By Tracy Morin

When people think of Midwestern pizza, Chicago and Detroit may get much of the glory, but one pizzeria wants to add another entry to the list of legends: Minnesota style, or ’Sota style for short. It’s a relatively new phenomenon with a long history—Red’s Savoy Pizza didn’t officially trademark “’Sota style” until 2017, but its founder had pioneered his singular interpretation of pizza decades before.

Flash forward to 2024, and this historic, now steadily growing brand will have more than 20 locations by the year’s end. With its presence now spreading beyond its original outpost in St. Paul, Minnesota—so far, into North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa—customers in more areas of the country are getting the chance to become converts. 

A Heavy Load
When Earl “Red” Schoenheider purchased a small tavern, the Savoy Inn, in 1965, the 6’4” entrepreneur made a natural bartender and bouncer. But he didn’t become a bona-fide pizza slinger until the next-door Sorini’s Pizza went up for sale in the late ’60s. “He bought the place, knocked a hole in the wall and started serving pizza,” recounts Reed Daniels, current CEO of Red’s Savoy Pizza. “He mastered the sauce. All of the pizza is very important, but what established the difference was the sauce.”

What’s your pizzeria’s pain point? Get the solutions from our experts at PMQ’s Pizza Power Forum

Today, Red’s calls its sauce “passive-aggressive”—a blend of sweet and savory, with a slightly spicy kick. The sausage, too, is a proprietary blend. The resulting pies, Daniels explains, are reminiscent of the Chicago tavern style, cut into squares. “But theirs is more thin and crispy,” he adds. “Ours is a bit thicker, and we put on way more toppings.” 

Indeed, loads of toppings are another key differentiation. The official mission of Red’s is to “rid the world of skimpy, wimpy pizzas,” and the pizzeria walks the talk. Its founder, in fact, often told his employees if they were skimping on the toppings, “We need to make a living, not a killing.” Part of this defining characteristic was born of circumstance: “Red’s hands were like bear mitts,” Daniels says. But, years after Schoenheider’s passing in 2017, “we still layer the toppings in huge handfuls—so you get a full layer of pepperoni, a full layer of sausage. You get a bite of every topping in every bite.” Holding up that heavy load is a relatively thin crust that’s run through a sheeter twice and docked before saucing. The pizza is then cooked on a metal disc to support the toppings. 

In another niche move, there’s one topping at Red’s that most American pizzerias don’t offer: sauerkraut. One limited-time pizza making the menu this summer is called the Ballpark, loaded with sauerkraut, hot giardiniera and sausage, finished with a mustard drizzle on top. “Sauerkraut is a popular Minnesota topping,” Daniels says. “It’s spectacular on pizza; it adds acidity.” 

Traditionally, Red’s used deck ovens, but two years ago new locations started making the switch to conveyor ovens with a black granite stone surface, which replicates the baking properties of a deck model. “There’s a significant art to deck ovens, with hot and cold spots,” Daniels explains. “With labor issues, we were running into consistency problems.”

Pizza Power Forum Preview: Being ‘cooler than the competition’ is a mostly uncool process

’Sota-Style Expansion
Consistency is an increasingly important consideration for the Red’s Savoy Pizza brand as it grows. Over the decades, Schoenheider ran a couple of locations himself but never harbored dreams of franchising. Only in the mid-2000s did he give permission to a couple of persistent Red’s Savoy fans to open a new location. Even without systems formally in place and loose agreements, Schoenheider managed to see his pizzeria grow to six or eight locations, Daniels estimates. 

But when Daniels, who started as a marketing consultant with Red’s in 2012, assumed operations after Schoenheider’s passing, he initiated a rebrand—and trademarking “’Sota style” seemed like a good idea. “We asked ourselves, ‘What differentiates us in the market?’” Daniels explains. “So we coined ’Sota style pizza. At first, people said, ‘There’s no such thing,’ but it has become a thing. The first 18 to 24 months, there was nothing [in terms of wider interest]—but now with all of these styles coming out from every region, it’s like a language or a dialect: This is how we pizza.”

For his part, Daniels knew a winning product when he saw it (and tasted it). “I realized how special the brand was, and the product is amazing,” he says. “The flavor profile is second to none.” 

In the future, Daniels isn’t sure how many cities might receive their own invasion of the ’Sota style, but franchising continues at a steady clip. “We get requests to open from snowbirds—people from here who have moved down to Florida, Texas or Arizona and say there’s no good pizza there,” Daniels says. “Pizza is a very interesting cuisine, because it creates memories. When you move away and miss home, pizza can bring you back in a second.” 

And, among customers that might not possess that nostalgia factor, curiosity has become a major selling point. By boldly claiming an entire style, Red’s Savoy attracts customers who just want to try something new. Even locally, the style is grabbing more attention. “In 2017, people were saying, ‘What’s that?’ Now, they’re saying, “My favorite ’Sota-style pizza is….’ Minnesota-style pizza has become a thing, locally and now regionally. That’s part of our marketing strategy when we go to new cities: to get people interested, then let the product speak for itself.”