Owner General Mills Markets Worldwide | Country U.S. | |
Product type Frozen pizza and pizza products Introduced 1951; 66 years ago (1951) (Totino's)
1968; 49 years ago (1968) (Jeno's) Previous owners Rose and Jim Totino (Totino's)
Jeno's Inc. (Jeno's)
Pillsbury Company | ||
Totino's and Jeno's are brands of frozen pizza products owned by General Mills.
Contents
History
Rose Totino and her husband, Jim, founded a take-out pizzeria in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1951. They later expanded it to a full-service restaurant, which moved in 2007 and closed in 2011. They also founded a frozen-pizza manufacturing company. The Totinos eventually sold the frozen pizza business to the Pillsbury Company, where Rose Totino was named a vice-president. The Totino's brand was acquired by General Mills with its purchase of Pillsbury.
Separately, Jeno Paulucci developed a series of food businesses starting in the late 1940s, including the Chun King line of Chinese foods. After selling Chun King in 1966, he founded Jeno’s Inc. in 1968, where he developed Pizza Rolls, a type of egg roll filled with pizza ingredients. In 1985, Paulucci sold his Jeno's Pizza Rolls brand to Pillsbury for $135 million.
The Jeno's line of pizza rolls was rebranded as Totino's in 1993. Totino's and Jeno's products are manufactured in Wellston, Ohio. The brands produce about 1.4 million pizzas a day and sell an average of about 240 million each year. Pizza rolls are also manufactured.
Product lines
Health and nutrition issues
On November 1, 2007, Totino's and Jeno's brand pizza were recalled for E. coli contamination.
Totino's products contain cheese substitutes made with hydrogenated oil. Totino's products have been criticized for their high amount of trans fat and sodium. In 2011, Consumer Reports rated Totino's as "only fair for nutrition" because of "high total fat and trans fat and low fiber." By at least October 2013, packaging on Totino's brand pizza now indicates 0 trans fat per serving.