Pizza Pizza is setting up shop in Saint John and Quispamsis this December and has its eye on a third location in the McAllister Drive area for the summer of 2023.

The Toronto-based restaurant chain with the catchy phone number will be located at 70 Lansdowne Ave in Saint John, with a tentative opening date of December 15, 2022. The Quispamsis location, at 176 Hampton Road, is anticipated to open December 21, 2022.

This is in addition to the Moncton and Dieppe locations of the chain.

“We’re very excited to be coming to Saint John,” says owner Paresh Patel, who recently moved to the area from Halifax.  “We’ve been trying to come here for two years but the pandemic got in the way.”

The Saint John restaurant will be located at the former home of the Canadian Red Cross, at Brunswick Plaza. They are looking for employees at the Lansdowne site.

Patel did not provide details about the location of the east end site other than to say it would be proximal to McAllister Place.

The openings come as the chain has made notable forays across Canada as well as into Mexico, with restaurants in that country set to open later this year.

In the past six months the chain has opened 14 new stores across Canada, with eight locations in British Columbia, two in Quebec, one in Ontario, and one each in P.E.I. and Nova Scotia.

The rate of expansion is prolific. For example at the beginning of the pandemic, the chain had about 5 stores in BC, they now have 20.

They were the first adopters of a single number call centre and won a Webby Award for their pizza ordering app in 2011.

The company made an initial public offering in 2005 and also acquired the Pizza 73 chain in Alberta in 2007. The company has over 625 stores, plus 100 Pizza 73 locations, and has been in operation since 1967.

Alex Graham is a reporter with Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.