Giordano's, the Chicago-based stuffed deep-dish pizza chain, will open a new location inside Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota on July 16 — marking another high-traffic retail-center entry for a brand built around a labor- and equipment-intensive pizza format.
The location will feature grab-and-go service alongside its signature stuffed deep-dish offering, plus retail-exclusive products — a format mix that signals a purpose-built kitchen designed to handle both dine-in production speed and packaged-goods throughput from a single footprint.
Operator & Equipment Implications
Stuffed deep-dish pizza is among the most equipment-demanding pizza formats in commercial foodservice. The category requires extended bake times, precise deck or conveyor oven temperature control, and high-capacity holding solutions to maintain product integrity during peak mall traffic periods. Operators specifying cooking equipment for retail-adjacent pizza concepts often prioritize deck ovens with independent deck control and programmable bake profiles to accommodate the thick dough mass characteristic of Chicago-style stuffed pizza.
The grab-and-go service component adds another layer of equipment consideration. Maintaining stuffed deep-dish at safe holding temperatures — while preserving crust texture — typically requires heated display cases or pass-through holding cabinets engineered for high-moisture product. Dealers and consultants working on similar hybrid dine-in/grab-and-go pizza builds should account for the additional refrigeration and prep-and-storage footprint that retail SKU production demands alongside à la carte service.
Mall Foodservice Context
Mall of America draws an estimated 40 million visitors annually, making it one of the highest-volume foodservice destinations in the country. For equipment specifiers, large-format mall deployments at this traffic level require warewashing capacity, ventilation systems, and refrigeration infrastructure scaled well beyond a standard suburban pizzeria build. The Giordano's concept — with its dual service model and retail product line — represents the kind of multi-function operator installation that increasingly defines food hall and anchor-mall foodservice environments.
The July 16 opening adds to a broader trend of regional pizza chains expanding into experiential retail environments, where grab-and-go and branded retail product sales can help offset the higher occupancy costs of flagship mall locations. Equipment dealers supporting similar rollouts should anticipate specification packages that balance high-throughput oven capacity with display merchandising and cold-chain retail prep.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
