Starting this week, one of Atlanta’s most beloved pies is joining the freezer aisle at Costco. Michelin Bib Gourmand winner Antico Pizza Napoletana has launched Antico Casa, a frozen Margherita pizza sold as a two-pack at roughly 80 Costco stores across Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Costco might not be where you expect to find a pizza that tastes anything like the blistered, fermented, deeply familiar pies Atlanta diners have lined up for at Antico for years. So I had to try it.
The pack has two 12-inch pizzas with torn buffalo mozzarella, garlic, and fresh basil. Once in the oven, within minutes, the kitchen smelled of that unmistakable Antico’s scent of tomatoes and fermented dough. After about eight minutes, the fluffy crust begins to crisp, the cheese melts, and the pizza takes on a familiar look through the oven door.
The crust has a spongy interior and crisp exterior. There’s even leoparding — the charred dark and light spots you want on a good crust. One bite makes it clear this is no standard frozen pizza. The San Marzano tomatoes are sweet and flavorful, the Campania cheese tastes fresh, and the crust eats like good sourdough. It’s deceptively simple, and it works.
According to the company, it took nearly a decade of research and development to land on the final frozen version, including adapting Antico’s signature 36-hour fermentation process for production at scale. The mozzarella di bufala is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) product from Italy, the flour is sourced from Naples, and the packaging highlights the regions behind the ingredients.
“As a maestro pizzaiolo, I spent years bringing everything we learned in Naples into a frozen pizza worthy of our ovens. When we quietly shared it during the pandemic, the reaction said it all, ‘this isn’t frozen pizza,’” said Giovanni Di Palma, founder of Antico Pizza, in a statement. “The goal was always … to make real Neapolitan pizza something anyone could pull from their freezer and enjoy in under 10 minutes. Seeing Antico Casa in Costco is a dream come true.”
Costco features a handful of local and regional products at its stores, including Atlanta food brands. Monica Sunny of the Chai Box (with an upcoming chai cafe on Howell Mill) launched her chai concentrate at the warehouse retailer in 2024, and Antico Casa now brings Antico Pizza Napoletana into the freezer aisle.
At $18.99 for a two-pack, the pizzas are also versatile. For the second pie, I added pepperoni and cremini mushrooms, which worked beautifully. The best part isn’t just that Antico has made a genuinely good frozen pizza; it’s that an Atlanta institution has found its way into a mega-store without losing its soul.
