What do you call a 29” specialty pizza that’s the equivalent of four pizzas? If your pizzeria is named Taranto’s, you won’t have to think too hard about it. Just call it the Tarantosaurus, and that monster pie will sell itself.

Taranto’s Pizzeria has just one location—in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio—but the woman-owned restaurant is big on marketing, offering a Sunday night Jeopardy-style Excess Trivia contest, Pizza Bingo, live music, fundraisers, ticket raffles for Ohio State football games and more. Debbie Taranto founded the pizzeria in 1999 and sold it last December to Shannon Bowman, who has continued to build on Taranto’s rep as the go-to family pizzeria in Columbus’s Polaris neighborhood.

That includes letting the Tarantosaurus go on a full-time rampage on social media. This belly-busting behemoth, featuring a three-cheese blend, starts at a price of $54.99, can feed up to 20 people and has to be ordered at least two hours in advance. Customers can order it with as many toppings as they’d like (for an additional $5 apiece), but most stick with pepperoni or plain cheese.

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How many Tarantosaurus pies get sold in a typical day? “It kind of waxes and wanes,” Bowman recently told YouTube reviewer Douglas Sherwood, as they sat down to try the monster pizza. “Sometimes we sell a lot, sometimes we don’t. This is our ninth one today.”

Debbie Taranto has said a friend pitched her on the idea for an oversized pizza designed for big gatherings and parties. She then held a contest to let her customers choose the name.

The Tarantosaurus isn’t Taranto’s only unusual attraction. The pizzeria is also home to the Pizza Man, a multimedia sculpture from the late Hans Rietenbach. The German-born artist gifted the sculpture—which depicts a mustachioed Old-World pizza man in a chef’s hat—to Taranto’s when it first opened 23 years ago.

This photo shows a green and yellow, cylindrical sculpture of an Old World Italian pizza man with mustache and a chef's hat.

Taranto’s Pizzeria / Facebook

PMQ featured Taranto in its November 2011 issue. In that interview, she noted the pros and cons of being a woman in the pizza industry. “Sometimes it is harder to get loans or make purchases, and it just affects overall business transactions,” she said. “Also, solicitors selling items tend to try to take advantage because I’m a woman and think that I’ll buy anything. Having children and a pizzeria is also a complicated juggling act. One big pro that has helped me as a woman is my ability to be more sensitive to the desires of my customers. I also have a great relationship with my employees. I feel that being a woman brings a friendlier, easier feel to the pizzeria.”

Marketing