Tasty Pizza closed its Blair storefront Friday, with owner Mary Joseph saying the shop at 1653 Washington Street was simply too far from her Omaha base to manage properly. The scratch-kitchen pizzeria, known around the metro for 8-inch personal pies and a no-delivery counter-service model, now operates from two remaining Omaha spots — one at 60th and Woolworth streets and another at 32nd Avenue and Oak Street.
Joseph told the Omaha World-Herald that managing the Blair location remotely meant scrambling to deliver products whenever the store ran low, since Tasty Pizza makes pretty much everything from scratch. She has offered the Blair employees jobs at her Omaha locations going forward. Despite the closure, Joseph praised the community, saying the Blair team was wonderful and that the town was very nice to Tasty Pizza during its run.
A 25-Mile Gap That Proved Hard to Bridge
The Blair shop opened in June 2025 at 1653 Washington Street, according to the Washington County Enterprise. The store faced problems early on. During the store's opening weeks, a walk-in cooler breakdown forced staff to haul dough daily from Omaha just to keep up with scratch-made crust standards, a process that led to significant early product loss, Blair Today reported.
Joseph shifted her menu to pizza in 2017, favoring a dedicated pizza line for its predictable, organized workflow. That same emphasis on operational predictability appears to have shaped her decision to step back from Blair now.
Not the First Consolidation for Tasty Pizza
This is not the first time Joseph has pulled operations into fewer locations. After opening a second Omaha shop at 1418 S. 60th Street in 2020, a fire struck her original Leavenworth Street cottage, forcing her to consolidate at the 60th Street site, per Omaha Exploration. Joseph later leased that historic 1910 cottage to local startup Omaha Bagel Co. for its permanent storefront, a business that had previously sold out of farmers markets, according to the Flatwater Free Press.
Joseph's roots in the Omaha food scene go back further still. Born in Jamaica and raised in Costa Rica, she studied pre-med and international relations in Massachusetts before relocating to Nebraska, where she first baked chocolate cakes for Dundee's Dario's Brasserie. She founded Tasty Pastry in 2012 inside that same Leavenworth Street cottage before the 2017 pivot to pizza, per the same account from Omaha Exploration.
Omaha Footprint Continues
Even as Blair winds down, Joseph continues to operate in Omaha. The Omaha City Council unanimously approved a Class I liquor license in August for Tasty Pizza's location at 3001 South 32nd Avenue near Oak Street, with Joseph participating in the hearing remotely via Zoom, according to Open Publica. Separately, Grow Omaha reported a proposal for a Tasty Pizza restaurant with a drive-through at 1421 North Saddle Creek Road; the August 2026 Omaha City Council meeting record said the project was on hold.
Tasty Pizza's counter-service concept — featuring small or 8-inch pies and no delivery — has earned it a loyal following well beyond Blair. Yelp ranked it the 10th-best pizza parlor in the Midwest in 2023, and a local media feature previously singled out its margherita pie as the city's best, per Omaha Exploration. Hoodline itself ranked it among Omaha's top pizza spots back in 2019, placing it fourth based on Yelp review data. With Blair now closed, Joseph's focus stays squarely on Midtown and Central Omaha, where the two remaining storefronts continue serving the personal pies that built the brand.
