food

Make Family Dinners More Meaningful With Zpizza

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family dinner traditions

Everyone thinks of the beginning of the school year as the perfect time to create new family dinner traditions, but summertime is actually a great time to savor this time too! 

Everyone is out of school, there are no homework assignments to do, and the days are longer with more sunlight in the evening. That all makes for a great opportunity to spend time together around the dinner table. Our favorite meal for family dinners is always pizza. No disrespect to other cuisines, but pizza is where it’s at… and everyone LOVES it!

time for family dinner

zpizza laguna

We set off last week for a fun dinner at Zpizza in Laguna Beach. Zpizza is the first artisan inspired pizza chain started in Laguna Beach nearly 30 years ago. Recognized for its high quality ingredients, Zpizza offers a wide variety of brick-oven baked pizzas, sandwiches, and fresh salads.   Vegan and gluten-free pizzas are also available, and Maddie and I really loved the vegan pizza. Pete and the other girls had the other ones and thought they were amazing too!

fun dinner

Zpizza has some of the friendliest staff and they had this awesome party spread set up for us. But even the non party tables feel like party tables at Zpizza. It has a great relaxed beachy vibe that makes it a perfect choice for families wanting to spend some time together… or, you can even get your pizza and the rest of your meal to go!

zpizza

Since I grew up in Orange County, I’ve been eating at Zpizza for years. In fact, it has been a trusted name for delicious and better for you family meals for over 30 years now! They also recently announced an exciting new partnership with non-profit, The Family Dinner Project.

The Family Dinner Project hosts community dinners across the country for underserved families, spotlighting the proven benefits of coming together around the table as a family for meals, and they provide free conversation starters, and fun games to make mealtime memorable.

dinner

Aside from hugs and kisses, we love games and talking about our day at dinner, although sometimes it can be a challenge getting the conversation started. That is why these games are so awesome. We have found that by playing some of the games at dinner it gets the fun started and makes everyone more open to having real family discussions.

From games to the conversation starters is how to get kids talking!family dinner

While we were talking and playing the games, we all enjoyed some appetizer salads and a hummus plate. I wasn’t sure that we were going to be able to even eat any pizza because the starters were so delicious… but, after trying the pizza later, I was so glad we did!

dinner time

hummus

salad

family pizza dinner

Then it was time to make our pizzas!

making pizza

Emmy loved creating her own masterpiece. 

fresh toppings

These were my favorite toppings. Fresh grilled vegetables!

pizza dinner with kids

Emmy took this job super seriously! She also is in love with Parmesan cheese!

family time

You should have heard all the giggling while we were working on our pizzas! I love creating such awesome memories!

zpizza dinner

Soon our pizzas were ready. Like really soon. I couldn’t believe how quickly they baked them. Emmy wasted no time digging right in!

the best pizza in laguna

And then it was back to more chit chatting and having fun!

family fun at dinner

Zpizza really made this evening special with the conversation starters, place mats, and games that they are making available for download here to enrich the family dinner experience.  They also have a great free free upgrade (from a Large to an XL) every Tuesday night at participating locations through the end of June that you can use to create your own family pizza night, or nights as we are doing for the rest of this month! Seriously, Tuesday nights are now Pizza Tuesdays to us!

They will also be randomly awarding free family dinners and copies of Home for Dinner written by Dr. Anne Fishel, founder of The Family Dinner Project, to families that share pictures sitting together at their dinner table and use the hashtag #zpizza on social media! So be sure to share your pictures!

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We had such a wonderful night and we can’t wait to have another awesome meal from Zpizza! Here are the other zpizza locations to see if there is one in your area. Be sure to join ztribe for special member only benefits!

What is your favorite pizza topping?

Heather Reese
the authorHeather Reese
Heather Delaney Reese is the storyteller and photographer behind the lifestyle and family travel blog, It's a Lovely Life®! For the past decade, she has vacationed over 150 days a year with her family. She is a vegan, and loves being by the water, spending time with her children, husband, 2 Shih Tzus and Cat.

90 Comments

  • I agree with you that Summertime is even better for trying out new dinner recipes.
    And new dinner habits, arrangements, and so forth. For example, it is good to spend time together at the dinner table during dinner. This is so traditional, but yet still creates such an impact for the family.

  • My son will love to make his own pizza too, I can sense that he will be happy too like your kid there.

  • What a great idea to start fun family traditions during the summer. Pizza is one of our favorite things to eat in my house. Would love to take the whole family out to eat and make our pizzas. My favorite pizza topping is mushrooms!

  • It is so important to have dinner as a family and enjoy that quality time together. Growing up family dinner was the biggest blessing and curse of all. Having my own family now I realize that it is mostly SO important. This pizza looks awesome!

  • Now you have me really curious about vegan pizza! My favorite topping is just cheese, but I do get pineapple quite a bit too.

  • Heather! That is too cool! We just got a new fast casual pizza place in our town – but nothing like this – I want to be able to make my own! That is too much fun!

  • I think pizza and summer vacay definitely go hand-in-hand. This sounds really fun.

  • I have never tried zpizza but it definitely looks worth checking out. We love having dinner together as a family and this would be awesome!

  • It looked like your family had a great time. My favorite topping is pepperoni – and that is about all I like on my pizza. This looks like a great place but there are no Z Pizza’s in my area. Thanks for sharing!

  • How fun! I wish they had one of those near us. I love the idea of making your own like that, so fun.

  • Family dinners are always so much fun & we have a habit of organizing weekend dinner at home. I am just loving that awesome Pizza party with Zpizza & I bet they are so delicious & yum!

  • What a fun family outing and I have to say that everything looks delicious. Looks like you had a blast! I love how everything looks super fresh!

  • Zpizza looks like a great family night out. I love that they let you make your own personalized pizzas so that everybody gets a pizza that makes them happy.

  • This place is an awesome one for family bonding and friends meetups too. I’m actually hungry just by looking at those pizza photos above.

  • Well yummy, pizza is always a hit here in Georgia. I’d love to try vegan pizza sometime and hope to visit this place in the future. Everything looks delicious.

  • I have never heard of Zpizza before. Sounds like a wonderful place for some pizza. I like that you guys were able to make your own pizzas. That’s really neat! I usually like to have pepperoni and sausage and that’s it.

  • i LOVE zpizza!!! they came to atlanta a couple of years ago and their location was not too far from where i worked. i loved how i could get my favorite food that was made with fresh and healthy ingredients!

  • How fun! My sons would love to make their own pizzas! I need to see if their is a zpizza near me!

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