National Tavern-Style Pizza Day

National Tavern-Style Pizza Day celebrates tavern-style pizza, a thin-crust, square-cut, and Midwestern-created pizza. Home Run Inn founded the day and claims—as do others—that they were the first to serve tavern-style pizza. Mary and Vincent Grittani opened the Home Run Inn as Grittani's Tavern on the corner of 31st Street and Kildare Avenue in the Little Village (South Lawndale) neighborhood in Chicago's South Side in 1923. Vincent Grittani passed away in 1945, and after Mary's son-in-law Nick Perrino returned home from World War II, he joined her at the tavern. They came up with the idea of making pizza based on a family recipe from Bari, Italy, and began cutting it into tiny square pieces and serving it free of charge to customers on small paper napkins. The pizza gained in popularity, surpassing that of beer, and they eventually began charging for it.

The tavern changed its name to the Home Run Inn in 1947 after a baseball from a nearby park crashed through their front window. In the 1960s, a customer from Wisconsin suggested the tavern make frozen pizzas so they could take them back to their state. The Home Run Inn began par-baking them so the customer could do so, and then began supplying them to be sold at nearby corner grocery stores, becoming one of the first companies to sell frozen pizzas. The Home Run Inn opened its first restaurant in the 1970s, in Darien, Illinois, and continued opening more, mainly in the Chicago area. They've continued as a family business well into the twenty-first century, as both an Illinois-based pizza restaurant and as a regional frozen pizza brand, and are in the top 10 frozen pizza brands nationally. While their original tavern no longer stands, they still have a restaurant at the location. Home Run Inn pizza is also the official pizza of Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs.

Home Run Inn created National Tavern-Style Pizza Day in 2024. That year, they celebrated with pizza parties, special offers, and a donation to the city of Chicago. Participants were given a chance to win one of 23 tavern-style pizza parties. Home Run Inn offered their large cheese, sausage, and pepperoni pizzas for $13.99 instead of their regular price. Home Run Inn also pledged to donate 11,923 pizzas to the city's Department of Family and Support Services the following year. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson also issued a proclamation, making National Tavern-Style Pizza Day official in Chicago in 2024. In 2025, Home Run Inn partnered with Old Style beer on the day. Select taverns across Chicago again participated in the celebration with complimentary slices of Home Run Inn pizza, beer, specials, and giveaways.

Tavern-style pizza, also called party-cut pizza, has a thin and crispy crust and is cut into small, square pieces instead of traditional triangle pizza slices. It's found in taverns, restaurants, and grocery stores in the Midwest, where it originated, and across the United States and beyond. In Chicago, it is more popular with locals than deep-dish pizza. Its popularity grew nationally during the 2020s, with Pizza Hut and Domino's beginning to sell it, while Tombstone started selling frozen ones.

There are other origin stories about tavern-style pizza besides the one from the Home Run Inn. Vito and Nick's Pizzeria (originally Vito's Tavern), another Chicago establishment, claims to have started serving it in 1946. In Milwaukee, where it's often called cracker crust pizza, the Caradaro Club opened in 1945. Other early tavern-style pizza locations include Wells Brothers in Racine, Wisconsin, and Riverside Pizzeria in Iron River, Michigan. There are additional regional varieties of tavern-style pizza worth noting. Minnesota-style pizza has a sauce that's a bit spicier and a crust that's a bit softer, and St. Louis-style pizza has a sweeter tomato sauce and uses Provel cheese. No matter where it was created, if Home Run Inn holds the title or someone else should, Home Run Inn did create National Tavern-Style Pizza Day, and their pizza and all other tavern-style pizzas are celebrated and enjoyed on the day.

How to Observe National Tavern-Style Pizza Day

Eat tavern-style pizza! Perhaps you could have a frozen one from Home Run Inn, the creator of the day. Make sure to cut it into small, square pieces. You could host a tavern-style pizza party and could provide the pizzas or ask guests to bring them. If you are in the Chicago area, you could have a tavern-style pizza at a Home Run Inn restaurant, such as the one that is at the spot of the original Home Run Inn. Check if Home Run Inn is organizing any pizza parties, special offers, or giveaways today, and follow them on Facebook and Instagram. You could also have tavern-style pizza at another Chicago-area establishment known for it, such as Vito and Nick's Pizzeria, Kim's Uncle Pizza or Pat's Pizza. In Milwaukee, you could try the Caradaro Club or Zaffiro's, or you could try Wells Brothers in Racine or Riverside Pizzeria in Iron River. Share how you are celebrating on social media along with the hashtag #NationalTavernStylePizzaDay.

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