Within the past week, a sleek new smattering of pizza photos may have stopped you in your social media scroll, with a catchy tagline to boot: “Fresh to frozen never looked so good.”
Billy Pie, the pizza brainchild of longtime industry baker and restaurant owner Billy Fallen, is on its second act.
“I realized that posting random pictures from my phone is not efficient to get my message across,” laughs Fallen. This rebranding is but a small part of Billy Pie’s new trajectory—pies are now being freshly made and frequently packaged in a spacious new warehouse and delivered to a frozen aisle near you.
And soon, more than a dozen other states.
We caught up with Fallen to learn more about how he’s planning to grow his ‘za empire with his new frozen pie facility.
Style Weekly: You’ve been carbo-loading Richmond for a while now. Tell us about how you got from Billy Bread to Billy Pie Wholesale.
Billy Fallen: I got the bread bakery going in 1999 then built, developed and sold that. The pizza actually came about when the guys at Triple Crossing asked me if I wanted to do pizza at their new Fulton facility (2016). I had been selling bread to them for their grilled cheese sandwiches… we were doing a little bit of frozen pizza during the slow days at Fulton. Then I opened the brick and mortar at Three Chopt and Patterson [2018-2022] and the frozen side really started to take off during Covid. So, I would say it’s been almost 10 years doing frozen pies with a couple of restaurants, pizza shops and breweries around the state. In 2023, I was approached by Rainforest Distribution — they had seen my pizzas in a lot of places they serve (Stella’s, Yellow Umbrella). We put the numbers together and decided it made sense to sell everything and funnel it all into building a distribution warehouse.
Tell us about the warehouse.
It’s in a brand new, mixed-use facility right off of Midlothian Turnpike. It was this perfect, huge shell. I got to build out everything how I wanted with a massive walk-in freezer, all the plumbing, the ovens. It works out really well—we have tons of capacity for storage and growth. Everything is under one roof and my buying power has gone up tremendously because I now have space to store stuff. Because we are so efficient our staff is small, but we’re growing. I hope to have a team of 20, that’s the goal. Just with one level of staff we can produce 220 pizzas an hour — that’s over 6,000 pizzas a week.
Why did you choose to work with a large distributor versus self-distributing?
This will be the first time the product goes across state lines so I’m super excited. For the past 10 years or so we’ve been in stores from Harrisonburg to Virginia Beach with a heavy concentration in Richmond. For me to expand outside of state lines, is, logistically, well it would’ve been insane… I wanted to leave it to people who that is what they do.
Where can folks find your pizzas going forward?
We’ve got four pies we’re offering; Rainforest is taking over my current 40+ customers and we’re hitting the road and growing it. [Locally] we are at Union Market, Little House Green Grocery, Stella’s, Yellow Umbrella, Shoreline Seafood and more [find the full list here]. [Working with] these smaller places has served me well for decades — some of them actually got bread from me when I was doing that. It’s nice to continue that relationship 25 years later
We’ve gotten into D.C. and Maryland, going into Delaware and Pennsylvania. Going forward, we’re looking at stocking up at a mix of both mom-and-pop shops and then also trying to get our foot in the door at bigger places like Whole Foods, Kroger in about 14 states total, all the way down to Florida.
From Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches to Keya’s Snacks, you’re joining some elite local makers who have expanded their distribution beyond the Old Dominion.
It’s funny you say that because I’ve known Hannah and Xavier [Nightingale] for decades —they actually were renting space from my one of my cousins when they first started. And they outgrew that. And then outgrew that. They have great experience and knowledge. I’ve talked to them to get contacts and get help navigating this because it’s a whole different ball game working with these large-scale distributors.
Being able to bounce ideas off of them [Hannah and Xavier] has been very beneficial.
