Born in a West Midtown “laboratory” and perfected during the pandemic, Giovanni Di Palma’s frozen line has conquered Costco’s Southeast freezer aisle — and its newest pizza, the Food Network-featured San Gennaro, just landed in a limited run.
In mid-August, at a Houston Costco, Giovanni Di Palma and business partners David Lee and Rob Moran sold out of every pizza they brought, turned away hundreds, and flew home to Atlanta early.
Lee has been an avid fan of Anticos since it opened and long before he became a partner in the frozen pizza venture. After working on private equity for 20 years, Lee made the decision to strike out on his own. “I’ve spent the last 18-plus years in the culinary space as a private equity investor, but the interest started long before the career did. Food was how my family and our friends came together when I was a kid. That’s still how I think about it. Nothing bridges a gap or brings people closer than an amazing meal. That’s the whole reason I wanted to work on this: Antico is one of those experiences, and the idea of getting it to people who can’t drive to Hemphill Avenue was impossible to pass up,” said Lee about his enterprise with Di Palma.
Moran, a friend and former neighbor of Lee’s, made the initial introduction. “Rob and I were talking about a completely different opportunity when he mentioned he knew Gio, and he offered to make the introduction. That conversation is the reason any of this exists,” said Lee.
The pizzas were Antico Casa, the frozen line from Antico Pizza Napoletana, which has collected recognition Lee calls impossible to buy: more than 50 awards, including a Michelin Bib Gourmand three years running and 50 Top Pizza USA honors four years running. Since launching in more than 80 Costco stores in the last week of January, it has sold roughly half a million pizzas, added a second production line and spread across seven Southeast states: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Costco buyers from the Bay Area to the Northeast are calling, Di Palma says. “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
Those in Buckhead might know him by his restaurant, Pala, which he opened at 1264 W Paces Ferry Road in 2022, but the story really starts in West Midtown, where Di Palma opened Antico on Hemphill Avenue in 2009 with one idea: artisan pizza made from the highest-quality ingredients, no shortcuts anywhere. “No press, no marketing, no plan beyond making it right,” Lee wrote. “People found it and started lining up, and they haven’t really stopped.” From those humble beginnings grew an Atlanta Italian fare empire and a style Di Palma dubbed Neo-Neapolitan: Naples tradition, New York influences.
“He’s always ahead of the curve,” Lee said. Di Palma has worked on the recipe for more than 10 years, running a West Midtown “laboratory,” freezing dough and testing it the next day. “Frozen pizza was completely ignored — people think it’s going to be bad, and we just live with it,” Di Palma said. “I always felt like there was a way to improve it.”
Then the pandemic closed his dining rooms, and the experiment became a side hustle.
Before seeking a retail partner, Di Palma shipped pizzas to private clients — famous ones. “Entourage” creator Doug Ellin reported, “Your pizza’s on every porch in Beverly Hills.” Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy scored the frozen pie an 8.3. The reorder requests, Di Palma said, were “the validation all I needed.”
The organic endorsements haven’t stopped. Clean-eating reviewer Bobby Parrish — more than 10 million YouTube subscribers and over 3 million on Instagram, none of it paid, Lee notes — featured Antico Casa in his “I Tried Every ‘Healthy’ Frozen Pizza” roundup and posted about it again, and again, and again, and again. The launch drew reviews from Eater Atlanta, USA Today and Southern Living.
Costco came via Duluth, where the buyer hosting the tasting already knew Antico from Avalon — and the first purchase order, Di Palma says, ran seven figures. “We’re like, ‘Holy cow, this is a pretty fun business.'”
What makes the pizza unique? The goal, Lee wrote, was pizza “everyone would be proud to put on the table — easy to prepare, genuinely better for you, and real food all the way through.” Start with what’s not in it: no dough conditioners or stabilizers — mass production’s additives for handling dough and surviving the trip — and no artificial preservatives, colors or flavors. The flour is Caputo 00, milled in Italy — never enriched, no folic acid. “There’s a reason Atlantans feel so good after they eat Antico,” Di Palma said. The margherita is, as Lee puts it, essentially six things: Italian flour, spring water, sea salt, organic tomatoes, mozzarella, and fresh basil and garlic, finished with extra-virgin olive oil. “It’s a label you can read out loud without explaining anything,” Lee wrote.
The rest is hands and time. Every crust is opened by a person — “not pressed, not sheeted, not rolled,” Lee wrote. “Our perfection is our imperfection.” Sauce is ladled, cheese torn, basil placed; no two pies look the same. The dough is aged and slow-fermented — time does the work that chemicals do elsewhere. “Nobody in frozen pizza talks about crumb structure,” Di Palma said. “We do.”
How does the crust stay crisp two hours out of the oven? Di Palma laughed. “Yeah. Well, it’s magic. It’s magic, man.”
“He’s not going to tell,” Lee added.
The newest trick is the San Gennaro — Italian sausage, sweet peppers and caramelized cipollini onions over fior di latte, Italian for “flower of the milk” — the pie the company says was featured on Food Network’s “Best. Pizza. Ever.” It launched Aug. 27 — Di Palma’s birthday — in a limited run at a few select metro Costcos.
His warning: “These things sell out — and when they’re gone, they’re gone.”
