The U.S. frozen pizza market was worth a stunning $6.62 billion in 2022, according to Grand View Research. Today, most Americans enjoy pizza at least once a month, which makes it hard to believe that pizza was barely on our culinary radar prior to the 1950s. Only one brand from that early era, Totino’s, is still going strong today.
It wasn’t until 1957 that frozen pizza became available nationally, thanks to the Celentano Brothers. You might recognize the name Celentano from the freezer section of your grocery store today. It’s not on pizza, but on frozen entrees. The company was bought by Rosina Food Products in 2000, and the pizza line was discontinued while the entrees lived on.
Back when the Celentano Brothers started, pizza was only well-established in some East Coast cities. It was on a trip to visit her aunt in Pennsylvania in 1942 that Rose Totino first discovered it and fell in love. She and her husband later opened their own Minnesota family restaurant in 1951, and in 1962, five years after the Celentanos, Jim and Rose Totino took their brand national. There’s a story that Rose had to make a pizza for the loan officer at the bank to convince them to give her the business loan. With the end of Celentano Pizza in 2000, Totino’s remains the oldest brand still mass-produced today and has come to dominate the frozen pizza market with not only pizzas and pizza bites, but also breakfast bites and ramen noodles.
How a little family company made it big
Frozen pizza was a perfectly timed innovation. Home freezers had only become common appliances in the 1940s. In 1950, there were already ads in newspapers for “heat and serve” frozen pizzas, but these were all regional.
An ad from the 1970s Minneapolis Star Tribune confirms Totino’s was a household name and the best-selling frozen pizza in the country, with 75% of the market. Its recipe remains simple but clearly effective. Still, we have some tips if you want to elevate your frozen pizza. When the Totinos sold their company to Pillsbury in 1975, Rose did the negotiating herself and pushed for a better deal than the first offer. The husband and wife stayed on to operate the business with Rose as Pillsbury’s first female vice president.
Totino’s pizza rolls sales have seen consistent popularity in recent history, showing why it continues to dominate that section of pizza snacking (and if heating your pizza rolls is a challenge, we may have a fix for that). This is something we confirmed when we covered which brand of frozen snack you ought to skip at Costco. Totino’s has grown into a billion-dollar brand, which is an amazing feat for a company with humble beginnings as a family restaurant in Minnesota. Even after all these years, the company is showing no signs of slowing down.
