Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria expanding to Ballpark Village

Katie and Ted Collier's third—and largest—location will be located across from Gate 4 at Busch Stadium.

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One of the city’s busiest, buzziest, and most beloved restaurant concepts is expanding, again.

Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria, with locations in Rock Hill and Town & Country, will build a third venue at Ballpark Village (751 Clark), directly across from Gate 4 at Busch Stadium and adjacent to the Live! By Loews hotel.

The 10,000-square-foot, ground-level space was originally slated for a Midwestern outpost of Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse until the pandemic derailed those plans. The projected opening date is early 2023, but co-owner Katie Collier says it could be sooner and “a great reason for a New Year’s Eve party.” 

The Back Story

Katie Lee, and her father, Tom Lee, opened the original Katie’s Pizza (6611 Clayton) in 2008. Five years later, buoyed by a successful Kickstarter campaign, she (along with husband Ted Collier) opened Katie's Pizza & Pasta Osteria (9568 Manchester) in Rock Hill. A much larger establishment, it became an instant success. The patio was expanded and eventually covered. The original location closed in early 2017, when Tom Lee retired. Later that year, the Town & Country location (14171 Clayton) opened, with a light, bright, and “more mature, modern feel,” she told SLM at the time.

It wasn't long before Katie was garnering local and national awards. PMQ Pizza magazine hailed her marketing prowess, calling her “the queen of all pizza media in St. Louis.” And that was before she started marketing frozen pizzas, a pandemic pivot that helped save more than 100 staff jobs. The public embraced the concept, which became a success story all its own. The pizzas are available locally at Dierbergs grocery stores (coming soon to Whole Foods and Fresh Thyme) and can be shipped all over the country, along with house-made pasta, sauces, and even the artichoke toasted ravioli, another house favorite. (Katie’s brother, Tommy Lee, manages the company's frozen foods operation.)

Having been the recipient of Kickstarter largesse themselves, the Colliers started the Giveback Tuesdays program, donating an entire day's profits once a month to a different local charity. (For every frozen pizza order, one is provided to local area food banks as well). The donation tally to date: more than $321,000 and thousands of frozen pizzas.

A Downtown Draw

The Colliers say they’ve been looking for a city location for years. “We’re St. Louis born and raised and thought a Katie’s would be a really cool thing to do downtown,” Katie says, looking at it as a way to give back to the city, in addition to “focusing that Giveback Tuesdays program on the city’s youth-based sport programs, like Mathews-Dickey and Cardinals Care.”

Including the St. Louis Cardinals’ attendance over 82 days, plus concerts, other sporting events, and tourists, Ballpark Village entertains more than 6 million people per year, making it the most visited spot in the state, according to Ballpark Village CEO Mike LaMartina, who also touts the “live, work, and play any day of the year” aspect.

Still, the Colliers admit they were initially skeptical of off-season business, "but when we visited in January,” Katie says, “there was an hour wait at Salt + Smoke on a cold, overcast day in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week. That’s all we needed to see.

“Tom [Schmidt, owner of Salt+Smoke] reminded us of the returning convention business and all the traffic that the Blues generate. He said he’d been so focused on the red seats, he’d forgotten about the blue seats. We came down here unsure and left very, very confident. Ballpark Village is the iconic location downtown.”

'A Big Fan'

It didn’t hurt that St. Louis Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III is a longtime Katie’s Pizza devotee. “I love their restaurants and count myself as a big fan of all that they’ve done, before and during the pandemic,” he says.

“St. Louis’ restaurant scene is vibrant,” he says. “For many St. Louisans, going out to eat is their thing to do. They take advantage of all the unique places to go. Katie’s is in that mix.” 

DeWitt III notes that the Colliers’ restaurants appeal to a wide range of customers, working as well for a business dinner as they do for a casual meal with family. "We have that full range of diners at Ballpark Village, often on the same night,” he says, citing locals in Cardinals jerseys, people visiting St. Louis, and travelers on business staying at nearby hotels. “It’s a unique site, and Katie's will be a great fit.

“Katie has adapted well in other parts of town,” DeWitt III adds. “A Ballpark Village location will create new opportunities, just like it did for Tom at Salt + Smoke." (The BPV location is the barbecue chain's fifth location and its busiest.)

Another advantage of “local and already existing” is the spillover effect. “With Katie’s Rock Hill [location] being busy all the time and BPV only 15 minutes away,” Dewitt III says, “some of her clientele will likely end up there.”

DeWitt III says it’s rewarding when a business owner says they believe in having a strong downtown and invest the time and money to make that happen. “We’ve planted the biggest flag we could here,” he says, “so to have others dive in with us feels really good.” And with the daily office flow returning, Dewitt III says, “it’s an especially good time to do that.

“We’re hopeful of more development,” he adds, “but big projects take time. In the meantime—and I think I’m speaking collectively here—we’re enjoying the invigorated commitment to downtown, projects like the soccer stadium and the possibility of more residential towers."

Asked what’s on the horizon, Dewitt III is working on “enlarging the pie” by adding more culinary diversity. “Pan-Asian, maybe a Mexican place, there’s always room for a burger concept. I see those categories as being additive, and we’ve had discussions in all those areas.

The Layout

The 10,000-square-foot Ballpark Village facility will be the Colliers’ biggest to date—“three Rock Hill [locations] and then some,” quips Ted. Katie describes the wall décor as “art heavy.” Another focal point is a building-length patio with a bank of French doors. Behind the bar will be screens featuring projected Italian movies and live baseball games. The kitchen sprawls along the back wall and is fully open, including the prep area. Regarding the décor, Katie says to expect a vibe similar to an industrial loft artist studio, “light and bright, with lots of greenery this time, so think plants and indoor trees.”

Such ancillaries as a small market selling grab-and-go items, as well as pastas, pizzas, sauces, and salad dressing, will service nearby offices and residents. All of Katie’s pasta will be made in a glass-walled pasta-making room next to the market—not just the extruded types (such as spaghetti) but also the handmade shapes (such as orecchiette, cappelletti, and agnolotti), which are currently being made at a commissary along with the frozen pizzas. “Since we will be making pasta for all three locations, there should be activity to watch throughout the day and night,” Katie says.

Spiegelglass Construction Company is the general contractor. The project architect is TAO+LEE Associates. “Starting at the dirt floor stage allows us to check off all our unchecked boxes” Ted adds, "all made possible by TAO + LEE, who are not just architects but masters of functionality, like sound abatement, one lesson we learned the hard way. They also designed the core and shell for the entire building, so they know better than anyone what will work in our space and what won’t.”

Similarities & Differences

The menu—appetizers, Italian-leaning salads, seasonal specials such as ricotta stuffed fried squash blossoms, sharable plates, and wood-oven fired pizzas—will be similar to the other locations but expanded to include location-specific items. The location will also feature a wood-fired grill for such favorites as Bistecca alla Fiorentina and rotisserie chicken, as well as grilled whole fish.

 “It will be both a continuation and a progression of the concept,” Katie says. “We can finally add a few things that have been missing,” one of them being a space for private parties and events that can also be used for overflow dining. 

The Colliers say they get several requests for such events every day, “a bombardment of DM’s” for rehearsal dinners, wedding receptions, baby showers, parties of all kinds. “We can cater offsite, but neither of our other places is equipped to do anything onsite without closing,” Ted adds. “All of that business can be directed here. Yes, it’s a huge space—250 seats inside, 100 outside—but it allows us to do what we want to do, what we need to do.”

Another adjunct is the to-go window, where guests can purchase canned cocktails (such as the house basil margarita) and pizza (the latter can be taken into Busch Stadium at nearby Gate 4).

As with the other Katie's locations, Bommarito Wines & Spirits’ Alisha Blackwell will curate the wine list, featuring “all cool, affordably priced, Italian wines,” says Katie. Industry veteran Hayley AuBuchon is in charge of the cocktail program, which pays homage to patriarchs Tom Lee (Katie’s father) and Rolando Llerena Colon, who both recently passed away. Several of the cocktails take their names from expressions that the men often used, including the Deal or No Deal Martini, Lifeaholic, Unemployable, and Next Stop Belize.  

“Rolando was a former professional baseball player in Cuba and a refugee,” Katie says. “Both he and my dad were huge, huge Cardinals fans. They would have loved this location.”

The Players

The new Katie’s will be a family affair, in both the literal and figurative sense. Ted Collier and Belinda Lee, both accomplished artists, will provide artwork for the space.  

Katie’s brother, Johnny Lee, who's a master’s student at USC studying human resources, has “been teaching us ways to attract and retain employees,” Katie says, which will bear fruit when the restaurant looks to hire approximately 100 employees. “In just a year, he’s changed our company so much, singlehandedly.”

The immediate family and executive chef Jake Sanderson plan travel to Italy in the fall “on an R&D trip, to make sure what we’re planning is up-to-date and perfect,” Katie says. “We send Jake all over the country to stage, too, to see what we might be missing.”

During the pandemic, Katie was able to keep her restaurant family “together and busy” as well. “It was a bonding experience,” she says. “Those pivots only made us stronger.”

DeWitt III feels similarly. “Failure is not an option for us,” he says. “We’ll support whoever’s committing to downtown, and we’re going to continue to do that ourselves. That’s our game plan.”

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