The Segment Play
Bacio Cheese, the premium Italian-style pizza cheese brand under the Leprino Foods umbrella, is doubling down on bar-and-grill operators as its next major growth channel — bringing the pizzeria-grade expertise it has refined for decades into full-service casual-dining kitchens where pizza is increasingly carrying menu-mix weight. The push reflects a broader industry recognition that pizza, long treated as a low-attention side category in bar concepts, has become a viable profit center when backed by ingredient quality and operational consistency.
Consumer demand supports the thesis. A 2026 Bacio survey found that 97% of U.S. consumers love or like pizza, and 88% report eating the same amount or more pizza year-over-year — figures that position the category as a reliable traffic driver even in an environment where restaurant guests are scrutinizing value more closely. For operators already carrying the infrastructure to produce pizza, upgrading the cheese specification represents a relatively low-friction path to menu differentiation.
Tommy's Tavern: The Case Study
The clearest proof point in Bacio's operator outreach is Tommy's Tavern and Tap, a 19-location full-service concept whose menu spans sushi, burgers, and tavern fare but has made coal-fired pizza a signature destination item. Executive Chef Chris Perrino credits the switch to Bacio with tangible, measurable operational gains: pizza complaints across the 19-unit system dropped from approximately 1.5% to just 0.25% after transitioning to Bacio's shredded cheese blends, which are portioned using proprietary measuring cups calibrated for consistent coverage across every location.
Off-premise performance has also improved. As takeout and to-go orders have grown in share of total covers, reheat quality has emerged as a competitive differentiator — and Perrino reports that a Bacio slice held for twenty minutes post-bake still delivers a mozzarella-quality pull rather than turning oily or rubbery. That consistency across dine-in and off-premise occasions matters as operators try to protect check size across all ordering channels. Perrino distills the economics plainly: spending an additional dollar on premium ingredients to generate eight dollars in guest retention is, in his framing, "really good math."
Beyond the pizza program itself, Tommy's Tavern uses the same Bacio product in high-velocity appetizers such as its signature spinach and artichoke dip — a cross-utilization strategy that simplifies inventory management and reduces the SKU complexity that can drag on back-of-house efficiency.
Rewards Program and Distribution
Bacio is reinforcing its operator relationships through the Bacio Gold Club Rewards program, which delivers monthly cash-back rewards and access to customized marketing and merchandising support. Tommy's Tavern channeled its Gold Club earnings into hiring a dedicated traveling pizza specialist — a position that now rotates across all 19 units to train kitchen staff on technique, portioning precision, and product performance. The investment illustrates how a well-structured supplier rewards mechanism can fund operator capability-building that a brand's field sales team alone could not deliver at scale.
Distribution is facilitated through Performance Food Group, one of the largest broadline foodservice distributors in the U.S., with purchases automatically tracked to credit rewards accounts. The PFG partnership gives Bacio broad reach into the independent and regional chain operator segments that represent the core bar-and-grill universe — a channel where direct sales coverage is expensive and distributor relationships are often the primary commercial lever.
For foodservice buyers and category managers evaluating premium dairy specifications, Bacio's bar-and-grill campaign signals that the specialty cheese segment's growth story is extending well beyond pizzeria and Italian casual-dining walls. As operators across dairy and specialty cheese categories look to ingredient quality as a traffic driver, and as foodservice channel competition intensifies, the argument for a branded, performance-verified cheese specification — versus a commodity mozzarella blend — is gaining traction at the unit-economics level where purchasing decisions actually get made.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
