• ZaLat Pizza’s first Kroger location will open on Friday, October 21, with a second one scheduled to open in December.
• The partnership with Kroger appears to be the latest step in ZaLat founder Khanh Nguyen’s plan for “global pizza domination.”

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ZaLat Pizza, the Texas-based pizza concept founded by Khanh Nguyen in 2015, has partnered up with Kroger to open restaurants in the latter’s supermarkets, starting with two in Houston, the company announced.

The first grocery-store ZaLat will open in Kroger’s Cypress Towne Lake Marketplace supermarket on Friday, October 21. The second, to be located at Kroger’s Conroe Marketplace supermarket, is scheduled to open in December. The partners plan to announce additional openings for 2023 in the next few months.

Nguyen came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1975 after the fall of Vietnam. He was featured on PMQ Pizza Media’s cover in March 2022. “Our entire business model was designed with plans for global pizza domination,” Nguyen told PMQ at the time. “I’m a natural business guy, especially with my ADD. Whatever I do, I’m always designing for global domination, whether it works or not.”

The Kroger partnership appears to be the next step in his plan.

“Kroger is the largest grocery retailer in the world with over 2,500 locations among its many iconic brands, and we are elated to partner with them on this project,” Nguyen said in a press release. “We are especially excited that Kroger is interested in us because of our best-of-class quality and dedication to our craft. Our model has always been about maintaining the highest levels of execution at large scale.”

ZaLat Pizza is “one of the hottest rising stars in the restaurant industry,” according to Garrett Fairchild, merchandiser, deli/bakery for Kroger. “We believe that offering customers convenient pickup and on-demand delivery access to ZaLat’s delicious handmade New York-style pizza creations will be a much-welcomed addition to our local Kroger communities.”

Along with being named one of the city’s Top 100 restaurants by the Dallas Observer, ZaLat Pizza was also named to QSR’s Top 40/40 Concepts. In 2021, ZaLat was chosen for Nation’s Restaurant News’ Hot Concepts Award, awarded to growth-stage restaurants that are predicted to “become household names” in the future.

“ZaLat Pizza has a romantic mission to become the first national, multi-unit restaurant concept that never compromised on its food quality,” Nguyen said. “We aspirationally strive to make the best pizzas in the universe and always want to be in the conversation when people are debating which pizzas are the best in the city. This is something we’re constantly striving for and have implemented many novel internal practices to ensure we are holding ourselves to the highest standards.”