Build your pizzeria website in Springfield
Springfield has been eating tavern pizza since 1947, and many of its pizzerias have served the same families for generations. A website keeps that loyalty ordering from you directly, instead of letting a delivery app take a cut of business your history already earned.
A capital city with a long pizza memory
Pizza reached Springfield in February 1947, when the Wonder Inn on East Washington Street advertised a new Italian dish called “La Pizza.” Within months it was on the menu in taverns and nightclubs across town. Saputo’s downtown added pizza in 1952, a Peoria Road tavern that opened in 1953 later became Vic’s Pizza, and Gabatoni’s was started by a World War II Marine cook who brought the recipe home. Places like Gabatoni’s and Bernie & Betty’s still serve the thin crust that generations of Springfield families grew up on.
This is also a city with its own food identity, the home of the horseshoe sandwich and the Cozy Dog, and its customers are loyal. They do not want the newest thing; they want the place their parents took them, and they want it to be easy to order.
A government town at lunch
The State of Illinois is Springfield’s biggest employer by far, with roughly 17,800 people on its payroll, and on weekdays downtown fills with state workers, lobbyists and legislators around the Capitol. Hospitals in the Medical District add thousands more. Lunch is a real business here, and big office orders are some of the best tickets a pizzeria can get. Through an app, every one of them pays a commission. Through your own site, an office orders for a set time and pays ahead, and the whole amount stays with you.
Keep the next generation ordering from you
Your longtime customers know your number by heart. Their children and grandchildren do not; they search, and if an app comes up first, the app takes a cut of an order that tradition already sent your way. Your own site tells your story, shows your crust and your cut, and takes the order directly at your counter price.
DoorDash and Uber Eats cover downtown, the Medical District, Enos Park and the west side, but Springfield spreads out around Leland Grove toward Westchester, Harvard Park and down to Lake Springfield and the UIS campus. For many of those families, ordering ahead and picking up is simpler than a long delivery. Keep the apps for discovery, and put your own ordering link on every box so the next order comes straight to you.