Pizza Emoji

A triangular slice of pepperoni pizza. 🍕 is the universal food emoji, the one that transcends dietary tribes and starts arguments that never end.

The global pizza market is worth an estimated $150-280 billion depending on how you count it, with the US alone consuming 3 billion pizzas per year. That's roughly 350 slices sold every second. The US has over 78,000 pizzerias, Italy has around 63,000, and the industry employs millions worldwide.

Every major platform renders 🍕 as a pepperoni slice, but the toppings quietly vary. Apple shows a clean pepperoni design. Google and Samsung previously included black olives alongside the pepperoni, and Samsung's earlier versions added white onion. The topping debate mirrors real life: what belongs on pizza is the internet's oldest food argument.

🍕 was approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F355U+1F355 SLICE OF PIZZA and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

🍕 is probably the most universally understood food emoji. It shows up in Friday night plans, late-night orders, party invitations, and the evergreen pineapple debate. On Instagram, pizza-related hashtags have billions of cumulative views.

The pineapple debate is 🍕's permanent cultural companion. Pairing 🍕🍍 is either an endorsement of Hawaiian pizza or a declaration of war, depending on your audience. Iceland's president joked he'd ban it if he could. Canada's former PM Justin Trudeau tweeted in its defense. The debate generates engagement every time someone revives it.

Pizza Rat, the 2015 viral video of a New York City subway rat dragging a full pizza slice down the stairs, turned 🍕 into a symbol of urban hustle. The video got 12.5 million views and became a metaphor for surviving in New York. The rat became an unofficial city mascot.

New York's dollar slice culture has its own emoji language: 🍕💵 means a $1 slice, which used to track the subway fare. That connection has broken as fares rose, but the cultural memory persists.

Modern pizza traces to Naples in the early 1800s, though flatbreads with toppings existed in the ancient Mediterranean for centuries.

The most famous origin story involves Pizza Margherita. In 1889, Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito allegedly created a pizza for Queen Margherita of Savoy with tomato (red), mozzarella (white), and basil (green) to represent the Italian flag. The story is charming but likely embellished: historians have found no media coverage of the supposed royal visit from that period, and the tale was first widely promoted in the 1930s-1940s.

Pizza arrived in America with Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. Gennaro Lombardi opened the first licensed US pizzeria in New York City in 1905. Then came the split: New York developed its thin, foldable, coal-oven slices, while Chicago invented deep-dish pizza at Pizzeria Uno in 1943. The NY-vs-Chicago debate has been running almost as long as the pineapple one.

The pineapple controversy has a specific origin. Sam Panopoulos, a Greek-born Canadian restaurateur, created Hawaiian pizza in 1962 in Chatham-Kent, Ontario. The name came from the brand of canned pineapple he used (Hawaiian Pineapple Company), not the state. It was inspired by Chinese-Canadian sweet-and-sour dishes. Neither Hawaiian nor Italian.

• Year inscribed: 2017, at the [12th UNESCO session](https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/art-of-neapolitan-pizzaiuolo-00722) in Jeju, South Korea
• Petition support: ~2 million signatures gathered by Neapolitan pizzaioli before the bid
• Active bearers: ~3,000 pizzaiuoli currently working in Naples; the inscription protects the practice, not the food
• Common confusion: [NPR's headline](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/07/569141920/cant-be-topped-neapolitan-style-pizza-making-wins-unesco-heritage-status) and most others say "pizza-making wins UNESCO status." Closer reading: the rotating wood-oven spin is what UNESCO inscribed.

1. 1889Pizza Margherita allegedly created for Queen Margherita of Savoy in Naples
2. 1905Gennaro Lombardi opens the first licensed US pizzeria in New York City
3. 1943Deep-dish pizza invented at Pizzeria Uno in Chicago
4. 1962Sam Panopoulos creates Hawaiian pizza in Ontario, Canada
5. 2010🍕 approved in Unicode 6.0 as U+1F355 SLICE OF PIZZA
6. 2015Pizza Rat goes viral in a New York City subway
7. 1946Detroit-style pizza debuts at Buddy's Rizzeria, baked in blued-steel auto-factory pans
8. 1925Frank Pepe opens in New Haven, CT, pioneering coal-oven apizza
9. 2017UNESCO inscribes the Art of the Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list at the 12th session in Jeju, South Korea

In Italy, pizza is a specific culinary tradition with protected standards. Neapolitan pizza has had EU Traditional Speciality Guaranteed status since 2010. The dough is hand-stretched (never rolled), baked in a wood-fired oven at 485 C for 60-90 seconds, and toppings are minimal. An Italian seeing 🍕's American-style pepperoni slice is like a French person seeing American "croissants."

In the US, pizza is a $46+ billion industry. Americans eat about 23 pounds of pizza per person per year. The NY fold-and-eat method, the Chicago deep dish, Detroit-style square pizza, and New Haven's coal-fired apizza are all fiercely regional traditions.

Surprisingly, Norway leads the world in per-capita pizza consumption, largely driven by the popularity of frozen pizzas (Grandiosa is a national institution there). South Korea, Brazil, and Australia all have large pizza cultures with local adaptations: sweet potato crust in Korea, catupiry cheese in Brazil, and prawns in Australia.

In Japan, pizza often includes corn, mayonnaise, and seafood toppings. In India, paneer and tandoori chicken are standard. The emoji shows an American pepperoni slice, but pizza has been localized so thoroughly that 🍕 means different things on different continents.

• •Americans consume 3 billion pizzas per year, roughly 350 slices sold every second. The US pizza industry alone is worth over $46 billion.
• •Pizza Rat, a New York subway rat filmed dragging a full pizza slice down the stairs in September 2015, became an instant viral sensation and unofficial NYC mascot. The video exceeded 12.5 million views. A performance artist named Zardulu claimed to have staged it, but the original filmer denies this.
• •Norway leads the world in per-capita pizza consumption, not Italy. Norwegians eat nearly 50 million frozen pizzas per year across a population of 5.4 million. The frozen pizza brand Grandiosa is a national institution.
• •The Queen Margherita origin story for Pizza Margherita is likely embellished. Historians found no contemporary media mentions of the supposed 1889 royal visit to a Naples pizzeria. The tale wasn't widely promoted until decades later.
• •Hawaiian pizza was invented by a Greek-born Canadian in Ontario in 1962. The name came from a pineapple can, not the state. When Iceland's president joked he'd ban it, Canada's PM Trudeau publicly defended it.
• •Platform designs differ: Apple shows clean pepperoni. Google and Samsung previously added black olives. Earlier Samsung versions also included white onion. The emoji toppings debate mirrors real life.
• •New York City's "dollar slice" culture tied the price of a pizza slice to the subway fare for decades. Both were roughly $1 through the early 2000s. The connection has since broken as fares climbed, but the cultural memory persists.
• •Italy has approximately 63,000 pizzerias employing 100,000 pizza makers. The US has over 78,000. Neapolitan pizza has had EU Traditional Speciality Guaranteed status since 2010.
• •Halloween overtook Super Bowl Sunday as the single biggest pizza delivery day in the US. Super Bowl is still enormous (12.5 million pizzas, Domino's alone sells 2 million), but October 31 now edges it out thanks to costumed chaos and exhausted parents.
• •Domino's posted $9.5 billion in US sales in 2024, nearly double Pizza Hut at $5.29B. Little Caesars hit $4.93B, Papa John's $3.66B. The Big Four control roughly 55% of the American pizza market. The other 45% is independents.
• •New Haven's "apizza" scene (pronounced "a-BEETZ") dates to the 1920s, when Frank Pepe started baking in a coal oven. Coal fires ran cheap and hot, producing the charred, chewy, almost-Neapolitan crust that defines New Haven. Most East Coast pizza lovers will tell you the original white clam pie at Pepe's is the best slice in America.
• •Detroit-style pizza is baked in blued-steel pans originally made for auto-factory parts storage. The pans caramelize the Wisconsin brick cheese against the edges to form a crunchy lace called the "frico." Buddy's Rizzeria in Detroit served the first one in 1946.
• •UNESCO inscribed the Neapolitan pizza maker, not pizza itself in December 2017. Around 2 million signatures backed the petition. The dough work and the rotating wood-oven spin became globally protected intangible heritage. The pizza you eat is incidental.
• •The US frozen pizza industry was worth roughly $5.4B in 2018 and $18.5B by 2024, more than tripling in six years. Lockdowns supercharged it but the bigger story is post-2022: frozen kept compounding while pizza-delivery search interest plateaued. The freezer aisle is the only competitor that actually moved Domino's needle.
• •About 3,000 pizzaiuoli are currently practicing in Naples under the UNESCO inscription. The protected craft has three bearer categories: Master Pizzaiuolo, Pizzaiuolo, and baker. Apprenticeship runs through bottega-style mentorship rather than schools.