Donatos Pizza

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Donatos Pizzeria, LLC
Donatos Pizza
Company type Private
Industry Restaurant
Founded1963;62 years ago (1963)
FounderJim Grote
Headquarters
Gahanna, Ohio
,
U.S.
Number of locations
178 Stores
Key people
Jane Grote Abell (chairwoman)
Kevin King (CEO)
Products Pizza, subs, salads
Website donatos.com
The original pizza restaurant on Thurman Avenue in Columbus is still one of the busiest and most successful locations. Donatos Thurman.jpg
The original pizza restaurant on Thurman Avenue in Columbus is still one of the busiest and most successful locations.

Donatos Pizza, is a Columbus-style pizza restaurant chain headquartered in Gahanna, Ohio, United States. Donatos and its franchise partners operate over 176 stores in twelve states. Additionally, Donatos Pizza is served in nearly 300 non-traditional locations nationwide [1] , including select Red Robin restaurants. [2] [3]

Contents

History

In 1963, Ohio State sophomore Jim Grote purchased the original Donatos located on the south side of Columbus, Ohio, for $1,300. Grote had been working at the restaurant since he was thirteen. He kept the name Donatos, which originally had an apostrophe. Donato is a conjugation of the Latin word, dono, which means to give. [4]

In 1991, the Donatos Pizza in Zanesville, Ohio, opened as the company's first franchise location. As of 2023, there are about three dozen franchisees operating more than 170 Donatos Pizza locations in twelve states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas. [5]

In 1999, Donatos was purchased by McDonald's in an attempt to enter the pizza industry. [a] A majority interest in Donatos was repurchased by Jim Grote and daughter Jane Grote Abell in 2003 as McDonald's sought to refocus on its core business. [6] During this period Donatos also had operations in Munich, Germany. [7]

In 2017, Donatos founder Jim Grote led a $1 million seed round in BeeHex, the 3D-food printing company with NASA origins.

In 2018, Donatos partnered with Red Robin to sell pizzas in their restaurants. This followed a foray into pizza by Red Robin in 2017 with a test run of Round Table Pizza at a Red Robin store near Portland, Oregon. After launching at 4 Red Robin restaurants in the summer of 2018, Donatos was in 25 restaurants by February 2020, with plans to expand into 100 additional Red Robin restaurants in 2020 and another 150 per year in 2021 and 2022, bringing Donatos to about 425 of Red Robin's 570 restaurants by the end of 2022. The Donatos partnership costs about $145,000 per store, which includes the installation of a pizza oven in the kitchen. Donatos makes its secret-recipe dough in a facility in Ohio and ships fresh dough to restaurants all over the country, where the pizzas are made in Red Robin kitchens exactly as they would be made in a Donatos restaurant. [8]

Products

Donatos is known for its thin-crust pizza "loaded Edge to Edge" with toppings, particularly its large pepperoni pizza that includes 100+ pepperoni slices. In 2009, Donatos launched a hand-tossed pie-cut crust option. [9] In 2004, the company introduced Donatos take-and-bake pizza in Kroger supermarkets. [10]

In 2013, Jane Grote Abell, the chairwoman of Donatos and daughter of its founder Jim Grote, was featured in an episode of Undercover Boss . [11]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Although before McDonald's acquired the company, McDonald's had first entered the pizza industry by introducing McDonald's Pizza (which in the 1980s, renamed McPizza) in the late 1970s. But just a year after the company acquired Donatos, McPizza was discontinued due to that it took 11 minutes to cook a pizza, and McDonald's wanted to keep its reputation for fast service. McDonald's had still been in the pizza industry until 2003.

References

  1. ↑ "Donatos Pizza opens 2nd location in Edmond, Oklahoma". Pizza Marketplace. July 10, 2025. Retrieved July 16, 2025.
  2. ↑ "Donatos Pizza Franchising". Donatos Pizza. Archived from the original on August 24, 2011. Retrieved July 26, 2011.
  3. ↑ "Columbus Style Pizza". www.experiencecolumbus.com. November 10, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2024.
  4. ↑ Vitale, Bob (October 20, 2023). "Grote family reflects on origin, McDonald's partnership". The Marion Star . USA Today Network. pp. A1, A6. story continued on page A6
  5. ↑ "Donatos Locations". www.donatos.com. Retrieved February 2, 2025.
  6. ↑ "Jane Grote Abell". Franklin University Leadership Center. December 15, 2003. Archived from the original on October 7, 2011. Retrieved April 1, 2007.
  7. ↑ "History of Donatos Pizzeria Corporation – FundingUniverse". www.fundinguniverse.com. Retrieved October 25, 2018.
  8. ↑ Luna, Nancy (February 3, 2020). "How the Red Robin and Donatos partnership came together". Donatos Pizza. Retrieved December 2, 2020.
  9. ↑ Blanton, Jason (September 16, 2009). "Hand Tossed or Edge to Edge?". Greatest City of All. Archived from the original on January 1, 2011. Retrieved June 25, 2022.
  10. ↑ "Donatos Pizzeria joins take-and-bake fray with Kroger kiosk". Pizza Marketplace. April 20, 2004. Archived from the original on September 28, 2011. Retrieved July 26, 2011.
  11. ↑ Vanac, Mary. "Donatos exec to be focus of 'Undercover Boss' episode". The Columbus Dispatch .
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