owners are buying a Manayunk bar, which will be called Bar Jawn

Pizza Jawn’s David and Ana Lee are going into the bar business just down the street from their popular Manayunk pizzeria.

They are buying Manayunk Tavern, at Main and Rector Streets, which will remain open through what the sellers, Joe Keough and Jeff Bender, say will be a seamless transition.

As Bar Jawn, the Lees plan few immediate changes. David Lee said they would rework the cocktails, add his own recipes to the menu, and eventually would install a pizza oven for a yet-to-be-determined style of pizza that he doesn’t serve at Pizza Jawn.

Pizza Jawn will remain open.

It will be a return to the bar business for David Lee, 43, who started tending bars while in college at such places as Top Dog and Rock Lobster. His last bar job was 105 Social in Manayunk, where he met Ana, now 36, who was attending a sorority event.

Their first Valentine’s Day date was dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant called Sole of Manayunk — which happens to be the current Manayunk Tavern.

The Manayunk Tavern-to-Bar Jawn changeover hinges on the sale of the real estate and the transfer of the liquor license, which is expected in the spring.

Meanwhile, Keough and Bender just bought the landmark Chap’s Taproom in Jeffersonville, Montgomery County, and said they plan no drastic changes.

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Three years ago, David Lee owned a CrossFit gym and ran pizza pop-ups on the side. Ana Lee, who sells residential real estate, cheerily indulged his obsessions with hydration and fermentation.

Then came the pandemic, which in March 2020 shuttered Manayunk CrossFit and other indoor businesses, including restaurants. They started selling pizzas out of their suburban Philadelphia home which were left for pickup on a card table on the front porch, and their following rapidly expanded.

The ordering system routinely crashed under the demand, and the 360 pickup slots between Thursday and Saturday quickly filled up.

By that summer, the Lees had opened the brick-and-mortar Pizza Jawn shop on Main Street in Manayunk, five blocks from the gym, which closed for good in July 2021.

Pizza Jawn won a Philadelphia pizza challenge recently against Rione Pizza for ABC’s Good Morning America, but the shop came up short in a contest against four other pizzerias in the finals last Friday.