National Tavern-Style Pizza Day

History & origins

National Tavern-Style Pizza Day falls on October 22. It is an informal U.S. food observance, not a federal holiday.

The calendar date is new and has a named founder. In 2024, National Day Calendar and Chicago’s Home Run Inn proclaimed October 22 as National Tavern-Style Pizza Day, with a city proclamation from Mayor Brandon Johnson. Home Run Inn’s story is specific: Mary and Vincent Grittani opened a tavern on Chicago’s South Side (Little Village / South Lawndale) in 1923. After Vincent’s death and World War II, Mary and her son-in-law Nick Perrino began serving pizza from a Bari family recipe, cut into small squares and — in the company’s telling — first offered free on napkins so a customer could hold a beer in the other hand. The tavern took the Home Run Inn name in 1947 after a baseball came through the window. The family still runs the restaurants and a frozen-pizza brand.

Home Run Inn is a well-known early source of the style. It is not the only Chicago or Midwest tavern with a claim. Other South Side shops and Milwaukee “thin crust” taverns served square-cut thin pizza in the same era. Treat the 2024 day as a Home Run Inn / National Day Calendar creation, and treat tavern-style pizza as a wider Midwestern bar food.

The pie itself: a thin, often cracker-crisp crust, toppings pushed close to the edge, and a grid of squares (the “party cut”) so it can be eaten standing. That is the opposite of deep-dish. Do not 301 this page into National Sausage Pizza Day or into a generic pizza URL.

Why it matters

Outside Chicago, “Chicago pizza” still means deep-dish. Tavern-style is what many Chicago neighborhoods actually eat on a weeknight. The day is useful if it teaches that difference. It is a food date, not a beer holiday; you can eat the pie without drinking.

How to celebrate

Order a thin, square-cut pie from a tavern-style shop, in Chicago if you can, or from a Midwest place that uses the cut. Make one at home on a thin crust and cut it in a grid, not triangles. Compare it with deep-dish on purpose so the contrast is clear. Try sausage, which is a classic topping on this style, without treating the day as National Sausage Pizza Day (October 11). If you drink with it, that is optional and for adults of legal drinking age.

Facts

• Home Run Inn and National Day Calendar founded the October 22 food day in 2024
• Mary and Vincent Grittani opened the original South Side tavern in 1923
• The company dates its tavern pizza to the 1940s, cut in small squares
• Tavern-style means thin, crisp crust and a square “party cut,” not deep-dish
• Other Chicago and Milwaukee taverns also served this style; Home Run Inn is not the only origin story

Upcoming dates

• Thursday, October 22, 2026
• Friday, October 22, 2027
• Sunday, October 22, 2028
• Monday, October 22, 2029
• Tuesday, October 22, 2030