Katie Lee has always been an underdog. Before achieving nationwide acclaim as the owner of Katie’s in St. Louis and her groundbreaking success in frozen pizza, she was a high school dropout, homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol. Clean and sober today, she’s one of the country’s most prominent pizza restaurateurs. She’s also the driving force behind a new line of handcrafted frozen pizzas that’s now available in every Target store nationwide.
How’s that for a comeback story?
Lee recently announced the launch of her frozen pizza line in Target stores with a series of dramatic videos on social media that underscored the project’s behind-the-scenes challenges and setbacks, including a desperate—and ultimately unsuccessful—quest for a larger production facility in a very short time window. She and her team needed to make—by hand, mind you—400,000 pizzas in 96 days.
“I would say the feeling right now is, it’s super-impossible,” Lee lamented in one of those videos depicting the early stage of that journey. But that was just a feeling, not the reality. In the end, the Katie’s team settled for using their existing space. Under the gun, they hired more staff, brought in more freezers and equipment, and got to work quickly.
“The pressure is intense, and our facility knows it,” the text for the series’ third video post stated, with just 50 days to go. “Power outages, equipment breaks. We aren’t making our numbers. Some of the hardest days our team has ever faced. Catastrophe city! Every day we feel like giving up, but instead we fix what is broken, get faster, work smarter and keep going!”
Then, with 40 days to go, “the incredible begins to happen. Like magic.” Lee’s team, which had doubled in size, started hitting its numbers every day, while new refrigerated trucks were purchased to handle the load. “We are not only making more pizzas, they are better than before,” one post noted. “A gift from repetition and grit….We go from making 1,000 pizzas on day 1 to 7,000 a day on day 45, with 45 [days] left. We’ve got a shot at making the largest order of our lives.”
Finally, with 25 days to go before launch, the Katie’s team “did the impossible”—making 400,000 pies from scratch for one of the world’s largest retailers and meeting its deadline.
Not to mention Katie’s pies will be displayed in Target’s coveted frozen endcap, a tier-one launch usually reserved for the big brands. “Call it a miracle,” the final post in the video series read. “If we would’ve known what we were up against 96 days ago, we would’ve said no, but instead this team came together in the most incredible way….This isn’t just the deal that will change our company. It’s a deal that taught us what humans are capable of. It’s a deal that taught us that we can do anything, and yes was the right answer.”
PMQ Pizza reported last year that Lee had scored the coveted Golden Ticket from Walmart, an opportunity to get her frozen pizzas and other consumer packaged goods (CPG)—including frozen pasta bakes, dried pastas, olive oil and more—in that global retailer’s stores. In PMQ’s May 2025 cover story, Lee alluded to a pending deal with Target as well and said she was in talks with other grocery chains like Kroger and Winn-Dixie.
“I’m not in a position where everything is riding on Walmart,” Lee told PMQ at the time. “It’s amazing, it’s absolutely gonna take us to the next level. But we’re grateful for what we have already….I always believed we will be in Walmart. I know we’re going to be in Target and Costco. I know we’ll be in every retailer across the country. It’s just a matter of how long—and how much hard work—it will take to get there. [The Golden Ticket] just made it easier.”
Lee built her small but renowned pizzeria brand—with three locations in St. Louis—on talent, grit and fierce yet compassionate determination. She supports numerous local causes with her Giveback Tuesdays, most recently donating 100% of an event’s proceeds to 100 Roofs, a local nonprofit that’s helping stabilize 100 occupied homes in North St. Louis following a devastating tornado on May 16.
She hasn’t forgotten the darker days of her past, when she found herself in a rehab center and looked around for a chance to make a getaway. She has recorded her journey in a unique magazine-style memoir, The Katie Lee Story, written in her own tight, vivid, near-poetic prose and illustrated with striking original artwork.
And look at her now. “When I was homeless, everything I owned would have fit into one of their shopping bags,” Lee said in a press release. “Now I’ve made it to Target’s shelves with Katie’s pizzas. I’ve come a long way, and our team is always pushing, no matter the odds. As a busy working mom, it’s hard to find convenient, real food—so we made it ourselves. This is real food for the soul handcrafted with the best ingredients. There’s nothing else like it and we’re proud to stand behind that.”
Additionally, Katie’s brand of handmade frozen pizzas has outperformed the strong frozen pizza category with more than 100% year-over-year growth since 2021. Using 48-hour naturally leavened dough, each chef-made pizza features a hand-stretched crust that’s wood-fired at 800° F. The four varieties featured at Target include:
- Burrata Margherita: House-made sauce, burrata, extra virgin olive oil, mozzarella, Parmesan, basil and sea salt
- Pepperoni Stracciatella: Cup-and-char pepperoni drizzled with wildflower honey on a bed of creamy stracciatella and fontina cheeses, finished with EVOO
- Meatball Pizza: Hand-rolled meatballs from select ground beef, Italian sausage, fresh grated Parmesan, toasted pine nuts, breadcrumbs, fontina, Parmesan and house-made sauce.
- Black Garlic Burrata Cheese: A Katie’s original, starring chef-made black garlic impasto complemented by burrata, Pecorino Romano and dried chives
