There’s a new pizza holiday to celebrate, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has made it official: October 22 is now National Tavern-Style Pizza Day, thanks to the efforts of Home Run Inn (HRI).
Johnson issued an official proclamation to honor the classic Chicago pizza style every year. Home Run Inn will kick it all off next week with special offers and a donation to support Chicagoans in need.
Festivities will include Home Run Inn’s large Cheese, Sausage or Pepperoni Pizzas for $13.99, a substantial discount on the regular price of $21.75 to $25, with a limit of three per customer. The offer will be good at any Home Run Inn restaurant on October 22 and 23.
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Customers will also have a chance to win one of 23 Throw Back Tavern-Style Pizza Parties (including 10 pizzas, a tavern-style pizza party kit and limited-time tavern-style merch valued at $200 each). Additionally, HRI will make a donation of 11,923 pizzas in 2025 to the City of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services, for Chicagoans experiencing homelessness and other families, seniors and youths in need.
Home Run Inn, known for its tavern-style thin crust pizza, has been an iconic institution in Chicago since 1923. The original tavern, located at the corner of 31st Street and Kildare Avenue in the Little Village neighborhood, was owned by great grandparents Mary and Vincent Grittani. It was later named “Home Run Inn” in 1947 when a home run from a neighborhood baseball game was hit through the tavern’s window.
The family-owned business continued when the Grittanis’ daughter married Nick Perrino, who, after returning from World War II, joined his mother-in-law in the tavern. They came up with the idea to put complimentary pizza at the bar as a snack to go with a cold drink. The family’s original recipe from Bari, Italy—featuring a hand-pinched, crispy crust, zesty sauce and plentiful cheese—soon became a hit. Thus, Home Run Inn began selling the pizza, and the famous tavern-style recipe took off.
“We were among the pioneers in conceptualizing frozen pizza,” noted Gina Perrino Bolger, a fourth-generation family member and HRI’s senior VP of marketing. “A regular customer from Wisconsin frequently requested his pizza to be partially baked. This piqued my grandfather’s curiosity, leading him to discover that the customer would store the pizza in his icebox to finish baking it later at home.”
Home Run Inn’s tavern-style frozen pizzas originated back in the 1960s and are now available in grocery stores across the country. It’s one of the top 10 pizza brands sold nationwide, the company said.
Today, Home Run Inn is led by fourth-generation family member Dan Costello, the CEO, and has nine locations throughout the Chicagoland area. Home Run Inn is also the Official Pizza of the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field and sold at Chicago’s Midway International Airport.