After 13 years of offering free pizza with every pint of beer, the City Beer Hall in Albany is making a major shift. The iconic promotion, which provided a small cheese pizza with every drink order, will now be limited to late-night hours on Fridays and Saturdays, after 10 p.m.
Starting this Friday, the beer hall will launch Blu Pizza, a pop-up concept offering artisan pizzas. Created in partnership with an Italian-trained pizza maker, Blu Pizza will feature handcrafted 13-inch pies starting at $15, with a limited availability of about 50 pizzas per night. The artisan pizzas will be available alongside the beer hall’s regular menu.
“Free pizza had its time, but it wasn’t resonating with customers like it used to,” said Kenny Schachter, co-founder of the City Beer Hall. Schachter, alongside his business partner Kaelin Ballinger, teamed up with Zane Cacace, a longtime friend and trained pizza maker, to bring a fresh approach to the pizza offering. Cacace, who studied pizza-making in Milan, now leads Blu Pizza as both a partner and head pizzaiola.
The new pop-up will run from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday, or until the day’s dough runs out. The menu will feature three signature pies — the Blu (made with Gorgonzola cheese), a pepperoni pizza, and a classic cheese pizza. Weekly specials may include a focaccia-style pizza or variations on the standard pies with ingredients like pears or arugula. Unlike many pizzerias, Blu Pizza will not offer extensive topping customization.
“We want people to come in and see what’s new each week, to experience our experiments,” said Cacace.
The decision to move away from free pizza came after a notable decline in demand. Once peaking at 2,000 orders per week, the number of free 9-inch cheese pizzas had dropped to just a few hundred.
Cacace explained the shift: “People who want great pizza are willing to pay for quality. That’s the idea behind Blu Pizza.”
Cacace’s passion for pizza developed during his travels and time living in Denver, eventually turning a hobby into a career. The dough at Blu Pizza uses an Italian technique called biga, a pre-fermentation starter, and undergoes a 48-hour cold fermentation process. While similar to Neapolitan-style pizza dough, Blu’s pies are baked in an electric oven at 650 degrees for 5 to 6 minutes, rather than the traditional 850-degree wood-fired method.
The result? “Light, airy, with a bit of crunch — somewhere between a Neapolitan and New York slice,” said Cacace, whose family has deep pizza-making roots.
The success of the beer hall’s recent Sushi by Bou pop-up inspired the move toward higher-quality offerings. “We wanted to elevate the experience,” said Schachter. “After seeing how well Sushi by Bou performed, Blu Pizza felt like the natural next step.”
As a nod to the City Beer Hall’s long-standing free pizza promotion, Blu Pizza will offer a free pint of beer with every pie sold between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Fridays, starting this week.