Longtime KC area pizza joint closed last year. Here’s what’s moving in
Before he opened PaPPo’s Pizzeria, Chris “Pappo” Galloway had spent decades watching the pizza business get faster, cheaper, and in his words, “less real.” He was a franchisee for one of the biggest names in the industry — he prefers not to say which — and found himself increasingly uneasy with what was passing for food.
“I’ve seen concepts and brands that literally don’t even cook their food,” Galloway said. “You just open a bag or a can and warm it up.”
That frustration turned into a pivot. In 2012, Galloway opened the first PaPPo’s in downtown Springfield, Missouri, drawing from his Italian mother’s cooking and a commitment to scratch-made everything.
This fall, PaPPo’s will debut its first Kansas location, in the former Overland Park d’Bronx space at 7070 W. 105th St., which closed in March. It will be the growing chain’s 12th location, following stores in cities including Columbia, Jefferson City, Branson, and Huntsville, Alabama.
Target opening date: early October, Galloway said.
The Overland Park location will be run by Casey Richards, a franchisee Galloway calls a “star already in our world.” Richards worked her way up through the company before opening her first PaPPo’s in Lee’s Summit two years ago. “Their sales have gone up every week for two straight years,” Galloway said. “I think they have a 4.7 on Google. They are killing it.”
The pizzas range from traditional to indulgent. The Kitchen Sink comes piled with 10 toppings, including sliced plum tomatoes. The apple bourbon barbecue pulled pork pizza uses pork roasted in-house. There’s also the “GOAT”: a pizza with goat cheese, caramelized pineapple and onions, spinach, garlic, and mozzarella on an olive oil glaze. “We have nine pizza sauces,” Galloway said, “and one is just a really good-quality extra virgin olive oil.”
The meatballs are from his mother Joan — a fifth-generation family recipe. The sausage is ground in-house. The cheese is shredded daily, because the pre-shredded stuff? “Those bags can have up to 10 percent wood pulp in them,” Galloway said. “They put it in there to keep the cheese from clumping. A woman mentioned that to me, so in a week we switched to shredding our own cheese.”
Galloway said they use unbleached, unbromated Minnesota hard red wheat flour in the dough — just six ingredients, no extenders or conditioners. The dressings, sauces, dough, and bread are made from scratch daily. They make their own wing sauces. Even the pineapple for their Hawaiian pizza is fresh, trimmed and caramelized in brown sugar — “not in cans,” he noted.
Roughly 35% of their orders, he said, are salads. Cookies are baked to order — brown butter chocolate chip, made with Ghirardelli 60% cocoa and real butter, served warm with sea salt.
“We don’t make them ahead of time,” Galloway said. “They come out of the oven all ooey-gooey.”
PaPPo’s stores also serve local beers — typically 32 taps, with a blend of national crafts and local names like KC Bier Co. and Boulevard.
The Overland Park store comes after years of requests from KC-area fans, many of whom discovered PaPPo’s at its Lake of the Ozarks locations.
“We’ve been hearing from people at the Lake for the past 12 years saying, ‘Please open in Johnson County or KC,’” Galloway said. “So, we’re finally coming.”
