Ellie Park, Senior Photographer

New Haven is looking to make its claim to the title of the United States’ “Pizza Capital” on Friday by attempting to set a Guinness World Record for the largest pizza party. 

The record attempt will take place at the 10th annual Apizza Feast — New Haven’s annual downtown celebration of the city’s famous woodfire pizza, known as “apizza” and pronounced “ah-beetz.” The festival will be held alongside the Grand Prix, a local bike race. 

“This event is very much a passion project that is the result of my love and pride for my hometown,” Colin Caplan, founder of local pizza tour company Taste of New Haven and lead event organizer, wrote to the News. “Achieving a record-breaking event is proving to each other that we are of the highest caliber, and we can do everything we set out to do.” 

The world record bid, organized by Caplan and local partners, will be subject to defined Guinness rules and a volunteer counting system. Up to 5,000 participants may be counted for the record attempt in a fenced party area. Each must stay at least 15 minutes and eat two pizza slices to be counted. 

Yale student organizers who have been involved in coordinating the record attempt say student turnout, boosted by 1,000 free tickets provided to Yale students, has already pushed registration numbers past the current record of 3,357 participants at one pizza party. Executing the pizza party on the Green will be the final hurdle. 

Guinness’ standards for mass participation records are exacting, Caplan wrote in an email outlining the logistics. The party window is 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., and the last group must enter no later than 6:45 p.m. Participants who do not eat their two slices, or who leave the party early, are disqualified. Eating the crust, however, is not required, Caplan wrote.

At the party, fenced pens will accommodate groups of roughly 100 people; volunteers called stewards must oversee each group and record participants’ names and numbers on paper tally sheets. The Guinness rules require one steward for every 100 participants, and at least 50 stewards must be on duty Friday for New Haven’s attempt at the record. 

The party cannot exceed 5,000 participants without hiring a third-party counting organization, which they did not do, Caplain wrote. According to Caplan, if more than 10 percent of participants leave before the end of the party, the attempt at breaking the record will be invalidated. 

Shortly after 7 p.m., the steward will reconvene and subtract any disqualifications to determine the final count for the on-site Guinness adjudicator. 

Guinness also requires a documentation package beyond paper tallies. According to Caplan, organizers will submit video and photo evidence, including drone footage, a timelapse, a local health department affidavit, media articles, ticketing records and other materials to prove the record was set. 

The slices counted in the record-setting attempt will come from the Big Green Truck Pizza, Connecticut’s first antique wood-fired pizza truck. Caplan said that after reviewing how to feed 5,000 people two slices each — which will require 10,000 slices, or 625 pizzas — the team concluded Big Green Truck was the only caterer with the capacity to produce that many wood-fired, New Haven-style apizzas. The restaurant will dispatch six trucks and 35 staff to Friday’s event. 

More vendors than usual will be attending Apizza Feast this year, as well. Caplan said the city has permitted around 70 vendors — nearly double last year’s total — to line the New Haven Green with pizza, food and retail stands. 

For Yale’s Sophomore Class Council, or SoCo, the record attempt became a chance to formalize student participation in the city’s signature food event. Council president Micah Draper ’28 said the student partnership began when SoCo’s director of events, Richelle Chang ’28, flagged a City of New Haven Instagram Reel promoting the Guinness attempt. 

“We absolutely have to help out with this,” Draper recalled telling the council. After email exchanges and Zoom meetings with Mayor Justin Elicker’s office, the council became an official partner for the event. 

SoCo then secured 1,000 free tickets for Yale students. 

“Within just over 48 hours after the tickets were released, they all were claimed, which officially brought the number of registered attendees above the current world record,” Draper said. “It feels pretty awesome that my classmates were a major factor in breaking this world record for the New Haven community. Now, they just need to show up.” 

Draper framed the effort as part of a larger project, noting that SoCo created a New Haven Connections role to strengthen relationships with the city and local partners. After attending a recent press conference and speaking with Elicker and other city officials, Draper said he expects this will not be the last SoCo collaboration with New Haven. 

Caplan said the record is one way to make New Haven’s pizza identity apparent to the rest of the country. He hopes to see New Haven-style pies spread across the country and increased food tourism to New Haven for pizza, he said. 

The city is expecting more than 15,000 people to attend the Apizza Feast and the New Haven Grand Prix cycling race.