A group of local investors has bought Buddy’s Pizza, the chain widely recognized as inventing Detroit-style pizza, from a Nashville investment group.
The new owner is led by Andrew Dickow, managing director of investment bank Greenwich Capital Group in Birmingham that specializes in food and beverage mergers and acquisitions, and Saber Ammori and Kevin Denha, co-founders of major T-Mobile retailer Wireless Vision in Birmingham and real estate and retail investors. The group bought Buddy’s Pizza from CapitalSpring LLC, which has invested in Buddy’s since 2018. The sale price of the pizza chain wasn’t disclosed.
The new owners said they will focus on Buddy’s customer experience, product quality and brand reputation after the chain has struggled with gaining traction outside of southeast Michigan, closing its last west Michigan location in January in Grand Rapids. They also want to grow Buddy’s frozen pizza offerings in grocery stores nationally.
“For us, this is deeply personal,” Dickow said in a statement. “I still remember walking to Buddy’s as a kid and grabbing a slice. The crust had that unmistakable crunch, the pizza felt premium in a way nothing else did, and it was the highlight of my day. Buddy’s has always been more than a meal. It is a part of Detroit’s fabric, and for a lot of us, it is tied to family, tradition, and memory.”
The oldest Detroit-style pizza brand, Buddy’s marks 80 years of business in 2026. In 1946, Gus Guerra started selling pizzas at Buddy’s Rendezvous, his bar in Detroit on Conant just north of McNichols. It still stands today as the original Buddy’s Pizza location among the 17 sit-down and carryout Buddy’s in Michigan.
Guerra sold Buddy’s on Conant in 1953 and opened Cloverleaf Pizza restaurant in Eastpointe, which is still open and run by his children. Buddy’s new owners Jimmy Bonacorsi and Jimmy Valenti carried the bar throughout the 1960s and sold it to William and Shirlee Jacobs in 1970. The Jacobs family took the Buddy’s name from a single Detroit restaurant to the multi-location brand it grew to become.
In 2018, Buddy’s Pizza partnered with New York-based CapitalSprings which made an undisclosed investment in the brand. The plan then was to expand Buddy’s to new locations across the Midwest. The brand did expand to the west side of Michigan with a few locations, but all have since closed.
The Grand Rapids closure came after a Buddy’s in Portage, Michigan, closed last spring. Another Buddy’s Pizza near Grand Rapids in Walker closed in 2024. Last February, the Portage and Grand Rapids Buddy’s tried to lure in more customers by selling “Rendezvous Rounds,” which was traditional round pizza, at the request of patrons — many who didn’t grow up with square, deep-dish pies featuring a crispy, golden crust and sauce on top of cheese, CEO Joe Dominiak said at the time.
The year after the CaptialSprings deal, Buddy’s Pizza sold the building that houses the original location for $1.36 million with a sale-leaseback agreement.
According to its website, Buddy’s has locations in Ann Arbor, Auburn Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Canton Township, Clarkston, Dearborn, Detroit (two), Farmington Hills, Grosse Pointe, Livonia, Novi, Okemos, Plymouth, Royal Oak, Shelby Township, Troy, Warren and Woodhaven.
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Buddy’s Pizza sold to local investors aiming to grow frozen pizza biz
Reporting by Breana Noble and Melody Baetens, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
