While I'm usually not big on pizza chains, but with over 190 locations in 5 states, Donatos Pizza breaks the mold when it comes to a typical pizza chain. I tried a Donatos pizza for the first time when I was spending a day with one of our distributors in Indianapolis and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.
Donatos began in Columbus, OH in 1963 when a college sophomore by the name of Jim Grote (right) opened his first establishment on the southside of Columbus by putting $1300 down on a small pizzeria. His business philosophy was simple, "To make the best pizza and treat others the way I'd like to be treated."
Along the way as business grew, Grote found that the way pepperoni had to be cut was both time consuming and somewhat costly. The thickness of the pepperoni varied from location to location. He invented the "Peppamatic" cutting machine that cut down on the time to cut the pepperoni slices, and also made them uniform in width and weight. Grote then noticed that most frozen pizza manufacturers were continuing to cut their pepperoni by hand and he saw the Peppamatic as a unique tool he could market to the industry. Grote, with the help of engineers, developed a number of industrial slicing and application machines to help stream line not only the pizza industry, but many food product companies, as well. To say that Grote is a very rich man is, well, a tremendous understatement.
Grote ended up selling Donatos to the McDonald's Corporation in 1999. While Grote had always stressed uniformity in his stores, the McDonald's people took it a step further. McDonald's tried to grow the chain, but ended up closing a number of under performing stores in Florida, Georgia and Michigan. Seeing that they couldn't quite figure out how to grow Donatos nationally and internationally, they ended up selling the company back to Grote in 2003. Armed with information he learned on market research from McDonald's, Grote opened up a series of "take and bake stores" where a customer can come in, get a pizza made up and take it home to bake themselves. The concept has gone over extremely well for Donatos.
I took five of the guys from the distributor to the 10th and Arlington location in East Indianapolis for lunch one day when I was there recently (see map). The menu at Donatos is pretty wide open with sandwiches, salads, breadsticks and desserts to go along with their pizza. I thought about getting the Big Don baked sub, but everyone else wanted pizza. So I went with the flow and we ordered up three different pizzas.
On the recommendation of the guys, we ordered a large Founder's Favorite - pepperoni, sausage, ham, hot peppers and provelone cheese. In fact, Donatos is so big on their pepperoni, they place exactly 100 slices of pepperoni on each large pizza. We also ordered a Serious Meat pizza, which is basically the same thing as the Founder's Favorite, only minus the hot peppers and adding beef and bacon to the topping list. And one guy talked us into ordering a Philly Cheese Steak pizza - thin slices of Philly steak topped with onions, peppers and a cheese sauce. It didn't sound good to me, but a couple of the guys raved about that pizza. We figured that we'd take the leftovers back to the guys in the warehouse to snack on.
Donato's certainly doesn't skimp on their toppings. The Serious Meat had a ton of toppings all over it. I'm not usually big on bacon on a pizza, but this was pretty good. And I liked the taste of their sausage. The pizza crust is thin and they cut their pieces into squares and not wedges - a big plus in my book.
I really liked the Founder's Favorite, though. The peppers gave it a little "zing" and didn't detract from the overall taste of the pizza. I would have liked to have tried their "Classic Trio" of sausage, pepperoni and mushroom, but I can do that another day.
I did give the Philly Cheese Steak pizza a try. One of the guys said that not all the Donatos have the Philly Cheese Steak, but he was just hooked by it. The taste was interesting, but I can't say it would be anything that I would crave in the future.
We did have some pizza to take back to the distributorship and I found myself stealing a couple pieces of the Founder's Favorite later in the afternoon. It was a good snack to have after a very satisfying lunch. I was mightily impressed.
While I can't call it the best pizza I ever had, I can probably call Donatos the best chain pizza I've ever eaten. I will be back to try one of their Classic Trio pizzas sometime down the line.
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