Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Delivering Great Pizza

For 25 days—August 22 through September 15—enjoy two 11” pizzas and a small salad delivered to your door for just $25!

Twenty-five years is a long time in the history of the relatively young city of Seattle. Back in 1992, Rolling Stone touted the low cost of living in Seattle, which made it “easy to be in a band.” And, man, there were bands—Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden topped the billboard charts. In 1992, Sir Mix-a-Lot released “Baby Got Back.” MTV said the video was too racy and banned it. The video isn’t quite Leave it to Beaver, but it’s pretty quaint by today’s standards. Back then Seattle had a basketball team—and a musty concrete fortress called the Kingdome. Back then, Microsoft Office came on floppy disks and Amazon wasn’t even a twinkle in the eyes of Jeff Bezos.

Twenty-five years ago, Pagliacci Pizza had just entered its teen years (13 years old) and, as teens do, had that itch to roam further afield. After playing footsie with pizza delivery (testing the service from the Queen Anne store), Pagliacci went all in and opened three delivery-only kitchens: 55th Street, which eventually moved and became our Lake City Way location, Stone Way and Miller. Delivery orders took off.

To help manage the new growth, Pagliacci founder, Dorene Centioli-McTigue, took Edgar Bobadilla, Pagliacci’s dough master, to a restaurant show in 1992 in Las Vegas to look at commercial kneading machines. She asked him what he thought about getting one. “What for? I wash my hands and I’m done. With that I’m gonna have to break the machine apart and clean the whole thing.” Edgar laughs. “We only had 3 or 4 stores back then. But she had a vision for expanding, getting bigger.”

Back then, Edgar would make the dough in the morning, doing all the kneading by hand, and deliver it in the afternoon—in a green and white Volkswagen van missing first gear. “Slap it into second and get it to go,” he says with a smile.

Today, Edgar Bobadilla is the General Manager of the Commissary and tops Pagliacci’s overall tenure chart with more than 35 years of experience. He learned the dough-making process from the original five people involved in starting Pagliacci. Today, Pagliacci’s dough recipe is the same as it was then. The big difference is we make a lot more of it.

Sasha Mitronovas began working for Pagliacci in 1995, just three years after Pagliacci had started delivery service. Sasha says, “I started with Pagliacci as a delivery driver after moving to Seattle from New York to pursue my dream of being a ski bum. The pizza delivery job was perfect because he could ski in the mornings, work in the evenings and even get some free food. I eventually got bored in the summer and returned to school and got a BA in economics.”

Today, Sasha manages, and personally trains, over 250 drivers who operate out of Pagliacci’s 26 Seattle area stores. Especially on busy nights, Sasha still cruises the streets of Seattle delivering pizza.

It is the experience and passion that Edgar and Sasha and so many others at Pagliacci have that has allowed us to keep growing with Seattle. As Seattle changes, we’re proud to be busy navigating traffic, wipers swishing, to deliver Seattle’s best fresh hot pizza to so many familiar faces and the many new arrivals to this great city.

Celebrate a vibrant quarter century of Seattle history with Pagliacci and enjoy two 11” pizzas and a small salad delivered to your door for just $25.

And in memory of that pivotal year in Pagliacci’s history, we’re transporting our stores back to the 90s with throwback delivery boxes and uniforms.

Thank you, Seattle.