This Mobile Pizzeria Serves New York-Style Slices at Music Fests and More

“I had a handful of friends out here, and I came out for Phish Dicks in 2011 and fell in love with the place,” recalls Ben Acton, owner of the Rocky Mountain Slices food truck, who officially made the move to Denver a decade ago.

Originally from Tennessee, Acton grew up just south of Nashville (aka Music City), so it’s no surprise that music impacted his decision to venture west. Music was also a driving force in developing and launching his mobile pizzeria, which debuted in December 2013.

“I’ve been doing pizza since I was like sixteen,” Acton says. “After high school, I went off to audio engineering school in Arizona and then moved back to Nashville to try to become an audio engineer, always having a side job at some mom-and-pop pizza shop. And then I got a little more serious about food.”

After landing a gig at a newly opened pizzeria in Nashville, “I quickly became the kitchen manager, and that’s when the food truck idea really took off and grew,” Acton recalls. “In the meantime, I had always been going to music festivals and traveling around, and always loved the idea of serving food to the masses at those settings. So I came out to Denver and started the food truck.”

Its first gig was at the Oriental Theater. “I had no idea what I was doing, obviously, but over time I got it,” Acton says. By 2014, Rocky Mountain Slices began making appearances at big music festivals.

Soon, Acton wanted to expand. “In 2017, I built a little mobile booth. Just a couple of tents and a couple of big pizza ovens on wheels that we used to go to smaller festivals up in the mountains,” he says. And he didn’t stop there. “In 2018, I built a big festival trailer, specifically for festivals. … We do a lot of catering with it as well, but it was mainly a festival thing until COVID hit. We kind of took a step back after that, but we got back into it last year.”

Now, with three mobile pizzeria operations, Acton contributes his success to high personal standards. “We do our version of New York-style pizza. It’s all hand-tossed. We make all the dough and all the sauces we use. We have very well-trained pizza guys,” he says. “I’ve got pretty strict standards for what my pizza is. We’re looking for that crunch, the chew, the good cheese and the good sauce. We hand-crush all our tomatoes, so it really is a hand-crushed tomato sauce, and we leave the sauce a little bit chunky. It’s kind of what makes ours a little unique. But really, just keep it traditional to the New York style.”

Although Acton prefers to keep it traditional and simple when it comes to pizza, he admits that he’s had some fun with pies in the past. “The funkiest pizza that we’ve made is probably the chicken and waffles that we used to run as a brunch slice at festivals. I don’t really do that anymore, but it was buttermilk fried chicken with a butter and hot sauce base topped with maple syrup and waffles,” he says.

“A really popular one that we do now is a jalapeño popper slice,” he adds, with bacon, jalapeños, cream cheese, and homemade raspberry chipotle barbecue sauce on top.

While he serves up creative specials from time to time, Rocky Mountain Slices focuses mainly on classic staples like cheese and pepperoni. “Our best-selling slice is the Godfather, with sausage, roasted red peppers, ricotta cheese and then little dollops of red sauce,” Acton says. “We just try to make good food. I pride myself on our dough; it’s recipes from everywhere that I worked kind of all combined.”

After a decade in business, Acton’s not slowing down. In 2019, he started a company that sells dough to Prefare, a meal-kit business.

Up next: “I don’t know if I can say too much about it, but let’s just say that this fall, you will be able to see us seven days a week,” Acton says, teasing a new venture to come.

Until then, if you’re craving a New York-style slice, be sure to check out Rocky Mountain Slice’s website for information on where it will be, or swing by Finn’s Manor in RiNo on Fridays and Saturdays, when it regularly parks out front.