62-year-old pizza buffet chain gives up control in major deal

As kids, determination was ever that 1 spot we begged our parents to instrumentality america to, oregon got excited astir visiting for a day enactment oregon a schoolhouse tract trip.

After all, kids' fixations are simple: Give them pizza and entertainment, and they'll happily enactment occupied for hours. When a concern offers both, it often becomes a invited interruption for parents arsenic well.

Everyone has their ain mentation of that place, whether it's Chuck E. Cheese, Dave & Buster's, oregon Main Event. Over the years, these spots person go go-to destinations for families crossed the country. In Texas, however, 1 concatenation has agelong stood isolated arsenic a root of Lone Star pride.

Mr Gatti's Pizza began successful 1964 arsenic a tiny edifice called "The Pizza Place" successful Stephenville, Texas. Five years later, it relocated to Austin and was renamed Mr Gatti's, successful grant of the founder's wife's maiden name.

During the 1970s, the Mr Gatti's marque expanded into a concatenation and introduced buffet-style dining, an innovation that helped separate it from competitors.

Although the Austin edifice predated the archetypal Chuck E. Cheese determination (which opened successful San Jose, California, successful 1977), Mr Gatti's didn't truly leap onto the entertainment-plus-pizza inclination until the 1980s. The conception rapidly won implicit families, and contiguous Mr Gatti's Pizza operates much than 200 locations crossed Texas and the southeastern U.S.

Industry experts accidental this hybrid exemplary has go progressively invaluable arsenic accepted casual eating struggles to vie for consumers. According to a 2025 McKinsey & Company survey, 45% of surveyed consumers person reduced their spending astatine pizza restaurants.

"When there's bully amusement and bully experiences, cheque averages spell up," Downtown Restaurant Investments President and BYOD CEO Dave Dittenber told Restaurant Dive.

Dittenber added that amusement lone works erstwhile paired with beardown work and prime food.

Mr Gatti's Pizza has sold a bulk involvement successful its concern to OneRyan Global LLC, the household bureau of businessman and philanthropist G. Brint Ryan, according to a property release. The fiscal presumption of the woody were not disclosed.

OneRyan has been a franchisee of Mr Gatti's Pizza since 2022, but its engagement with the marque has steadily expanded.

In September 2025, OneRyan acquired a number involvement successful the institution and, a period later, purchased a corporate-owned edifice astatine South Park Meadows successful Austin. That transaction completed Mr Gatti's Pizza's modulation to a afloat franchised strategy and concluded the re-franchising of each company-owned locations.