Pi Pizzeria (400 N. Euclid)—home of the pizza that former President Barack Obama once proclaimed his favorite in the country—is closing its last remaining location, in the Central West End, after service July 7. Sunday hours are 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. The business (including the recipes, furniture, and fixtures) is for sale, according to owner Chris Sommers.m.
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Reached this morning, Sommers says, “Despite our issues and challenges, we made it 16 ½ years. We had a great run.”
The closure was due to a variety of reasons, Sommers says, the most significant being the pandemic. He says that “the downtown locations were by far the most profitable, which changed post-[pandemic], when office workers did not return. The Pi and Gringo downtown, along with the monster Pi in Washington, DC, are what kept us going for so long, and then that all ended.”
Sommers says sales were down since last fall at the Pi location in the CWE, and they didn’t bounce back this year despite changes and adjustments. The fire that closed the nearby Mission Taco Joint, Ranoush, and Salt + Smoke locations two years ago also affected sales, Sommers says. “The loss of those three restaurants left us sitting almost alone on an island. All of that took its toll.” (Mission Taco Joint and Ranoush are slated to reopen later this year.)
Four years ago, Sommers returned to his former career in software and app development, which he says also affected the restaurant, but “I had my eye on the ball for a long time,” he says, “and had a team that did the same.” Sommers says he plans to help place Pi’s employees and has been working on it behind the scenes already.
“But at the end of the day and especially today,” he adds, “successful restaurants are run by operators who are there day in and day out,” which his other obligations did not allow him to do. Pi remains a solid brand in St. Louis, he notes, and “is an opportunity for the right individual, an owner-operator. I sincerely hope that Pi is not done forever.”
Regarding the closure, Sommers cited the familiar refrain that “there’s no right way to do it. You close suddenly, and guests are upset they couldn’t visit one last time. You close with notice, and you run the risk that staff won’t show up or you’ll run out of food or both, which is why I didn’t do this at least a little sooner. I hope that some of our friends will be able to visit us in the next few days.”
The Backstory
In 2007, Sommers bought the recipe to his favorite pizza in San Francisco and parlayed it into the biggest local restaurant success story in years. In 2008, SLM wrote that the deep-dish, cornmeal-crusted Pi pie was “arguably St Louis’ favorite (new) pizza.”
At about the same time, when Obama was visiting St. Louis, he declared Pi his favorite pizza in the country (high praise from a Chicagoan!), which garnered Sommers a visit to the White House to cook pizza for the president and his staffers. It was the first time that a St. Louis restaurant—and certainly a local pizzeria—was granted such an opportunity.
Sommer’s Pi On The Spot was the first food truck to hit local pavement. He was the first restaurateur to sign on to downtown’s ambitious Mercantile Exchange (MX) project. Over the years, Sommers opened nine Pi Pizzeria/Pi-branded locations across several states.
Sommers had long been ahead of the curve for improving employee wages and benefits as well. In 2014, his restaurants were the first in St. Louis to implement an hourly minimum wage of $10.10 (a substantial increase at the time) for non-tipped employees, a policy which Obama mentioned in a news address.
According to Sommers, Pi was one of the first locally owned restaurants to offer its employees health insurance. “Pi has taken care of a lot of people over the years,” he says. “I would like that part to continue, too.”
Parties interested in Pi Pizzeria can reach Sommers via the contact form on its website.
