St. Louis-based Katie’s Pizza & Pasta scored big on Walmart’s Open Call product pitch day by earning the rare and coveted Golden Ticket offer. The win means founder Katie Lee’s handmade frozen pizzas will be available in Walmart grocery stores starting in mid-to-late 2025.
Lee and Culinary Director Chef Jake Sanderson received the news onsite at Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, immediately following their pitch, which focused on Lee’s unrelenting drive to grow the brand and keep doing more to share their award-winning offerings with a wider audience. Only a fraction of the hundreds of businesses who pitch thousands of products during Walmart’s Open Call receive the prestigious Golden Ticket offer.
“We did it! We got a Golden Ticket,” Lee said. “It’s the American dream come true, and we’re so proud to expand into Walmart. We’re so grateful to our St. Louis fans who have supported us as we started offering frozen pizzas through our restaurant business during the pandemic. We dreamed big and expanded into local grocery outlets, nationwide shipping, then moved into wider retail distribution, and now Walmart.”
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According to a press release, Katie’s is outperforming the strong frozen pizza category with over 100% growth year over year for the past three years, which is 10 times the growth of the entire category. Lee’s frozen pizza line is handcrafted daily with scratch ingredients. Katie’s Pizza & Pasta is the only restaurant of its size that makes pizzas and pastas by hand for retail, raising the bar on packaged frozen food.
Following the 2021 renovation of its frozen production facility, Katie’s frozen pizzas and pasta bakes became available at local St. Louis grocers Dierbergs Markets and Straubs. Growth continued with expansions into retailers including Fresh Market, Fresh Thyme, Kings-Balduccis, Mothers, Whole Foods Markets and more.
Lee was featured on PMQ’s cover in the May 2017 issue. She started out in 2008 with a restaurant owned by her father, then opened Katie’s Pizza & Pasta in Rock Hill in 2013. That was followed by the Town & Country location in 2017. The largest location opened in 2023 in downtown St. Louis’ Ballpark Village, featuring a pasta-making station, wood-fired grill, expansive patio, private events space and in-house market selling to-go items.
Lee’s portfolio of fresh and frozen pizzas, pastas and sauces are available at many grocery retailers and shipped nationwide. Since 2014, KPP’s “Giveback Tuesday” program has donated over $470,000 to St. Louis-based charities.
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