Franco Pepe becomes Honorary President and Educational Inspiration Ambassador
At The Best Pizza Awards 2026 in Milan, Franco Pepe received one of the event’s highest honors – The Best Pizza Awards Legend Award. Presented for the very first time in the history of The Best Pizza Awards, the accolade recognizes his extraordinary contribution to the evolution of pizza and his lasting influence on generations of pizza chefs around the world.
The ceremony also marked another historic moment: Franco Pepe was officially appointed Honorary President and Educational Inspiration Ambassador of The Best Pizza Awards. As he takes on this prestigious role, he will no longer be eligible to participate in the annual ranking, symbolically stepping beyond competition to become one of the project’s foremost ambassadors and custodians of its values.
For years, Franco Pepe has demonstrated that pizza is far more than a craft – it is a language of culture, education, community, and human connection. As he embarks on this new chapter, we revisit a conversation that perfectly captures his philosophy, his commitment to future generations, and the vision that has established him as one of the most influential and respected figures in the global pizza community.
Cristian Gadau: Franco, we know you as a great professional, an excellence in your field. But who is Franco Pepe outside the world of pizza?
Franco Pepe:So, Cristian, outside the world pizza I try to make the best way, I try to be, above all, a good father to Francesca and Stefano, and then I’m a person who really likes to interact with everything that has meaning behind the human factor, and that has led me a little to be known around the world because the human factor, interaction with people, real people, is something important to me. My family has a history of interaction with others, with people. Starting with my grandfather when he baked bread and distributed that little piece of bread with the exhibition which brought me a bit of being during World War II to my father, who still today old people tell me „We lined up to eat you father’s pizza”, but no one has ever talked about Stefano Pepe, but he’s a very sociable person, and he taught me to listen to the customer.
Cristian Gadau: What responsibility do you feel today as a global leader in your industry? You’re a leader, right? You know that.
Franco Pepe: No, I don’t know I’m a leader, you say so, but I don’t feel like a leader.
Cristian Gadau: Come on, let’s say, a source of inspiration for the new generations.
Franco Pepe: Yes, as a source of inspiration I get important signals, because from all over the world I interact and lots of pizza makers write to me. This dialogue with pizza chefs is a beautiful thing, really. I manage to talk more with pizzaioli around the world than with Italian ones, but this is wonderful. And talking with pizza makers from all over the world is something that makes me understand that perhaps I’ve sent out some message and I’m leaving something to the new generations. And so it’s important to me, because many consider me a mentor a little bit of our industry.
Cristian Gadau: Do you still have a dream you want to achieve and what is it?
Franco Pepe: Well, I’d say there’s a dream not yet dreamt. So I’m at a certain age, but I still feel young for this journey and there’s a dream yet not dreamt. And so I’m really waiting, because I’m also waiting to understand where this pizza world is going to go.
Cristian Gadau: This is the question we ask, I don’t want to say the greatest, but the most established professionals. Who is The Best Chef or The Best Pizza? What characteristics define them? What does it mean to be the best? One of the best?
Franco Pepe: So what it means in both cases, because The Best Chef gave me the emotion of being, of also having the two knives. So, what does it mean? For me, it’s a huge emotion. I mean, sometimes today we have so many awards, so many recognitions, but few of them give you goosebumps and make you think truly about all the sacrifice of a journey. So I’ll never forget when on that screen in Dubai two knives came out, and I’ll never forget the first time I was proclaimed together with Don Alfonso, with The Best Chef.
Cristian Gadau: So, let’s leave the Italian territory, from Sardinia, from Caiazzo, from Campania, and we fly again to Copenhagen, where in the past few months, a while ago, you participated in Convergence, by Rasmus Munk at Alchemist. This connection, you were the only pizza chef there in Copenhagen, if I’m not mistaken. Isn’t it? How was this contamination, this sharing ideas, values, there in a context where, if I’m not mistaken, there were… 60 chefs from all over the world. How was that experience? What did it give you as a professional, and what did you transmit to these great global chefs?
Franco Pepe: So, Cristian, I’ll start a bit further back in time. When I opened Pepe in Grani, my idea was to provide different training and to apply cooking to pizza, so a kitchen team that would develop and transform raw materials with the support of the pizza chefs. (…) When The Best Chef gave me the Two Knives, that was a very emotional moment for me, there I had a perception, I had goosebumps, and I realized that maybe I was right back in 2012. And then when I went to Rasmus, at Alchemist, with 60 Chefs, I found myself with that sweatshirt, that manifesto saying „Franco Pepe, guest of honor.” For me it was a huge emotion. Arriving there, with my dough, from Caiazzo and expressing myself among a fantastic group of chefs from all over the world, there I truly had a great confirmation, that maybe those Two Knives you gave me with The Best Chef had a meaning.
Instagram:
@francopepeingrani
@pepe_ingrani
Restaurant website: www.pepeingrani.it/en
Restaurant Address: Vico S. Giovanni Battista, 3, 81013 Caiazzo(CE) Italia
Franco Pepe represents the third generation of a family of bakers. His grandfather started the business in 1938, with an operating license granted by the Potestà. Since then, not even a wartime managed to interrupt the work. Pepe’s grandfather continued to bake, authorized to give the ration of 150 g of bread upon presentation of the card.