It’s official. Now we’re cookin’ in Katy!
We are delighted and excited to announce the opening of Crown Pizza in Katy, Texas at Tiger Square, right across from Katy High School. We’re proud to bring back the Neapolitan-style pizzeria to the community from years ago with all new ownership, new management, and a new-look menu from the Neches Restaurant Group.
The new Crown Pizza will offer both creative and classic style craft pizzas baked fresh to order in our authentic oven from Naples, Italy. Just like the award-winning, original pizzeria in Beaumont (Texas), Crown Pizza offers more than a dozen specialty pizzas for customers to choose from along with toppings, sauces, and options to customize their own.
Crown’s signature specialty pizzas include extraordinary, exotic flavors such as Cajun boudin, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, ricotta cheese, Serrano peppers, grilled Brussels sprouts, prosciutto, and even crispy French fries.
The new menu also features additional fare such as our FIVE flavors of hand-tossed chicken wings, new cannoli, hand-selected wine, and variety of beer on tap and in bottles.
A familiar name to “Old Town” Katy, Crown Pizza formerly operated under its original owner and evolved into Crown Kitchen before closing years ago.
Most recently, it temporarily housed Midway BBQ in 2021 as they transitioned to their re-constructed Highway Boulevard location.
Our new ownership and new management means a whole new life for the restaurant, and it means more opportunities for growth for all involved. Crown Pizza is now part of the Neches Restaurant Group. The group includes Willy Burger and now Taco Rey Mexican Restaurant (as announced just a little over a month ago).
“Our vision is to create and serve world-class flavors to hometown communities,” says owner/CEO, Dallon James. “Katy’s a special place, and we believe Crown has something Katy will be proud of.”
Mike Daniels, longtime Willy Burger GM of Katy, will serve as GM over the new Crown Pizza as well.
The team has been working on getting the restaurant ready with a new look, new menu, new crew, and new energy that reflects the wholesome brand that the group envisions. Our team at the Neches Restaurant Group says that Crown Pizza is as much the people’s pizza place as it is our own.
“Crown Pizza aims to be THE favorite pizza place in the community for something extra special,” says Alden Pond, Chief Product Officer and Executive Chef. “It’s something you can’t just get at any other pizza place, and it’s like the model of Willy Burger where it’s this dynamic of flavor adventure and excitement, but also comfort.”
The model, as he says, is to focus on what we do best. Our sister restaurant, Willy Burger, by comparison, has awesome onion rings, award-winning french fries, boudin balls, chili dogs, fun funnel cakes, and more. However, the all-star is obviously the big, beefy, craft burgers. For Crown Pizza, it’s the thin crust, Neapolitan oven-baked pizza as the All-Star.
“Our focus is making the best, most exciting, distinctive pizza(s) we can and supporting it; not distracting or interfering with it,” adds Pond. “We’ve added some terrific wings, some appetizers like meatballs and cheesy garlic bread sticks, and so on, but none of those take away from the pizza being the clear and present centerpiece.”
COO and co-owner, Johnny Collazo helped the team set up a private party as a soft opening last Friday. The event was a special night filled with smiles, encouragement, and enthusiasm.
“It was a small premiere party of sorts, but we had several Katy residents pop in and join in the fun to make it a bigger than anticipated crowd,” says Collazo. “We worked through some ‘new kitchen kinks’ in real time so that’s really good thing. Simple things with worker space and the inevitable technical software speed bumps tested us, and we did well. It’s good that we were able to quickly solve those and keep things moving. A success on all fronts.”
Crown Pizza will be open throughout much of the holidays except for Christmas Day and New Years Day. A more formal ribbon cutting will follow early in the new year. Stay tuned for more news to come for our all new Katy Crown Pizza.
ABOUT NECHES RESTAURANT GROUP
In 2020-2021, the James family purchased Willy Burger and Crown Pizza of Beaumont and Katy, Tx from its founder. The Neches Restaurant Group was formed in 2022 and is based in Southeast Texas. In 2022 alone, the group has grown in locations, personnel, and in new honors for “Best of” awards in both markets, including *Best Pizza and Best Chef (Executive Chef, Alden Pond) for Crown Pizza.
