After She Had to Shut Down Her Restaurant, She Sold 50,000 Pizzas in 6 Weeks — Then Signed a $20 Million Deal With Target

Key Takeaways

When dining rooms shut down, Katie Lee focused on survival, not reinvention.
By turning a restaurant pizza into a frozen product in 24 hours and launching direct-to-consumer with her existing team, she proved that speed and simplicity can unlock entirely new businesses.

When dining rooms shut down during Covid, Katie Lee was not trying to build a new business. “We just wanted to survive,” Lee says.

With restaurants suddenly unable to serve guests, she and her team looked at what they already had and moved fast. At the time, Lee was operating Katie’s Pizza & Pasta in St. Louis, where wood-fired pizza anchored the menu.

“I prototyped the frozen pizza in 24 hours,” Lee explains. They cooked a restaurant pizza, sealed it, froze it and baked it again the next day. “It was awesome.”

Instead of redesigning the product for retail, Lee kept it close to what came out of her kitchens. Then, she flipped her operation almost immediately. Her restaurant’s dining room became a place for a pizza assembly line. “We moved all of the servers and bartenders into delivery drivers,” Lee explains. “They made $10 a box and had a 50-mile radius.”

She launched direct-to-consumer with a basic setup. The response was immediate. “We sold 50,000 pizzas in six weeks,” she says.

Growth brought complications. After placing pizzas in grocery stores, Lee received a call from a federal agent. “We’re pulling all your pizzas off the shelves,” he told her. Selling pizza with pepperoni meant USDA oversight. “I remember saying, ‘Is this a big deal?’” Lee recalls. “And he said, ‘It’s a really big deal.’”

The business paused, entered inspection and continued under federal regulation. Momentum built from there. Lee applied for Walmart’s Open Call and earned a Golden Ticket, a fast-track entry into national distribution. “If you get a Golden Ticket, you’re automatically accepted into Walmart,” she says.

Not long after, Target reached out. Lee flew to Minneapolis expecting a limited regional rollout. Instead, the meeting ended with a full national launch. The $20 million retail deal is putting Lee’s handmade frozen pizzas in every Target store nationwide.

“When I found out what the purchase order was — 400,000 pizzas — we about lost our minds,” she says.

The team scaled production quickly, expanding its facility, hiring dozens of new employees and producing nearly half a million pizzas in just over three months to meet the first order.

Lee chose not to wait until the outcome was clear to tell the story. “You always hear the success stories afterwards. It’s very rare you get to be involved from the call and from there,” she says. A documentary crew filmed the process as it unfolded, while Lee began writing a memoir in chapters, documenting the work in real time.

Learning through life

Before the frozen pizzas or national retail deals, Lee’s story was already defined by contrast. She did not come up through culinary school or formal training. Her experience was built in restaurant kitchens, shaped by repetition and tested long before the business scaled.

That background is how she explains the team behind the brand: “We are a team of misfits,” she says. “A single mom, chefs, creatives, former addicts, dreamers. And now we are on the shelves next to billion-dollar brands. We weren’t supposed to be here, and that’s exactly why we are.”

Lee learned the industry by working in restaurants, not classrooms. “I’m a high school dropout,” she says. “Restaurants will take you no matter what.” Kitchens became her education, and repetition became her training.

Time spent in Italy sharpened that foundation. Lee lived in Florence while her mother taught fine art, and the experience reshaped how she thought about cooking. “I fell in love with Italian cooking,” she says, pointing to regional recipes and the way food is woven into daily life.

It was not about trends or presentation. It was about restraint and consistency. Those ideas stayed with her when she returned to the United States and opened her first restaurant.

That first restaurant brought attention quickly, and just as quickly, things unraveled. Lee battled addiction while trying to keep the business running. She describes being removed from her own restaurant and eventually losing it.

Sobriety followed, not as a dramatic turning point, but as a practical reset. “Sobriety gives you so many gifts,” she says. “The most basic one is that we just have more time. We’re clear every day.” It changed how she showed up and how she took responsibility.

Family later reshaped her perspective. Motherhood forced distance from daily operations and required trust in others. “You’re pulled away for a while, and you’re forced to rely on other people,” she says. Watching others run the business without her constant presence was uncomfortable, but necessary.

Over time, that trust helped turn Katie’s Pizza & Pasta from a single neighborhood pizzeria into a growing restaurant group, now operating three locations in St. Louis, with two more set to open in 2025.

Those lessons carried forward during Covid, when reliance on her team became essential.

When Lee talks about success, she rarely frames it as personal achievement. “Being able to share this success and dream big with a group of people who may not have had this opportunity [is] the most exciting part,” she says.

For Lee, food was the entry point. Sobriety, family and trust are what make the speed sustainable.

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在她被迫关闭餐厅后，她在六周内卖出了五万个披萨——随后与塔吉特百货公司签下了一份价值两千万美元的合同。
要点总结

当餐厅关门歇业时，凯蒂·李专注于生存，而不是转型。
她仅用 24 小时就将一家餐厅的披萨变成了冷冻产品，并带领现有团队直接面向消费者推出，证明了速度和简便性可以催生全新的商业模式。

新冠疫情期间餐厅关门歇业时，凯蒂·李并没有试图开创新的事业。“我们只是想活下去，”李说。

由于餐厅突然无法接待顾客，她和她的团队迅速审视了现有资源并采取了行动。当时，李在圣路易斯经营着一家名为“凯蒂披萨意面”（Katie’s Pizza & Pasta）的餐厅，该餐厅以柴火烤披萨为主打菜品。

“我只用了24小时就做出了冷冻披萨的原型，”李解释说。他们先烤了一个餐厅用的披萨，密封后冷冻，第二天再烤一次。“效果棒极了。”

李并没有为了零售而重新设计产品，而是保留了自家厨房出品的配方。然后，她几乎立刻改变了经营模式。餐厅的用餐区变成了披萨流水线。“我们把所有的服务员和调酒师都转岗成了送餐员，”李解释说，“他们每送一盒披萨能挣10美元，配送范围覆盖方圆50英里。”

她以简易的设备开展了直接面向消费者的销售模式，反响立竿见影。“六周内，我们卖出了5万个披萨，”她说。

业务增长也带来了麻烦。李的披萨摆上超市货架后，她接到了一位联邦探员的电话。“我们要把你所有的披萨都下架，”探员告诉她。因为披萨里加了意大利辣香肠，所以要接受美国农业部的监管。“我记得当时我说，‘这事儿有那么严重吗？’”李回忆道，“他说，‘这可是件大事。’”

公司一度暂停运营，接受检查，并在联邦法规的监管下继续运营。此后，公司发展势头逐渐增强。李申请了沃尔玛的公开招聘，并获得了“金票”，这是一条快速进入全国分销渠道的途径。“如果你拿到‘金票’，就意味着你自动被沃尔玛录取了，”她说。

不久之后，Target联系了Lee。Lee飞往明尼阿波利斯，原本以为只是小范围的区域推广。结果，会面后达成了全国范围的全面上市协议。这项价值2000万美元的零售协议将使Lee的手工冷冻披萨进入全美所有Target门店。

“当我发现采购订单的数量——40万个披萨——时，我们简直要疯了，”她说。——-只有追求产品质量才能遇到这样的机会，否则永远没有这样的机会

为了满足第一笔订单，团队迅速扩大了生产规模，扩建了工厂，雇佣了数十名新员工，并在短短三个多月的时间里生产了近 50 万个披萨。

李并没有等到结果明朗才讲述这段故事。“你总是事后才听到成功的故事。能从接到电话的那一刻起就参与其中，并亲身经历整个过程，这种情况非常罕见。”她说。一个纪录片摄制组记录了整个过程，而李则开始分章节撰写回忆录，实时记录着这段经历。

相关报道：他开始在家制作自己最爱的比赛日零食。如今，他的品牌发展迅速。

在生活中学习

在冷冻披萨和全国零售合作出现之前，李的故事就以鲜明的对比为标志。她并非出身烹饪学校或接受过正规培训，而是在餐厅厨房里摸爬滚打，在反复实践中不断磨练，并在业务规模扩大之前就经受住了考验。

她用这样的背景来解释品牌背后的团队：“我们是一群格格不入的人，”她说。“一位单身母亲、厨师、创意人士、曾经的瘾君子、梦想家。而现在，我们的产品却摆在了价值数十亿美元的品牌旁边。我们原本不该出现在这里，而这恰恰是我们现在站在这里的原因。”

李不是在教室里学习，而是在餐厅里摸索，才掌握了餐饮行业的诀窍。“我高中辍学了，”她说，“但不管怎样，餐厅都会录用你。”厨房成了她的课堂，重复练习成了她的训练。

相关报道：OpenTable负责人称，这是CEO们“最不应该做的事”。

在意大利的时光巩固了她的烹饪基础。李的母亲在佛罗伦萨教美术，她也随母亲一起生活，这段经历彻底改变了她对烹饪的看法。“我爱上了意大利菜，”她指着当地的特色食谱以及食物融入日常生活的方式说道。

这无关乎潮流或摆盘，而是关乎克制和坚持。这些理念在她回到美国并开设第一家餐厅时依然伴随着她。

第一家餐厅很快就引起了人们的注意，但同样迅速地，一切都崩溃了。李一边与毒瘾作斗争，一边努力维持餐厅的运营。她描述了自己被赶出餐厅，最终失去餐厅的经过。

戒酒之后，她并没有经历戏剧性的转折，而是迎来了一次切实的重整。“戒酒给了我很多好处，”她说，“最基本的一点就是，我们拥有了更多的时间。我们每天都思路清晰。”戒酒改变了她为人处世的方式，也改变了她承担责任的方式。

家庭后来改变了她的视角。为人母让她不得不与日常运营保持距离，也让她必须信任他人。“你会暂时离开公司，被迫依靠其他人，”她说。看着别人在没有她时刻在场的情况下经营公司，虽然让她感到不自在，但却是必要的。

相关报道：这位米其林星级厨师如今为加州发展最快的品牌之一掌勺

随着时间的推移，这份信任帮助 Katie’s Pizza & Pasta 从一家社区披萨店发展成为一家不断壮大的餐饮集团，目前在圣路易斯经营着三家分店，另有两家分店计划于 2025 年开业。

在新冠疫情期间，她仍然能够运用这些经验，因为那时依靠她的团队变得至关重要。

李在谈到成功时，很少将其定义为个人成就。“能够与一群可能没有这种机会的人分享这份成功，并一起怀揣远大的梦想，这才是最令人兴奋的部分，”她说。

对李来说，食物是切入点。清醒、家庭和信任才是他能够持续高速运转的关键。

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