News that Conagra has stopped making Celeste frozen pizza has left many shoppers nostalgic for the brand’s familiar box, with its smiling, grandmotherly face. That face belonged to a real person.
A Chicago restaurant, 1937
The story starts in Chicago in 1937, when Celeste Lizio and her husband opened a restaurant and tavern. They ran it for about 25 years.
In 1962 the couple closed the restaurant but kept going in food, supplying pizzas and other products to restaurants. That frozen-food business grew into the Celeste brand.
A brand that changed hands many times
Mama Celeste did not own her brand for long. Its later history reads like a tour of America’s food industry:
- 1969: the Quaker Oats Company bought the brand.
- 1996: Aurora Foods took it over.
- 2004: Aurora merged with Pinnacle Foods as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
- 2018: Pinnacle’s assets, including Celeste, passed to Conagra.
Celeste Lizio died in 1988 at the age of 80.
Why the pizza is going
Conagra, whose other brands include Banquet, Healthy Choice and Slim Jim, said in a recent earnings report that exiting Celeste was an early example of a wider simplification of its business. Chief executive John Brase said there were “certain brands and categories where we simply just don’t see a future.”
Remaining stock will stay on shelves until it sells out, so fans may still find a last box or two in some freezer aisles.
Further reading
Image: Frozen pizzas 02 by Pannet, BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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