In 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, Katie’s owner Katie Lee began making frozen pizzas so that her business would survive and her staff could remain employed. Five years later, what started out of necessity is launching her into the national spotlight, thanks to a major deal with Target.
Beginning today, Katie’s frozen pizzas will be sold in all 1,800 Target stores nationwide. Not only will her pizzas be available in the stores, but the mega retailer is also putting its full weight behind Katie’s products, giving her valuable endcap space, marketing support, and Tier One launch status—its highest priority, most resource-intensive launch, rarely seen for brands the size of Katie’s.
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Target is beginning its relationship with Katie’s by carrying all four of its frozen pizzas: burrata margherita, meatball, black garlic and burrata, and pepperoni with honey. Katie’s pasta sauce and pasta will follow; Lee says the additional products are slated to arrive on Target’s shelves in May of next year.
“It’s been an incredible feat, but we did it,” says Lee. “I think this opens up a lot of potential and, I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t be a national, iconic brand in near future and be able to do that through handcrafting, sourcing really good ingredients, telling a good story and being super transparent. I see a big future for our team.”
Scaling Up
Lee and her team first connected with Target earlier this year at a consumer packaged goods trade show in Anaheim. There, the retailer approached Lee and her team, noting that they were interested in her pizza and wanted to explore a possible relationship. In April, Lee flew to Target’s Minneapolis headquarters for a pitch meeting, thinking that the company was looking for a regional launch; instead, she was informed that they wanted to put her products in all of their stores throughout the country and give Katie’s a Tier One launch, meaning the deal would include its endcaps, which was a significantly larger commitment than she was anticipating. She wasn’t sure if she could meet that demand, but she said yes, hoping she and her team could figure it out.
“We were excited at first, and then we started to understand what it takes to fill an endcap—it’s double what you’d anticipate,” says Lee. “I realized it meant 400,000 pizzas, which seemed impossible because we are not automated. I got the team together, and we all agreed that this is our big shot. We sat down, crunched the numbers, and they came out almost impossible but still maybe reachable. Knowing the team and what we have all been through, we decided we were going to go for it.”
Lee cannot emphasize enough how big of a deal it is to be a Tier One launch. “I’ve talked to people who are very high up in the consumer packaged goods industry, and they have never seen a Tier One launch for a brand like ours,” says Lee. “What this means is that Target is putting their entire company and resources behind us. It’s a big move for them.”
In talking to Target, Lee understands that the retailer is excited to work with her company because they see consumers demanding craft, clean food, and small luxuries—and they see the Katie’s brand as embodying this. Lee is committed to remaining true to that craft ethos, even at such a large scale. “The thing about this company is that we have always said we had to stay true to the craft as we scale,” says Lee.
That means drastically expanding their already impressive frozen pizza operation. Currently, Katie’s consumer packaged goods line—which includes pastas and sauces in addition to pizzas—operates out of a site in Creve Coeur, but they are in the process of designing a much larger facility in Bridgeton to handle the additional demand. Until then, the Creve Coeur operation has been pushed to the max, going from producing 1,000 to 8,000 pizzas per day, all of which are handmade as if you were ordering them while dining at one of her restaurants.
“Every day, there was a 911-level emergency call, whether that was about our electrical systems and equipment being overloaded or a tornado taking out our power,” says Lee. “But every day, we would learn from whatever happened the last day. Every one of us—me, the chef collective, our team members—was lending a hand to make these pizzas. It was incredible.”
The Branding
Lee knew that the logistics of making enough pizzas to fulfill the Target agreement would be difficult. What she was not prepared for was how much would go into creating a national brand in the scope of the 96 days allotted to her by the retailer.
“Target is giving us all of this support, so we have to support Target by becoming a national brand in the three months they gave us to make this happen,” says Lee. “Basically, we had to become famous. That became the work of creating content and strategy and paid media and everything you have to do to support a launch like this. On top of making all of these pizzas, we had to build brand awareness, because if we don’t, the pizzas won’t sell.”
Lee and her team enlisted the help of St. Louis native Gregory Shadwick, a creative and brand strategist who now lives and works in Los Angeles and has worked on product launches with such companies as Apple, Vital Proteins, and Uber. They also worked with a documentarian who chronicled the entire 96 days of the launch that will be made into a film, which will be part of Katie’s marketing strategy.
Looking Ahead
Lee has been thrilled by the support that the Katie’s brand has received from Target and believes that the arrangement is the first step toward her products being on the shelves of additional national retailers. That’s why she is investing in the forthcoming Bridgeton production space, which will be five times larger than the Creve Coeur space and will have space for refrigerated trucks and additional product storage.
Lee’s expansion plans include Walmart, which has already given Katie’s its famous golden ticket, the green light that it will begin selling her products. “We’re super grateful for Walmart’s enthusiasm and believe it’s a good opportunity for the future,” says Lee. “We’re waiting until we have everything in place to support Walmart; we want to be ready when we go into their stores, which will hopefully be next year. The deal with Target shows that the tide in retail is turning toward brands like us; it’s very exciting and is a matter of us being ready for them.”
The Backstory
Lee opened her first Katie’s Pizza in Clayton in 2008 with her father, the late Tom Lee. At the time, she often jokes, she had no idea how to fold a pizza box, but through her hard work, tenacity, and passion for food, she built a loyal following that led her to expand her brand, first with a larger restaurant in Rock Hill (which is slated to expand again to a nearby space), then with additional locations in Town and Country, Ballpark Village, and a forthcoming restaurant in Crestwood.
Lee had no plans to get into the frozen pizza business, but when the pandemic hit in 2020, she and her team decided to make a go for it in order to keep the staff fully employed. One day in March of that year, they made a pizza, cryovac-ed it, threw it in the freezer, and heated it up the next day to see if it was any good. To their surprise, it was delicious, so they scaled up as quickly as possible and launched a bona fide frozen pizza business that not only carried them through the difficult times of the pandemic, it allowed them to grow their business. Eventually, they were approached by Dierbergs, which began carrying their packaged goods line. From that moment, the sky has been the limit.
“It’s been very hard. Over the last five years, we have never made money from it because the grocery business is incredibly difficult,” Lee says. “Until you can get a volume play, it is a struggle. There have been many moments over the last five years where it was either not making money or sucking out money from the rest of the business. I’d often ask myself, Is this worth it? or Why am I doing this?
“This Target break for us was more than just OK—it kind of saved the business and made it a success. This is a story about holding on tight, even when it gets hard. As long as you stick with it, eventually it will all click.”
