An Ontario event collective is making adults-only pizza parties a thing, and people are loving it

Pizza parties are making a comeback in Ontario, thanks to one collective that’s putting them on for a whole new audience.

For many of us, the term “pizza party” evokes memories of sitting cross-legged in an elementary school classroom while a teacher hands out juice boxes and cardboard-like slices of cheese or pepperoni. If you’re lucky, it might even spark the memory of a bowling alley birthday party of yore — still featuring those same cardboard-y slices, of course.

Regardless of what your dominant pizza party memory may be, there’s typically one common thread: the last time you heard that term used was at some point deep in your childhood.

For whatever reason, people just aren’t throwing pizza parties for adults the way they did for kids.

Ottawa-based friends Brian, Hassan, and Trevor took notice of that, too, and decided it needed to change. Thus, the very first, in their words, “Grown-Ass Pizza Party,” was born.

The friends, known professionally as No Def Collective, tell Dished Toronto that Brian was travelling the world, exploring the underground event scenes in cities like London, L.A., Melbourne and Medellìn, and found one common thread across the board.

“Community events that felt grown, free, and wrapped up early,” No Def Collective explains to Dished Toronto. “They weren’t about chasing clout, but about culture and connection.”

With that in mind, they set about crafting the ultimate pizza party in the spring of 2024. In the year that has followed, they’ve hosted over 30 parties, so to say that people have responded to the concept would be an understatement.

Still, they didn’t get everything perfect on the first try, and No Def Collective tells Dished Toronto that they’re still striving to make each event better than the last.

“The early days weren’t polished. We didn’t offer pizza at first. There was food waste, DJs playing safe playlists like it was a club, and folks unsure what to do,” they say, “but we learned. We started embedding pizza into the ticket price, adding collectible vinyl, and building a vibe where people could come full, fulfilled, and free.”

Nowadays, at any given Grown Ass Pizza Party (or GAPP, for short), you can expect at least two slices of pizza from a local pizzeria (Ottawa’s Lil Z’s and Stay Gold are favourites, and in Toronto they source from Cherry Blossom) and DJs spinning all-vinyl sets designed to get you on the dance floor, working up an appetite.

Slowly but surely, the attendance at each event has grown as more and more people discover this new alternative to the late-night, booze-fuelled club nights the city knows all too well, and No Def Collective has their own ideas about why people are latching on to the concept so much these days.

“Honestly? It’s because we’re tired. We’re grown. We’ve got jobs, bills, kids, pets, therapy sessions, and deadlines,” they tell Dished Toronto. “We don’t want to party until 3 a.m., we want to dance hard, eat well, and be in bed by 10.”

That’s not to say that there are no adult beverages flowing at GAPP — they just stop flowing at a respectable hour.

That, and there’s the nostalgia aspect. The popularity of GAPP might just be proof that people never actually stopped craving a pizza party; we just stopped being offered them. “Also,” they add, “Pizza is a love language.”

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Still relatively new to the scene, No Def Collective acknowledges that there’s plenty to continue working on, but at the same time, they say, what they’ve achieved thus far is plenty to be proud of.

“We’re still new to the world in many ways, but what we’ve built is already so rich in community. People come because they feel seen, respected, and celebrated. That’s the part we’re most proud of. It’s not about hype, it’s about building something that feels real and sustainable.”

If a night centred around cheesy eats and vinyl beats sounds like your idea of a good time (isn’t it everyone’s?), you’re in luck: they’ve got a full suite of events lined up in Toronto and Ottawa this summer that you can attend to bring your pizza party dreams to life.

Up next for Toronto, you can catch them popping up at the Toronto Festival of Beer on June 25 and Stackt Market on Aug. 12. You can view their complete lineup by visiting No Def Collective‘s website.

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