Giordano's, the Chicago-based stuffed deep-dish pizza institution, will open a Mall of America location on July 16, expanding its physical retail and foodservice footprint into one of the country's highest-traffic consumer destinations. The move pairs traditional dine-in service with grab-and-go formats and retail-exclusive product offerings — a combination that positions the brand at the intersection of foodservice and packaged goods.
Retail & Channel Strategy
The Mall of America unit is notable not just for its foodservice component but for the retail-exclusive SKUs the brand is bringing to the location. Grab-and-go packaging and branded retail product lines at high-footfall venues like Mall of America — which draws an estimated 40 million visitors annually — can function as both a revenue channel and a trial mechanism, seeding consumer awareness that supports broader grocery and club channel distribution. For legacy regional pizza brands, this kind of flagship retail-adjacent placement has historically preceded expansions into frozen or refrigerated grocery sets.
What It Means for CPG
Giordano's has long maintained a retail presence through its frozen deep-dish pizza lineup, available for shipping and through select retail partners. The Mall of America format — blending on-premise dining with take-home and branded retail product — mirrors a strategy employed by other foodservice-heritage brands that have successfully crossed into the grocery aisle. Category data from Circana consistently shows that frozen pizza remains one of the highest-velocity segments in the frozen food department, with stuffed and deep-dish varieties commanding a premium price point and strong repeat purchase rates among loyalists. A high-visibility venue like Mall of America gives Giordano's the kind of earned brand impressions that are difficult to replicate through traditional trade marketing or slotting investment alone.
For grocery buyers and category managers tracking the premium frozen pizza segment, the Giordano's Mall of America opening is worth monitoring as a potential signal of accelerated retail distribution activity. Brands that invest in experiential and flagship locations often follow with expanded TDP pushes into regional or national grocery chains, particularly in markets where brand awareness is already established. The grab-and-go and retail-exclusive angle suggests Giordano's is actively developing the product formats and packaging infrastructure needed to compete more aggressively on grocery planograms alongside national brands and growing private-label sets in the frozen foods category.
The July 16 opening also arrives as summer foot traffic at major mall properties peaks, giving the brand a strong consumer-facing launch window. Operators and retail partners in the foodservice and restaurant channel will be watching whether this location becomes a proof-of-concept for additional high-footfall retail venue expansions.
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.
