Little Caesars

Michael and Marian Ilitch took a chance on a little-known snack food called pizza and built a carryout empire. When Michael and Marian Ilitch opened a single pizza shop in Garden City, Michigan, with their $10,000 life savings, they were taking a chance on a little-known snack food called pizza—and on a carryout-only model that…

Domino’s Pizza

James Monaghan sold his share in DomiNick’s—precursor to the world’s second-largest pizza chain—to brother Tom for a Volkswagen Beetle. With a $75 down payment and a loan of $500, brothers Tom and James Monaghan bought their first pizza store, called DomiNick’s, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1960. James ended up selling his stake in the company…

Cloverleaf Bar & Restaurant

It’s hip to be square at this Detroit-area institution, whose owner helped pioneer the city’s legendary square style. In 1944, Gus Guerra formed a partnership with his wife Anna’s uncle to open Buddy’s Rendezvous in Detroit—at first a bar only. “Profits from the bar business weren’t enough to live on, so Grandma Passalacqua told my…

Buddy’s Rendezvous Pizza

According to legend, a Buddy’s waitress from Sicily invented the square pizza that would become forever associated with Detroit. When Buddy’s Rendezvous Pizza (buddyspizza.com) served its first pie in 1946, the Detroit (and U.S.) pizza scene was forever changed. Legend has it that a Sicily-born waitress named Connie, employed by then-owner Gus Guerra, developed the…

Bruno’s Pizza

Pizza’s just one item on the menu at this Indiana mainstay founded in 1955. Anyone up for Wiener schnitzel and Swiss fondue? Bruno Itin moved from Switzerland to Indiana in 1951 and, after a few years as a restaurant worker, decided to open his own venture in 1955: Bruno’s Pizza in West Lafayette. “My dad…

Vito & Nick’s Pizzeria

From humble beginnings in a Chicago saloon, this South Side pizzeria continues, now in its fifth generation, as a family affair. Vito & Nick’s Pizzeria (vitoandnick.com) has its roots in a saloon, Vito’s Tavern, that Sicilian immigrant Vito Barraco started in the early 1920s. He added food to the menu—sandwiches and spaghetti at first—in 1939….

Pizzi Café

The pizzeria that helped introduce round pies to Ohio also offers overnight shipping across the U.S. Tony Pizzi, a mason by trade, ventured to America from Italy and settled in Conneaut, Ohio, where he opened a beer garden in 1934. He bricked together two old fish-drying houses and lived above the business with his wife,…

Nicolosi’s Italian Restaurant

Motorcycle delivery didn’t fly and a freeway nearly shut everything down, but this San Diego survivor keeps rolling with the punches. After operating a bakery in Massachusetts in the 1940s, Sicilian emigrant Salvatore Nicolosi brought his family to Southern California in 1952 and opened Nicolosi’s Italian Restaurant (nicolosis.com), serving Old-World recipes handed down in his…

Coletta’s

This Memphis institution was Elvis Presley’s favorite pizzeria—‘nuff said! In 1922, Emil Coletta opened the Suburban Ice Cream Company, selling ice cream and Italian dishes. But when his son Horest took over the business in the early 1950s, he decided to focus more on food and added pizza to the menu. Largely unfamiliar to Memphis…

Robert Leucht was the first in town to offer a pizza buffet

PizzAroma

This Kentucky pizzeria went from humble beginnings to 50-plus years of success, thanks to innovation, attention to quality and a can-do attitude. Robert Leucht didn’t know much about the pizza business when he opened PizzAroma (pizzaroma.com) in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1963. What’s more, the locals didn’t really know pizza either. But with a recipe and…