This tiny pizza shop in Chester County is scoring big in national competitions

Mezzaluna KSQ started as a roaming pizza operation, firing pies at breweries, wineries, and pop-ups around southern Chester County. Six years later, Ben and Samantha Tobin have turned it into one of the western suburbs’ more distinctive pizzerias. The shop, off the main drag in Kennett Square, has both a local following and growing credibility on the national pizza competition circuit.

Both Tobins have placed at the International Pizza Challenge in recent years, unusual for a small-town shop. Ben Tobin finished second in the Northeast and sixth in the world in the nontraditional division in 2023, and that year placed sixth in the World’s Best Cheese Slice at the Pizza & Pasta Expo in Atlantic City.

In March 2025 at the International Pizza Challenge, he took first in the Northeast and third in the world with a Reuben-inspired Detroit-style pizza. (It’s a crispy-edged square pie slathered with garlic cream sauce, topped with corned beef, sauerkraut, Irish cheddar, gruyère, and caraway seeds, and finished with a drizzle of Thousand Island dressing and parsley.)

Last month, he was inducted into the World Pizza Champions team, comprising 71 top pizzaioli, including Pizzata Pizzeria‘s Davide Lubrano Lavadera, Ciro Lubrano Lavadera, and Vinny Gallagher.

In 2025, Samantha Tobin also competed at the International Pizza Challenge, finishing ninth in the Northeast and 24th overall among 75 competitors in the New York-style cheese category. This year, her New York cheese was third in the Northeast and eighth overall.

The couple eased into the business. Ben, a Norristown native who moved to Kennett Square in 1998 and graduated from Kennett High School in 2007, was a local police officer. Samantha taught elementary school music. They met in 2011 at the Kennett Square Memorial Day Parade through Kennett Fire Company, where Ben volunteered.

On their way to a new home in Charleston, S.C., the couple turned the drive into a 46-state food crawl.

A visit to the vaunted Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco “really changed my thinking,” Ben said. “Growing up around here, I didn’t have much of a sense of what pizza could be beyond Franzone’s in Bridgeport. After that, I got the pizza bug.”

Ben dove into dough, ovens, YouTube videos, and technique. In the Charleston area, he was driving for Uber when he met a couple who owned a wood-fired pizza and catering business; he went to work for them. After a move to Denver, he worked for a mobile wood-fired oven company, teaching customers how to cook on the equipment.

The couple began planning a return to Chester County to open a food truck. They incorporated Mezzaluna on March 9, 2020 — a week before the pandemic scrambled those plans. (The name — Italian for “half-moon” — refers to the curved pizza cutter and also nods to Half Moon Restaurant & Saloon, where Ben once worked.)

Their first catered event was that October for Kennett Fire Company, bringing them full circle, as they say in the pizza biz.

From there, the company grew steadily. Mezzaluna started with two tiny Ooni ovens, then added a small trailer and regular pop-up stops. By summer 2021, the business had grown to a five-person team and a larger trailer nicknamed Big Red.

In June 2024, the Tobins opened their brick-and-mortar shop in a steel building. It seats about 20.

Crispy New York pizzas and crunchy-crusted Detroits remain the backbone of the business, though tavern-style pies added earlier this year have gained traction. Competition pizzas and monthly specials have also become part of Mezzaluna’s identity, such as the Reuben-inspired Detroit pie that’s offered in March as a St. Patrick’s nod. Other specials have included a shepherd’s pie pizza topped with potatoes whipped with Dubliner cheese and baked until the edges crisp.

Samantha Tobin had planned to keep substitute teaching while helping to build the food truck, but when that work dried up during the pandemic, she moved more fully into the company.

“When we started the food truck, the plan was for me to keep substitute teaching,” she said. “I was starting to lose the joy in teaching, and when you lose the joy in something, you feel like you’re doing a disservice to the craft. The food truck gave me a chance to step back while still keeping a foot in the door.”

Her role, she said, quickly expanded beyond bookkeeping.

“People would say, ‘You can do the books and Ben can run the restaurants,’” she said. “And I always thought, I can do more than the books. At the end of the day, I do a lot of the books, yes, but I also love coming in and making pizza. I like working with my hands.”

Mezzaluna KSQ, 216 S. Mill Rd., Kennett Square. Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday.