As it turns 80 years old, an iconic Detroit pizza brand is coming home—in a sense. Buddy’s Pizza, owned since 2018 by Nashville-based investment firm CapitalSpring, has been purchased for an undisclosed price by a group of Motor City locals who say the deal is “deeply personal” to them.
The new ownership group is led by local entrepreneurs Saber Ammori, Andrew Dickow and Kevin Denha.
Buddy’s Pizza invented Detroit-style pizza and has spawned countless imitators around the U.S. But CapitalSpring’s efforts to export the brand outside the metro Detroit area largely foundered in recent years. New stores opened and then closed in western Michigan cities like Grand Rapids and Portage.
Buddy’s has changed hands four times since it was founded by Gus and Anna Guerra in 1946. Eager to focus on a new venture, the equally legendary Cloverleaf Pizza, the Guerras sold the restaurant to Jimmy Bonacorsi and Jimmy Valenti in 1953. In 1970, the Jacobs family took over and expanded the brand to multiple locations across Detroit before selling it to CapitalSpring in 2018.
Now it’s time to return to basics and focus on protecting and reenergizing Buddy’s legacy, the new owners said in a press release.
“For us, this is deeply personal,” said Dickow, who recalled eating the famous square pies at Buddy’s. “The crust had that unmistakable crunch, the pizza felt premium in a way nothing else did, and it was the highlight of my day. Buddy’s has always been more than a meal. It is a part of Detroit’s fabric, and for a lot of us, it is tied to family, tradition and memory.”
“Our goal is not to change what makes Buddy’s special but to reinforce it,” Ammori said. “That starts with our employees, our commitment to authentic Detroit-style pizza, and delivering the level of customer service that our guests have come to expect from a brand with this kind of heritage.”
In an interview with WDIV Local 4, Juan Rojas, Buddy’s newly appointed CEO, clearly felt a Detroit icon like Buddy’s Pizza ought to be owned by Detroiters, not investors from Nashville. “We needed to get this back here,” he said. “For the ownership team, all these guys were born and raised here, and this is just emotional for them.”
The U.S. pizza scene was forever changed in 1946 when Buddy’s Rendezvous Pizza served its first square-shaped pie—which eventually came to be known as Detroit-style. Legends surround the brand, but it seems most likely that a Sicilian-born waitress named Connie developed the recipe for then-owner Gus Guerra.
While various regions around the U.S. lay claim to their own pizza styles, not all of them are particularly distinctive. Detroit’s style definitely is. It’s made in rectangular blue steel pans that offer “unique baking properties”; the dough is stretched numerous times; and the pies undergo a seemingly backward assembly process (makers first add the pepperoni, then cheese, and finally stripes of sauce, atop the dough)—techniques unchanged from the original days.
However, under CapitalSpring’s ownership, Buddy’s dabbled in other approaches. The company last year circled the square, so to speak, when it introduced round pies at two of its newer locations—the ones in Grand Rapids and Portage that have since closed.
In the WDIV interview, Rojas emphasized that Buddy’s new ownership has immense respect for the brand’s 80-year legacy and the people who built it. “I’ve been blown away by the team,” he said. “I’m meeting people who have been here 20, 30, 45 years. My job right now is to unleash those people. Some of them helped create these pizzas. You don’t mess with that…I met (an employee) [with 40 years of experience] making dough. What am I going to teach him about making dough?”
However, Rojas said some customers have complained to him about a perceived decline in Buddy’s overall pizza quality. “It’s really hard to argue with the feedback you’re getting. It’s daunting to get all that feedback all the time. I had this woman in one restaurant half-congratulate me and half-yell at me, but it’s really coming from a place of love and high expectations. That’s the way I see it. I get to steward this brand, which has been here before me and will be here long after me.”
The new ownership’s primary goal, he added, is to reclaim Buddy’s “undisputed crown as the best pizza in the world. We want that back first. That’s the first order of business.”
