ST. LOUIS, MO – October 5, 2026 (STL.News) Katie’s Pizza – A frozen-pizza business created during the COVID-19 pandemic to help a St. Louis restaurant company survive has grown into a rapidly expanding national consumer brand, and Katie’s is preparing for another major expansion in St. Louis County.
Katie’s plans to open a new manufacturing plant in Bridgeton, expected to triple the company’s frozen-pizza production as its products expand into thousands of retail stores nationwide.
The St. Louis Business Journal reported Oct. 1 that the regional food company will triple frozen-pizza production at the new Bridgeton plant while expanding its retail presence to approximately 7,500 stores.
The development marks another significant step in Katie’s transformation from a locally known restaurant company into a business increasingly dependent on manufacturing, grocery distribution, and national consumer-product sales.
That transformation has occurred remarkably quickly.
In a Sept. 15 interview with Taste Radio, founder and CEO Katie Lee discussed a consumer packaged goods business that grew from roughly $2 million in revenue in 2023 to one on pace to exceed $24 million in sales in 2026. At the time of that interview, Katie’s was headed toward more than 6,300 retail locations by year-end.
Newer reporting from Oct. 1 puts the company’s expanding retail presence at approximately 7,500 stores.
The numbers demonstrate how dramatically the business has changed since 2020, when frozen pizza was not a national expansion strategy at all.
It was a survival strategy.
Katie’s Pizza – Frozen pizza began during the COVID crisis
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Katie’s faced the same sudden disruption that threatened restaurants across the country.
Lee provided a particularly clear account of what happened during her recent Taste Radio interview.
“I had two restaurants at the time and 150 employees,” Lee said.
Faced with the possibility of losing employees and struggling to keep the business operating, Lee and her team quickly developed a frozen version of Katie’s restaurant pizza.
The response was immediate.
Lee said Katie’s sold approximately 50,000 frozen pizzas in six weeks in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
Grocery stores then began contacting the company.
Katie’s had to learn packaging, labeling, grocery distribution, and other elements of the consumer packaged goods industry while simultaneously navigating one of the most disruptive periods the restaurant industry had experienced.
The product created to preserve the existing business was beginning to create another business entirely.
Lee said she initially questioned whether the demand was simply the result of consumers rallying around restaurants and small businesses during the pandemic. But demand continued, and grocery retailers kept calling.
That became the beginning of Katie’s consumer-products operation.
Katie’s Pizza went from $2 million to $24 million
The company’s reported sales illustrate the scale of the subsequent growth.
Taste Radio reported that Katie’s consumer-products business generated roughly $2 million in revenue in 2023.
In 2026, it is on pace to surpass $24 million in sales, according to the Sept. 15 report.
That would represent roughly twelve times the company’s 2023 consumer-products revenue in three years.
Lee said the decisive moment came as Katie’s gained opportunities with two of the country’s largest retailers.
The company won a Walmart Golden Ticket and subsequently secured a full-chain Target deal for its pizzas.
Lee told Taste Radio that the Target launch was when she realized Katie’s had shown it could operate at national scale.
The opportunity also presented a formidable manufacturing problem.
Katie’s suddenly needed to produce approximately 400,000 pizzas in three months to meet the Target rollout.
Those pizzas were not designed for conventional high-volume frozen-food production.
Katie’s developed its product using techniques from its restaurants.
The dough was hand-stretched. The pizzas were wood-fired. Ingredients included burrata cheese, San Marzano tomatoes and extra virgin olive oil.
Lee said the original frozen pizza was developed in roughly 48 hours during the pandemic and was essentially the restaurant’s pizza prepared, sealed, and frozen rather than a product initially engineered for industrial-scale manufacturing.
That became both the company’s advantage and one of its biggest challenges.
Katie’s Pizza – Target pushed Katie’s onto the national stage
Katie’s national Target rollout dramatically increased the company’s exposure outside St. Louis.
The retailer’s decision to take the product nationally meant Katie’s was no longer simply proving that a local restaurant could sell frozen pizzas in regional grocery stores.
It had to demonstrate that a St. Louis company could reliably supply a major national retailer.
Lee said Katie’s products quickly moved toward the top of Target’s sales and growth rankings after the full-chain launch.
That experience changed her view of the business.
Katie’s had reached national consumers, and those consumers were buying the product.
The company now had evidence that its brand could travel well beyond the St. Louis restaurant market.
That realization helped shift Katie’s growth strategy toward a much larger consumer-products operation.
Katie’s Pizza is expanding beyond pizza
Frozen pizza may have created the opportunity, but Katie’s is no longer simply a frozen-pizza company.
Its consumer portfolio has expanded into pasta bakes, sauces, dried pasta, olive oil and other products.
Lee told Taste Radio that pizza was only one component of the restaurant menu and that expanding nationally meant finding ways to translate more of Katie’s restaurant offerings into products consumers could prepare at home.
That strategy also provides an important competitive advantage.
Katie’s already operates restaurants where chefs can develop dishes and where thousands of customers can effectively help test products.
Lee described the restaurants as a “secret weapon” for the packaged-food business.
Instead of developing consumer products solely in a test kitchen, Katie’s can draw on years of restaurant experience, culinary employees, and direct customer feedback.
The company can potentially develop a dish in its restaurants, evaluate how customers respond, and then determine whether the concept can be adapted for grocery distribution.
St. Louis Magazine reported in September that Katie’s had grown to 18 packaged-food products sold in more than 6,000 stores nationwide, including Target and grocery chains.
That September figure provides another snapshot of a distribution network that has continued expanding.
Taste Radio later projected more than 6,300 retail doors by year-end, while the newer Oct. 1 Business Journal report says Katie’s is expanding to about 7,500 stores.
Because those numbers were reported on different dates during a period of rapid expansion, view them as snapshots of a growing distribution network rather than a fixed store count.
New factory addresses a major growth problem
Rapid sales growth creates a fundamental problem for any food company: somebody still has to make the product.
For Katie’s, that challenge is particularly complicated because the company has built its consumer brand around production methods associated with its restaurants.
The new Bridgeton manufacturing operation is intended to address that problem.
The Oct. 1 Business Journal report specifically says the new plant will allow Katie’s to triple frozen-pizza production.
Lee separately confirmed in her Taste Radio interview that a new manufacturing facility is under construction.
She said the plant is expected to come online around early 2027.
The facility is designed to preserve production steps that Katie’s considers essential to its product—including wood-fired cooking and hand-stretching dough—while automating processes where craftsmanship matters less.
Packaging and boxing are among the operations that can be automated.
That distinction is central to the company’s manufacturing strategy.
Katie’s is not attempting to preserve manual labor simply for its own sake. Instead, management is trying to identify which parts of production contribute to the product’s characteristics and which can be automated to improve efficiency.
Lee said the new facility should also provide space for additional product lines and help reduce production costs.
Reducing those costs could ultimately allow Katie’s to lower consumer prices.
That could become increasingly important as the company moves from a premium regional product toward much broader national distribution.
Katie’s faces the challenge of scaling craftsmanship
The Bridgeton expansion presents an unusual manufacturing challenge.
Mass production normally depends heavily on standardization and automation.
Katie’s, however, has built much of its frozen-pizza identity around characteristics that sound almost incompatible with mass production: hand-stretched dough, wood-fired cooking and premium ingredients.
The company therefore must determine where automation improves efficiency without eliminating what distinguishes the product.
Lee told Taste Radio that the new plant would continue the wood-fired and hand-stretching processes while automating functions such as packaging.
If that approach works, Katie’s could substantially increase production without completely changing the product that generated its national retail opportunity.
If it does not, the company risks encountering a common problem among rapidly expanding food brands: losing the characteristics that created demand in the first place.
The Bridgeton factory therefore represents more than additional capacity.
It tests whether Katie’s can translate a restaurant production philosophy into a much larger manufacturing system.
More than 500 people now work across Katie’s businesses
The expansion is also significant from an employment standpoint.
St. Louis Magazine reported Sept. 10 that Katie’s restaurant and packaged-food businesses employ more than 500 people.
Lee independently referenced approximately 500 employees during her Taste Radio interview.
That provides striking context for what began during the pandemic.
Lee said she had about 150 employees when COVID hit, and that preserving those jobs was one reason Katie’s moved so quickly to create frozen pizza.
The business that emerged from that crisis now operates on a dramatically different scale.
St. Louis Magazine reported that Katie’s now encompasses four restaurants, frozen-pizza manufacturing, e-commerce operations, a 300-acre farm-to-table property near Hardin, Illinois, and its growing packaged-food portfolio.
The company is therefore no longer simply a restaurant group.
It increasingly combines hospitality, manufacturing, retail distribution and e-commerce.
Restaurants remain part of the strategy
Despite the explosive growth of consumer products, Lee has not abandoned the restaurant business.
During the Taste Radio interview, she said the company’s four St. Louis restaurants were still growing, though more slowly than in the past.
Lee said restaurant sales were up approximately 5%, compared with the roughly 15% growth she described as more typical for the company.
She characterized positive restaurant sales growth as significant given the difficult environment confronting many restaurant operators.
At the same time, Katie’s consumer-products business is expanding much faster.
Lee acknowledged the contrast.
She described herself as a restaurateur at heart even as the frozen-food business, pasta products, sauces and other consumer lines experience rapid growth.
Rather than choosing one business over the other, Katie’s is continuing to pursue both.
That strategy may ultimately provide advantages unavailable to conventional food manufacturers.
The restaurants give Katie’s physical locations where customers interact directly with the brand, while consumer products allow the company to reach people in markets where it does not operate restaurants.
Katie’s also secured $5 million in SBA financing
Katie’s rapid expansion coincides with another significant financial development.
Katie’s Pizza and Pasta LLC received approval for $5 million in SBA 7(a) financing during the second quarter of 2026, according to data published by the St. Louis Business Journal.
The Business Journal lists Bank of Franklin County as the lender and associates the financing with 145 jobs.
The $5 million approval ranked Katie’s among the largest St. Louis-area SBA loan recipients during the quarter.
However, the financing needs to be separated carefully from the Bridgeton manufacturing announcement.
The publicly available information reviewed by STL.News does not establish that the $5 million SBA financing is paying for the Bridgeton factory.
STL.News therefore is not making that connection.
Katie’s received substantial SBA-backed financing during the same year its restaurants and consumer-products operation expanded, but available records do not establish exactly how those proceeds are allocated among the company’s projects.
The distinction is important.
The financing reflects the scale of Katie’s broader business activity, but it should not be characterized as Bridgeton factory financing without documentation establishing that use.
Bridgeton keeps expansion in the St. Louis region
One of the most significant elements of the manufacturing announcement for the St. Louis region is simply the location.
Katie’s is developing a nationally distributed consumer-products company while keeping an important part of its manufacturing expansion in St. Louis County.
That makes the story larger than restaurant news.
A locally developed brand is selling products through thousands of retail locations nationwide while expanding production in its home metropolitan area.
For regional economic development, that distinction matters.
Restaurants largely generate revenue within the markets where they operate.
Manufacturers can produce goods in one region and sell them nationwide.
Katie’s consumer-products business therefore creates an opportunity for revenue generated from customers nationwide to support business activity and employment tied to the St. Louis region.
The new Bridgeton plant is the physical infrastructure required to support that model at a much larger scale.
Walmart remains another potential growth opportunity
Katie’s national expansion may not stop with its existing retailers.
Lee said Katie’s won a Walmart Golden Ticket, an opportunity that could eventually create another major distribution channel.
However, the company has had to balance the attraction of additional national distribution against the realities of manufacturing capacity.
That is one reason the Bridgeton project matters.
Large retailers can create enormous opportunities for smaller food brands, but those opportunities also create risks if manufacturers cannot supply enough product consistently.
The Target rollout demonstrated the challenge.
Producing 400,000 pizzas in three months required Katie’s to mobilize employees and production capacity at a scale it had not previously encountered.
Lee described the experience as an “all hands on deck” effort.
After overcoming the initial production hurdle, the company then had to build systems, add people, bring in equipment and develop a longer-term manufacturing strategy.
The Bridgeton facility appears to be the next stage of that strategy.
The numbers show a company undergoing rapid change
Viewed individually, each of Katie’s developments is noteworthy.
Viewed together, they illustrate a business changing remarkably quickly.
When COVID hit, Lee says Katie’s had two restaurants and approximately 150 employees.
The company created a frozen pizza and sold approximately 50,000 pizzas in six weeks in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
The consumer-products operation subsequently grew to approximately $2 million in revenue in 2023.
It is now reportedly on pace to surpass $24 million in 2026.
A national Target rollout forced the company to produce approximately 400,000 pizzas in three months.
By September, Katie’s had 18 packaged-food products in more than 6,000 stores nationwide.
Taste Radio reported Sept. 15 that Katie’s was headed toward more than 6,300 retail doors by year-end.
The Oct. 1 Business Journal report subsequently said the company is expanding its retail presence to approximately 7,500 stores.
The company now employs more than 500 people across its restaurant and packaged-food operations.
And the forthcoming Bridgeton manufacturing plant is expected to triple frozen-pizza production.
A St. Louis restaurant brand goes national
The most important part of the Katie’s story may be how fundamentally its business model has changed.
A restaurant company’s growth is normally constrained by geography.
To reach more customers, it generally has to open more restaurants.
Consumer packaged goods operate differently.
Katie’s can manufacture products in the St. Louis region and reach customers through thousands of stores without building restaurants in every market.
That dramatically increases the company’s potential scale.
At the same time, Katie’s has retained the restaurants that established its reputation and provide a testing ground for new products.
The company is effectively attempting to combine the two models.
Its St. Louis restaurants provide culinary development, direct customer relationships, and brand identity.
Its consumer-products operation provides national reach.
Its manufacturing operation connects the two.
That makes the Bridgeton project particularly significant.
The factory is not simply additional space for a successful local restaurant company. It is infrastructure for a St. Louis brand attempting to operate nationally.
Katie’s still faces substantial challenges.
Rapid growth pressures manufacturing, logistics, working capital, staffing, and quality control. National retailers also operate in a highly competitive environment where gaining shelf space does not guarantee that a product will keep it.
Katie’s must demonstrate that its recent growth can be sustained while preserving the product characteristics that generated consumer interest.
But the company’s trajectory since 2020 is already notable.
A product developed rapidly during a crisis to help keep approximately 150 employees working became a multimillion-dollar consumer business.
That business is now expanding toward thousands of retail locations, employing hundreds of people and requiring a new manufacturing plant capable of substantially increasing production.
The newest chapter will unfold in Bridgeton.
For St. Louis, Katie’s is increasingly more than a successful restaurant story.
It is becoming a local manufacturing and entrepreneurship story about a homegrown company attempting to turn a St. Louis restaurant brand into a national food business—while keeping a major part of that growth rooted in the region where it began.
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