Fan favorite Pizza Jawn to shutter as owner David Lee consolidates into Manayunk’s nearby Bar Jawn

David Lee is pivoting his Jawn-branded pizza business, which he started five years ago as a hobbyist’s pop-up before expanding into the popular Pizza Jawn takeout shop on Main Street in Manayunk and later to a second location on the next block, Bar Jawn.

Lee told The Inquirer that he plans to close Pizza Jawn next spring, likely in April, as his lease at 4330 Main St. winds down. It will be business as usual until then.

Changes to the pizzas will accompany the transition. Bar Jawn, at 4227 Main St., is now testing a limited amount of personal pan-style pizzas along with the pub menu; it possibly also will start offering a larger pan-style pizza.

Lee will add a new style that he said would be a hybrid of Chicago tavern and pizza tonda, the almost-cracker-thin style popular in Rome.

Here’s the unfortunate part for Pizza Jawn fans: Bar Jawn’s kitchen is too small to accommodate larger ovens, and Lee said he will be forced to “retire” Pizza Jawn’s familiar rounds, grandma-styles, and Detroit-styles.

» READ MORE: Picking up your Pizza Jawn pies at the owners' front door.

In time, Lee hopes to be able to expand Bar Jawn’s kitchen, and “then they’ll make a comeback like [Michael] Jordan,” he said.

Economics dictated the decision: renting versus owning. Lee and his wife, Ana, a real estate agent, lease the Pizza Jawn space. Last year, they bought the former Manayunk Tavern and the business, on the corner of Main and Rector Streets.

“I can’t get past paying all that rent and overhead for a building we don’t own,” Lee said.

Lee, now 44, owned Manayunk CrossFit, and dabbled in pizza for years as a hobby using frozen dough. A fitness client introduced him to Joe Beddia, at the time working out of his first pizzeria in Fishtown; Lee booked a private event and spent the duration of it peppering Beddia with questions. Next, he devoured The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani, bought a Roccbox tabletop oven, then took a three-day Pizza University class at the MarraForni factory in Beltsville, Md.

Pizza Jawn’s turning point came in October 2017, when Lee and the oven showed up at a football-watching party at a friend’s house. That led to a series of pop-ups, which the husband-and-wife duo operated out of the gym’s truck. Booked six months out, the Lees were looking for a pizza truck in early 2020 when the pandemic hit.

The Lees began baking pizzas in their home, offering pickup slots in 15-minute intervals. Customers paid in advance and walked up to their front porch to get their pizzas, which were set down next to bottles of hand sanitizer and containers of disinfecting wipes. Two months later, having received a curious call from their township asking questions about the business, they signed the lease for Pizza Jawn and opened in August 2020.

Although they wanted to buy property at the time, “we were like, ‘Could the world end in the next six months?’” Lee said. “We didn’t know what we were looking at. So we just signed a lease and thought, ‘We’ll see what happens.’”

Lee closed the gym in 2021. Even with Pizza Jawn’s limited hours, business was good enough that the they wanted more. In 2023, they bought Manayunk Tavern, a 30-seat corner bar with 70 seats outside, amid Manayunk’s commercial strip.

Then came their decision to not renew the lease for a business open only for limited hours four days a week. Pizza Jawn does not offer dine-in or delivery.

Even with the financials in front of him, Lee became emotional. “It was pride,” he said. “I was like, ‘If I close Pizza Jawn, am I a failure in some way?’ But then I thought, ‘We were renting Pizza Jawn during crazy COVID times and we did well enough that by 2023, we were able to actually purchase another business — whole building, rent, liquor license, everything — on the same street.’

“That’s a win, no matter what. Pizza Jawn was very successful, and it is still, but it makes more financial sense long term to put it all in the same building.”

Then again, the change may not even register with those who don’t realize that the two businesses are related. “It’s funny,” Lee said. “I’ll be on the street and overhear somebody be like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe that bar stole the name of Pizza Jawn right down the street. They suck! I’m never going in there!’ You want to stop and say, ‘No, it’s the same owner.’ But, no. I just walk away.”