After Name Debacle, Wicked Fire Rebrands As Shore Fire Pizza
The day after hanging the freshly printed sign emblazoned with the name of his pizza business above his new shop, Joshua Lowden got a letter that threw a rather significant wrench into his plans. It was mid-December, just weeks away from the opening of the brick-and-mortar shop on Buzzards Bay’s Main Street that spawned from his catering and food truck business, and Wicked Fire Pizza was now being told it needed to change its name.
The letter came from an attorney representing Wicked Restaurant and Bars in Mashpee, Mr. Lowden said, and asked him to cease using the word “wicked” in terms with “fire” and “pizza.” As it turns out, Wicked Restaurant actually had registered a service mark with the commonwealth for the term “Wicked Fire Kissed Pizza,” something Mr. Lowden had not been aware of despite doing his own research.
“I’ll be 100 percent transparent and honest in saying it’s totally my mistake and my fault,” Mr. Lowden said, adding that he takes “full responsibility” for the infringement. “The timing sucks, absolutely, but I certainly tried to do my homework when I started up my mobile business in 2020.”
Mr. Lowden decided to start the business in September 2020 after leaving his job amidst COVID reductions. In doing so he was reviving a dream he had previously lived out: a catering company called Wicked Fiyah that he operated with a friend in 2016. They had both done it only part time for that one season due to their careers, but Mr. Lowden was now ready to commit full time.
But he suddenly needed a new name. A self-identified believer in karma and everything happening for a reason, Mr. Lowden remained optimistic: “You’ve got to roll with the punches.”
“I don’t want people taking this out on Wicked Restaurant or getting upset,” he said. “It’s taken on a life of its own and I’ve tried to answer as many things [online] that I’ve seen where people are saying anything negative, because it’s really not their fault. If I took the appropriate steps to trademark my name or a line in my name, I certainly wouldn’t want somebody to use any portion of that as well, so I totally get where they’re coming from.”
Transparency between the two establishments was key, and Mr. Lowden said that Wicked Restaurant was willing to work with him through the search for a new name. He didn’t want to use the name of his old catering business, and liked the word “wicked” because of its regional significance. He knew he wanted something similar to the significance of the word “wicked”; he just didn’t know what.
After announcing the news of the name debacle on Facebook, Mr. Lowden sought input from the public and asked followers to submit suggestions for a new name. And soon enough, the comments started to pour in. But what Mr. Lowden was not expecting was to have more than 10,000 comments and 122,000 interactions with his post.
The flood of suggestions was great, but also overwhelming for the new business owner.
“I honestly think I expected to hear a name and be like ‘yes, that’s it,’” Mr. Lowden said, “but we were getting so bombarded with names and suggestions and trying to open the business and deal with the name change that my head was literally ready to explode.”
A spreadsheet of names was created and narrowed down until it was a small enough pool where Mr. Lowden could get to work making mock-ups of the logo design. He was trying to hone in on his reason for opening this shop in the first place, which is to bring new meaning to the idea of artisan styles.
“My whole mindset is to try and change the concept of just being the local pizzeria on the corner,” Mr. Lowden said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that; I have four kids and my wife and I still order from the local pizzeria down the street. It’s not to take anything away from that, but that’s not what I wanted to be in my plans.”
Of all the great name suggestions, he said, the one that stuck out the most was actually from his wife’s aunt: Shore Fire Pizza.
“Honestly, it was probably on the bottom of the list,” he said. “And for whatever reason, it just kept coming back and it kept resurfacing as one of our favorites. Being from New Jersey, some of my first memories of life are being down the shore with my family.”
The more he thought about it, he said, the more it made sense: the Jersey Shore holds happy memories of his childhood and is a place he visits with his own family, and the shores of Cape Cod surround his home now.
“It was just one of those obvious things that we should have thought about sooner,” he said, “and we didn’t but after looking at it over and over again, we were like, ‘That’s it.’”
The name change was announced on Facebook on January 19 and the rebrand has since begun for the business, which is in the midst of a soft opening. Social media channels are being updated with the new logo and a website for Shore Fire Pizza has been created, which redirects to the former Wicked Fire Pizza website to avoid missing old customers who missed news of the name change.
One thing that will certainly make the rebrand a bit easier is Shore Fire’s ethos of not having printed menus like most restaurants or takeout spots.
“We’re going to have a revolving menu,” Mr. Lowden said. “We obviously have standards, pizza-wise, that we’re going to have all the time, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to gear toward giving our menu to the public basically through social media and QR codes.”
The decision to nix typical menus stems from Mr. Lowden’s desire to focus on sourcing local and seasonal products. What the eatery can get for product week to week might vary, he said, and for that reason it makes sense to stick to a rotating array of specialties over a fixed list of offerings.
The plan, which has worked well in the short time Shore Fire has been open, is to have a short list of classic items that will be offered regularly, accompanied by daily and weekly specialty offerings that will be blasted out via social media.
“We had a couple of specials that we started last week that we didn’t have by the end of the week because I couldn’t get the product fresh and that’s kind of what I want to do,” Mr. Lowden said. Being able to constantly stock fresh product is crucial to his business, perhaps more so than your average pizza joint. That is because Shore Fire has zero freezers, meaning what is on hand is all it has at that time.
“I don’t even own a freezer,” Mr. Lowden said, “so 100 percent of what we have is what we’re going to have in our refrigerators and on hand. And when we run out of that, we just have to source it again and get some more.”
Changing the way people think about pizza and artisan-style cooking will not be easy, Mr. Lowden knows, but he is optimistic. Pizza lovers can find more information on the shop’s Facebook page, which, as of this writing, is still titled Wicked Fire. The shop shares its weekly hours and specials there, and customers will know the shop is open when the red “open” flag is flying out front.