Vietnam-Born Pizza 4P's Opens Its First New York Location

[Vietnam-Born Pizza 4P's Opens Its First New York Location]

Pizza 4P's opened its first US restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in July. The brand arrived from Ho Chi Minh City in one of the world's most established pizza markets. Two practices central to its Asian expansion — sending experienced staff and making fresh cheese in-house — both had to change in New York.

The founding team had weighed New York against Paris and Singapore for its next overseas market. New York came first in its internal assessment. Strong demand at the Tokyo restaurant, where reservations often had to be made weeks ahead, also gave the company confidence to expand again.

Pizza 4P's is widely seen as a Vietnamese restaurant brand, but a Japanese couple founded it. Yosuke Masuko worked for a Japanese trading company before joining CyberAgent's investment business and moving to Vietnam to oversee local operations. Sanae Takasugi also worked at CyberAgent before relocating to Vietnam. She now serves as co-founder and deputy CEO. They opened the first Pizza 4P's in Ho Chi Minh City in 2011.

Masuko later said Japan's market was too competitive and that he wanted to bet on Vietnam's growth. He was also drawn to the closeness of personal relationships in the country. That is why the first restaurant opened where he was already working, rather than in Japan.

From the beginning, Pizza 4P's put cheese workshops inside its restaurants to make mozzarella and burrata. Cheese later became a business of its own, supplying products to five-star hotels and upscale restaurants. The model depends on reliable dairy supplies and trained cheesemakers.

The company was not built without outside backing. Mekong Capital invested in the business, and the Japanese government-backed Cool Japan Fund later acquired a minority stake.

COVID-19 nearly ended the story. During lockdown, the restaurants could not operate, and Masuko said the company came close to collapse. Banks would not lend, so he borrowed from business contacts and friends and issued corporate bonds. Pizza 4P's recorded losses in the first two pandemic years before returning to profit in 2022.

The company's disclosed 2023 financial results showed VND 115.3 billion in after-tax profit, its highest level since 2018. It had also repaid its bonds by the end of that year. More recent full-year profit figures are not publicly available, so the 2023 result should not be treated as a measure of its current performance.

Expansion resumed after the pandemic. Pizza 4P's opened its first Japanese restaurant at Azabudai Hills in Tokyo in November 2023. Three cheesemakers assigned to the store had trained in Vietnam.

By spring 2026, the company said it operated more than 40 locations worldwide. It aims to reach 100 by 2030, with Brooklyn serving as its first foothold in the United States.

New York has forced compromises. The founders have cited high construction, fit-out and labor costs as the biggest hurdle. Visa barriers also limited how many experienced employees the company could send. Local rules prevented the restaurant from following its usual process of making fresh cheese on-site from raw milk, so the Brooklyn team had to source curd from a local dairy producer instead.

The Brooklyn restaurant is open, but its commercial outcome is still unknown. Pizza 4P's has said any further US expansion will depend on how this first location performs.

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