Frozen pizza is no longer a choice between corporate brands like Red Baron and DiGiorno. Consumers’ options are getting better and better now that independent pizzerias like Di Fara, the iconic Brooklyn pizza shop founded in 1965 by the late Dom DeMarco, have started making their way into home ovens around the country.
Di Fara has been expanding its portfolio of frozen pizzas since it entered the consumer packaged goods (CPG) market in ShopRite stores four months ago. The DeMarco family’s latest offering: the new Three-Meat Pizza. It features hand-crafted meatballs, sliced Italian sausage and cup-and-char pepperoni, plus mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano and DeMarco’s signature Sunday sauce.
Di Fara makes its frozen pizzas highly affordable, too. “Priced under $10, Di Fara’s frozen offerings are bridging the gap between restaurant-caliber quality and accessible pricing—a differentiator in a category where elevated, branded offerings continue to perform,” the company said in a press release.
Related: How Independent Pizzerias Are Elevating the Frozen Pizza Segment
The Di Fara line of frozen pies also includes the Vodka Sauce Pizza made with a vodka sauce base, mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano, basil and vine-ripened tomatoes, as well as the Classic (mozz, Parmigiano Reggiano, basil and tomato sauce) and the Pepperoni (mozz, pepperoni, basil and tomato sauce).
Di Fara, which has partnered in the CPG venture with BossBites, is just the latest independent pizza brand to appear on the frozen-foods shelves of supermarkets around the country. The fast-growing movement reflects consumer interest in higher-quality frozen pizza created by accomplished restaurant chefs, minus the preservatives typically used by the manufacturers that have dominated grocery stores for decades.
Anthony Mangieri, owner of New York’s Una Pizza Napoletana, might be the best-known and most lauded indie pizzaiolo to launch a line of frozen pies. His Genio Della Pizza brand debuted in 2023. But Mangieri admitted last year to PMQ Pizza that his Neapolitan-style frozen pies are “a completely different product” compared to the fresh pizzas he serves at his restaurant.
As Mangieri explained in PMQ Pizza’s April 2024 cover story, “That’s also why I didn’t name it Una Pizza or Anthony Mangieri. I named it something that was separate from the restaurant and myself. But I’m on the back of the box, and I’ve given it all my love. I go to Italy every single time we do a production run. I’m in the factory, and I make the pizza and run around driving everyone nuts, telling them that we need to turn the oven temperature higher or lower, add more cheese or less cheese, and all that. I’ve tried to give it the same attention to detail that I’ve given Una, but with the idea that it’s accessible to people outside of the restaurant.”
50 Top Pizza, a highly respected Italian guide, declared Una Pizza Napoletana the best pizzeria in the world in 2024 and No. 1 in the U.S. this year.
Tutta Bella, which has five locations and two food trucks in the Seattle area, has made headway in Kroger stores this year, and Katie’s, a three-store St. Louis brand owned by Chef Katie Lee (pictured above), is another growing force in the market. Celebrated Minnesota pizzaiola Ann Kim, owner of Pizzeria Lola and Young Joni, also joined their ranks earlier this year with her own frozen pizzas in Target stores.
For Lee, freezing and selling her pizza was “a survival mechanism” during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We prototyped a frozen pizza and pivoted to that in about 72 hours,” she told PMQ Pizza in the May 2025 cover story. “We launched a simple e-commerce site on Shopify and sold 50,000 pizzas in the first six weeks, just in the metropolitan St. Louis area….It was an instant success. My restaurants have always been a success, and I’m lucky like that. But this was the first time where I felt like, oh, my goodness! It’s like when someone strikes oil or gold.”
In late 2024, Lee’s products scored a Golden Ticket from Walmart, which opened the doors to getting her pizzas, pasta bakes, EVOO and other items in the company’s stores nationwide. “We dreamed big,” Lee said at the time.
Related: Keep an Eye on Katie Lee: She’s About to Become a Nationwide Brand
Frozen pizza is such a hot topic that it will be covered in a session titled “Some Like It Cold: Shipping Your Frozen Pizza to Build a National Brand,” at PMQ Pizza’s upcoming Pizza Power Forum, taking place September 2 through 4 in Atlanta.
Meanwhile, Di Fara is reportedly looking to expand into national grocery chains like Kroger and LIDL.
But Di Fara’s entry into the world of CPGs is a bit ironic. Known as a perfectionist, Dom DeMarco, who passed away in March 2022, was famous for taking his sweet time as he made every pizza with his own two hands—no matter how many customers lined up outside the door.
