ST. LOUIS, Mo. (October 25, 2015) – Shakespeare’s Pizza, a local Columbia restaurant since 1973, had their grand opening of the new location on Oct. 24 2015. The restaurant is the fourth branch along with three Columbia locations. The business decided to add the new location based on the high number of frozen pizzas they sell in St. Louis. “We always aim to serve our customers in the best way possible. We thought that it would be great to have it in the mall so that people could have a delicious meal while shopping.” said Owner, Jay Lewis. “We did research and found that a lot of our sales that weren’t coming from Columbia were coming from St. Louis. Therefore, the smart move was to make the move to St. Louis! We are very excited to see how this grows in the future,“ said General Manager, Kurt Mirtsching. …show more content…
Jay Lewis purchased three Shakespeare’s Pizza restaurants in 1975 and after the Columbia location became the most successful, he closed the other two locations and made it into what it is today. In 2003, Shakespeare’s began providing frozen pizzas to grocery stores in Kansas City and St. Louis. Since then, the market in St. Louis has grown tremendously which stimulated the decision to make a permanent location in St. Louis. “I love that there’s going to be a Shakespeare’s in St. Louis! Both of my parents are Mizzou Alumni and loved Shakespeare’s. I’m from Chesterfield, so we plan on making the drive to the mall when I’m home on break since it’s so close now,” said Mizzou Student, Ryan Cruz.
“Even though it will be in the mall, we still plan on keeping our casual, fun atmosphere the same in the restaurant,” said Lewis. Shakespeare’s is known to be a cool, hip pizza places as shown by their mission statement “It’s the pizza, stupid. And maybe the beer. Everything else can go