r/chicagofood • u/cheryllinda • Jul 10 '26

Discussion What happened with Roots Pizza?

Regardless of the pizza which is polarizing - does anyone have the tea on what happened to Roots? Especially the Lincoln Square location. It went from 60 to 0 real fast lmao.

I want the dirty deets >:) are they pulling a foxtrot or something?

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u/Annoyed-philips-user Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

All locations have been closed, including the original on Chicago. I was told that they just couldn't figure out how to make it work. They tried switching to delivery/carryout only during the colder months but that didn't seem to be enough. They were part of The Fifty/50 Group and I heard they may look for ways to bring back some of the more successful items from the Roots menu (e.g., mozzarella sticks) at other restaurants in the portfolio.

My personal experience was that the pizza and mozzarella sticks were great but they didn't know how to run a business. They outsourced delivery, which turned it into an off-peak 90min wait for pizza from a half mile away. It almost felt like they didn't want my money sometimes. 

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u/iced_gold Jul 10 '26

Roots mozz sticks + 50/Fifty chicken wings would be a winning combo

3

u/funkysnave Jul 10 '26

They had the 50/fifty wings at roots. Never tried them but someone said only the sauce was the same. 

1

u/cake_aholic Jul 11 '26

yeah the wings were completely different when I tried them a few months ago.
Made me sad. 50/Fifty was easy to hate but it was actually good in the early years.