What started as an experiment to see whether a Little Village tavern’s patrons would like small squares of pizza instead of popcorn and pretzels turned into a nationwide frozen pizza company. With 750 employees at its Woodridge, Illinois, facility, Home Run Inn Pizza makes more than 100,000 pizzas a day! The company is still family-owned and still uses the original recipe and thin-crust, square-cut style. Marketing director Gina Bolger, great-granddaughter of co-founder Mary Grittani, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander the fascinating origin story in the audio clip below. And wait till you hear how the tavern — now with nine locations, including the original — got its name.
Photo from Home Run Inn Pizza
Celebrating National Pizza Day with the fascinating story of how a mom and pop tavern morphed into a frozen pizza behemoth