Totino's

Last updated

Totinos
Product typeFrozen pizza and pizza products
Owner General Mills
CountryUnited States
Introduced1951;74 years ago (1951) (Totino's)
1968;57 years ago (1968) (Jeno's)
MarketsWorldwide
Previous owners Rose and Jim Totino (Totino's)
Jeno's Inc. (Jeno's)
Pillsbury Company
Website www.totinos.com

Totino's is a brand of frozen pizza products owned by General Mills, best known for their pizza rolls. Totino's was founded as a restaurant in the 1950s in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which expanded to frozen foods in the 1960s. They also operate the Jeno's brand.

Contents

History

Totino's pepperoni pizza Totino's brand pizza.jpg
Totino's pepperoni pizza

Rose and Jim Totino founded Totino's Italian Kitchen, a take-out pizzeria in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on February 7, 1951. After customers regularly tried to eat in the store, they expanded to a full-service restaurant, [1] which relocated to Mound's View in 2008, before closing in 2011. [2]

Totino's expanded into frozen-pizza manufacturing during the 1960s, initially selling frozen pastas from their restaurant before transitioning to pizza production. This shift began in 1961 with the purchase of a plant in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Following the plant purchase and the start of production in January 1962, the company initially faced losses. However, in the fall of 1962, they transitioned to purchasing pre-made frozen pizza crusts and shifted their focus to the tomato sauce, meats, and cheeses. This change successfully turned the company profitable by 1963. [1]

In 1970, they built a larger-capacity plant in Fridley. [1] The Totinos sold their frozen pizza business to the Pillsbury Company in 1975, where Rose Totino was named as vice-president. [3] After the acquisition, Rose Totino helped develop a new in-house crust and the brand grew nationwide. [1] By the 1970s, they were the top-selling frozen pizza in the United States. [4] Totino-Grace High School in Fridley was renamed after the brand's founders in 1980. [5]

Separately, Jeno Paulucci developed a series of food businesses starting in the late 1940s, including the Chun King line of Chinese foods. [6] After selling Chun King in 1966, he founded Jeno's Inc. in 1968, where cook and product developer Beatrice Ojakangas developed pizza rolls, [7] [8] a type of egg roll filled with pizza ingredients. The first pizza roll flavor was cheese. [6] In 1985, Paulucci sold his Jeno's Pizza Rolls brand to Pillsbury for $135 million. [9]

Totino's pizza rolls Totino's Pizza Rolls, May 2019.jpg
Totino's pizza rolls

The Jeno's line of pizza rolls was rebranded as Totino's in 1993. [10] Totino's was acquired by General Mills with its purchase of Pillsbury in 2001. [1]

Health and nutrition issues

On November 1, 2007, Totino's and Jeno's brand pizza were recalled for E. coli contamination. [11]

Totino's products contain cheese substitutes made with hydrogenated oil. [12] Totino's products have been criticized for their high amount of trans fat [13] and sodium. [14] In 2011, Consumer Reports rated Totino's as "only fair for nutrition" because of "high total fat and trans fat and low fiber." [15] [16] Packaging on Totino's brand pizza now indicates 0 trans fats per serving. [17]

In pop culture

Saturday Night Live featured a popular series of ad parodies for Totino's Pizza Rolls in the 2010s, starring Vanessa Bayer. [18]

On July 22, 2016, the official Sonic the Hedgehog YouTube channel hosted a live stream on both YouTube and Twitch simultaneously, where they announced Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces respectively. [19] During the event, they also announced coinciding collaborations with both Totino's and Hooters. It is unknown why Totino's or Hooters were chosen for collaborations thanks to their admitted irrelevance to the Sonic IP, although it's implied the collabs were due to Totino's being an American brand and Hooters a Japanese one respectively, the two major markets for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise: Japan being where it was created and America being where it is most popular and where most of its fanbase resides.

The collaborations, along with the stream's infamous technical problem riddled status, characterized by a faint erroneous buzzing present throughout the stream, were not only referenced by Sonic Mania itself in the form of a broadcast sign-off screen on the monitor in Studiopolis Zone Act 2 after defeating the Weather Globe, with the "error code" in the bottom right of the monitor being "072216", the day the stream happened on both platforms, along with the also aforementioned erroneous persistent faint buzzing. It appears that the buzzing was ripped from the stream directly or possibly recreated, given how it sounds in-game.

The announcement of the collaboration resulted in various internet memes, especially in the form of Totinos' ad campaigns, their jingle, and references to them, becoming a staple of several Sonic Mania related rips on the SilvaGunner YouTube channel, although being a persistent joke in other areas as well, although rarely utilized due to Mania's inherent relevance to Totino's and vice versa thanks to the live stream.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Johnston, Louis (April 29, 2021). "How Totino's secured Minnesota's slice of the frozen pizza market" . Retrieved January 31, 2025.
  2. ↑ "Totino's Italian Kitchen in Mounds View to close after 60 years". Pioneer Press. twincities.com. June 7, 2011. Retrieved June 19, 2019.
  3. ↑ "Rose Totino". Great American Leaders of the 20th Century. Harvard Business School. n.d. Retrieved October 31, 2012.
  4. ↑ Huddleston Jr., Tom (May 2, 2020). "The history of frozen pizza—how a frozen food staple became a multibillion-dollar business". CNBC . Retrieved January 31, 2025.
  5. ↑ "History and Heritage". Totino-Grace High School. Retrieved January 31, 2025.
  6. 1 2 Slotnik, Daniel E. (November 25, 2011). "Jeno Paulucci, a Pioneer of Ready-Made Ethnic Foods, Dies at 93". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved November 1, 2019.
  7. ↑ Johnston, Louis D.; Riley, Susan E. (May 19, 2021). "How (American) Chinese cuisine gave birth to the Minnesota-invented pizza roll". MinnPost . Retrieved March 1, 2024.
  8. ↑ Dean, Lee Svitak (October 9, 2016). "Adventure of a lifetime". Star Tribune . pp. E7. Retrieved March 1, 2024– via Newspapers.com.
  9. ↑ Finkelstein, Matt (November 2, 2007). "The Master Chef". Inc.com. Retrieved November 1, 2019.
  10. ↑ "Totino's History". Totino's. Archived from the original on April 25, 2017. Retrieved November 1, 2019.
  11. ↑ "Ohio Firm Recalls Frozen Meat Pizzas Due to Possible E. Coli O157:H7 Contamination" (Press release). Food Safety and Inspection Service. November 1, 2007. Archived from the original on February 9, 2008. Retrieved October 31, 2012.
  12. ↑ "Pizza Makers Whip Dairy Lobby, Duck 'Imitation Cheese'". Ocala Star-Banner . June 10, 1987. Retrieved October 31, 2012– via Google News.
  13. ↑ Rem, Kathryn (January 18, 2012). "Kathryn Rem: Investigating the contents of packaged foods – Trans Fats Have Not Gone Away". GateHouse News Service. Archived from the original on January 20, 2013. Retrieved November 1, 2019– via Journal Star.
  14. ↑ "Processed-Food Makers Criticized on Sodium". The New York Times. Associated Press. February 13, 1986. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved November 1, 2019.
  15. ↑ "Shop Smart: Frozen pizzas can satisfy even adults". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Consumer Reports. January 30, 2011. Archived from the original on November 1, 2019. Retrieved November 1, 2019.
  16. ↑ Perrin, Gail (November 30, 1988). "Frozen Pizzas May Be High in Fat". The Boston Globe . Archived from the original on January 21, 2013. Retrieved October 31, 2012.
  17. ↑ "Combination Party Pizza: Nutrition Facts". Totino's. Retrieved January 31, 2025.
  18. ↑ Fox, Jesse David (February 4, 2019). "The Story Behind SNL's 'Totino's' Sketches". Good One Podcast. Vulture. Retrieved January 31, 2025.
  19. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzV6RVR2D8g
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