A four-day pop-up at Costco Galleria Houston is giving Texas shoppers their first taste of Antico Pizza Napoletana's frozen Neapolitan-style pies, with the Atlanta restaurant's founder on hand to serve samples himself. The roadshow, running Thursday through Sunday, marks a new frontier for the brand's Antico Casa frozen line as it pushes beyond its original Southeast footprint.
Gio Di Palma, the pizzaiolo who founded Antico Pizza in Atlanta's Home Park neighborhood, is meeting shoppers at the Costco pop-up to demonstrate the pies and hand out samples, according to Click2Houston. The roadshow opened Thursday and runs through Sunday at the Costco Galleria location, part of what the outlet describes as Antico Casa's expansion beyond the Southeast and into more than 40 Texas warehouses. Antico Pizza itself has been credited with helping put Atlanta on the pizza map, and the brand now holds three Michelin Bib Gourmand awards, per the same report.
A Houston-Only Flavor Debuts
The Houston stop comes with a bit of exclusivity built in. The Antico Casa lineup includes the Original Margherita — topped with San Marzano tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil and garlic — alongside a San Gennaro pizza made with Italian sausage, sweet peppers, caramelized onions, fresh mozzarella and tomato sauce. That San Gennaro pie was introduced as a launch tasting in Houston and, for now, is available only there, the station notes.
Antico Casa is the frozen product line spun off from the flagship restaurant, and it has already drawn national attention following its initial Costco launch. Eater Atlanta called it no standard frozen pizza, while USA Today's 10Best labeled it shockingly good, and Southern Living praised the wood-fired-style crust for its char and chew, according to Click2Houston's roundup of the coverage.
From Atlanta Takeout Counter to National Freezer Aisle
The push into Texas retail fits a pattern for independent, acclaimed restaurant brands chasing national scale through frozen packaged goods. Antico Pizza Napoletana had already rolled Antico Casa into more than 80 Costco stores across Georgia, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee starting in January, according to Pizza Today. Getting there took roughly a decade of research and development, as the company worked to adapt its traditional 36-hour dough fermentation process so the frozen crust could match the texture of its brick-and-mortar pies.
That technical challenge is a real one in the Neapolitan world, where dough traditionally depends on high-heat flash baking and extended fermentation to stay light and properly charred. At the Atlanta restaurant, pies are still flash-baked in ovens built from Vesuvius volcanic rock and Santa Maria brick that reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, using Denominazione di Origine Protetta certified imported ingredients, according to Simply Buckhead. Translating that into something that survives a home freezer and a standard oven is a different engineering problem entirely.
Costco Roadshows as a Retail Testing Ground
Costco's roadshow format is designed exactly for this kind of stress test. These are temporary, vendor-managed pop-ups that typically run Thursday through Sunday, letting brands demo products, sample directly with members, and gather real-time sales data, per Makai Inc. Wholesale clubs use these short-run events as a low-risk way to gauge demand before committing to permanent freezer-aisle space, which makes the Houston stop a meaningful signal for whether Antico Casa earns a lasting spot in Texas Costcos.
Pricing at Costco has generally landed a two-pack of 16-ounce frozen Margherita pizzas in the $18.99 to $21 range, which roughly matches the $21 to $22 menu price of a single fresh Margherita pie at the Atlanta restaurant, according to Chowhound's comparison of retail and dine-in costs. Shoppers who miss the Houston roadshow can still buy Antico Casa pizzas through anticofinefood.com once the pop-up wraps, and the brand says it will continue rolling out more widely across Texas.
A Brand With Accolades and a Complicated Past
Antico Pizza's rise has not been without controversy. In 2014, founder Giovanni Di Palma reached a $329,445 out-of-court settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor to resolve a federal investigation into overtime pay and working conditions affecting 56 employees at the restaurant, a dispute tied to complaints over overtime calculations during the company's rapid early expansion.
The restaurant has also built a genuine reputation for quality since Di Palma opened the original Antico Pizza Napoletana in 2009, eventually growing the surrounding Home Park block into the multi-concept Italian dining enclave known as Little Italia, which includes affiliated spots like Gio's Chicken Italiano, Caffè Antico and Bar Amalfi — a cornerstone Hoodline once spotlighted in Home Park. Antico Pizza Napoletana earned its first Michelin Bib Gourmand award in October 2023, when the inaugural Michelin Guide Atlanta launched, an honor reserved for high-quality dining at moderate prices rather than the traditional star system.
The frozen expansion also rides a broader wave in the grocery aisle. The U.S. frozen pizza market was valued at $8.13 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $8.71 billion in 2026, fueled by consumers seeking restaurant-quality convenience at home. Demographic trends help explain the appetite too — U.S. Census Bureau data shows single-person households now make up roughly 29 percent of all American households, while USDA figures indicate nearly 11 percent of Americans eat pizza on any given day, a combination that favors storable, portion-controlled options over big takeout orders.
