Giordano's, the Chicago-based deep-dish pizza chain, is adding a Mall of America location in Bloomington, Minn., with doors opening July 16 — a move that extends the brand into one of North America's highest-traffic retail-foodservice venues.
The unit will serve the chain's signature stuffed deep-dish pizza, a format that distinguishes Giordano's from thin-crust fast-casual competitors and commands a premium price point. The location will also offer grab-and-go service, a critical operational lever for capturing impulse traffic in a mall environment where dwell times and dining decisions differ sharply from traditional street-side or strip-center units.
Channel Context
Mall foodservice has undergone a significant reset since the pandemic, with operators rethinking anchor-tenant dependence and leaning into experiential and destination dining as foot-traffic drivers. For legacy regional chains like Giordano's, high-profile mall placements — particularly in fortress properties like Mall of America, which draws an estimated 40 million visitors annually — can function as brand-awareness vehicles as much as revenue units. The retail-exclusive offerings planned for the location align with that dual strategy, giving the chain an incremental revenue stream and a retail presence that extends beyond the dining room.
Growth Implications
Giordano's has historically operated a mix of company-owned and franchised units concentrated in the Chicago metro and select tourist markets, including Las Vegas and Florida. A Mall of America footprint signals appetite for non-traditional venue development — a channel that brands from Shake Shack to Auntie Anne's have used to supplement traditional area development agreement pipelines. The grab-and-go format also suggests the chain is engineering the unit for higher throughput and broader daypart coverage than a full sit-down deep-dish experience alone would support.
For foodservice operators tracking off-premise and convenience-oriented formats, Giordano's mall entry is a data point worth watching. Deep-dish pizza — inherently a dine-in, high-ticket, slow-cook product — is being adapted here for a faster-moving consumer occasion without abandoning the core product identity. That kind of format flexibility, paired with retail exclusives that can drive incremental basket size, reflects the kind of unit-economics thinking that franchise development teams in the pizza segment are increasingly prioritizing as same-store sales growth moderates across the category.
The pizza and Italian casual-dining segment has faced sustained pressure from delivery-native brands and fast-casual competitors, making non-traditional venue access — airports, stadiums, and destination malls — an increasingly viable growth lever for established regional chains. Giordano's Mall of America opening offers a live case study in how a heritage brand can pursue non-traditional unit growth without diluting its product positioning.
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.
