Missouri’s ‘Best Pizza Place’ is expanding into Johnson County and Blue Springs

Longtime neighborhood favorite Waldo Pizza is expanding with grocery store operations.

It recently opened a Waldo Pizza Express inside the Cosentino’s Price Chopper at 1101 S. Missouri 7 in Blue Springs. Another will open in Cosentino’s Market, at 8051 W. 160th St. in Overland Park, in mid-February.

Customers can preorder pizzas, or place an order when they come in and shop while it is prepared.

“Cosentino’s reached out to us and it seemed like a good opportunity and a chance to reach markets that we weren’t able to reach before,” said Steven Kingery, owner of Waldo Pizza.

Mashed.com, a food news and recipe website, put Waldo Pizza on its list of “The Best Pizza Place in Every State” in 2020, as well as an updated list in 2021, for Missouri.

Waldo Pizza Express offers five pizza choices baked to order: Pepperoni, the Choice Cut (with Scimeca’s Italian sausage, bacon, pepperoni, hamburger and Canadian bacon), Scimeca’s Italian sausage, cheese, and The Combo (with pepperoni, Canadian bacon, pork sausage, hamburger, green peppers, onion, mushrooms and black olives).

Customers also can select their own toppings. Other menu items include garlic cheese bread and desserts.

However, the Express operations do not offer the restaurant’s deli sandwiches since the grocery stores already offer something similar in their prepared food sections.

Waldo Pizza, at 7433 Broadway, opened in early 1988. Phil Bourne bought it in 1993, and sold it to longtime employee Kingery in July of 2020. It also had a Lee’s Summit location under different owners, but it changed to Summit Pizza.

This story was originally published January 28, 2022 at 3:08 PM.