ZinkUbator: Pizza-Palooza — How It Went

Last night, the Revel Room smelled like wood-fired dough and contested opinions about sauce-to-cheese ratios. ZinkUbator: Pizza-Palooza ran in the Revelance Culinary Lab and the Revel Room, and by the end of the evening the results were in, the beer was cold, and someone had strong feelings about the judges’ decision.

This is what ZinkUbator is supposed to feel like.

What ZinkUbator Is

ZinkUbator is an event series built around food — specifically, around the kind of hands-on culinary experience you cannot replicate at a restaurant. Each event is developed in partnership with Zink Foodservice Group, which operates its showroom and Culinary Lab inside the Revelance building.

The format changes every time. The first ZinkUbator put participants in the kitchen with professional equipment and a challenge. Pizza-Palooza did the same with dough, a wood-burning oven, and enough opinions about toppings to last well into the evening.

How Pizza-Palooza Ran

Teams built their pies in the Culinary Lab using professional-grade equipment — the same kitchen available for rental to food entrepreneurs, caterers, and culinary professionals throughout the week. The competition brief gave enough structure to make it interesting and enough freedom to make it a genuine contest.

After the cook, everything moved into the Revel Room for judging and the Taphouse for the rest of the evening. Sonder Brewing was on tap. The pizza was good. The arguments about the pizza were better.

Why Revelance Hosts Events Like This

Revelance is a private business club. That means the building exists to make members’ professional lives better — better workspace, better meetings, better client entertainment. But it also means the building is a community, and communities need shared experiences that are not just transactional.

ZinkUbator is that. It is not a networking event with name tags and forced conversation. It is a room full of people doing something together, competing, and then eating and drinking the results. The relationships that come out of that kind of evening are more durable than anything that comes out of a mixer.

If you missed Pizza-Palooza, the events calendar is where next ZinkUbator will appear when it is announced. Walk-ins are welcome when space allows — though for popular formats like this one, Eventbrite registration is the safer bet.

Frequently Asked Questions