Rocky Rococo

Rocky Rococo is a pizza chain established in Madison in 1974. It is known for its unique pan-style pizza, sauce, the flamboyant and comical figurehead bearing its namesake, and sells pizza both by the slice and whole pies.

Origin

The original Rocky Rococo was located in downtown Madison, at 411 W. Gilman St., just off State Street. It opened on April 4, 1974.

The founders, Wayne Mosley and Roger Brown, were both from the Chicago area and met at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Brown had worked there at Garcia's Pizza in a Pan, which sold pizza by the slice; Mosley was a law student and a customer. They thought there was a market for pan-style pizza, which was popular in Chicago but little known elsewhere, and that a university town was the place to start. In 1973 they visited each city with a Big Ten university and settled on Madison, because it was close to home and had many students from Chicago.

The building on Gilman Street had been Brown's Restaurant, which closed on March 16, 1974, after 36 years. The newspaper noted the coincidence that one of the new proprietors was named Brown. Mosley and Brown bought it with a bank loan; a later account has them starting "with $15,000 and a beat-up pickup truck". Mosley remembered sitting outside that first summer asking passersby to come in. Business picked up when university classes began in the fall.

The name came from a song on a record album popular at the time.

History

Growth

A second restaurant opened in the summer of 1975 at State and Lake streets (651 State St.), and two more within the next six months. An advertisement in August 1978 listed five restaurants in the Madison area. The first restaurant outside Madison, in La Crosse, followed by about 1979.

By April 1982 there were 11 restaurants (six in Madison, two in La Crosse and three in Minneapolis) with 350 employees, and the company expected sales of about $6 million that year. Its headquarters was at 333 W. Mifflin St. It was about to start selling franchises, beginning with Milwaukee. The company sold franchises for whole television markets rather than single restaurants, so that advertising would pay. By February 1985 there were 43 restaurants in four states.

Sale of the company

Public Storage Inc., a real estate company in Glendale, California, took a stake in 1986. In January 1988 Mosley and Brown sold their 70 percent of Rocky Rococo Corp. to senior executives of Public Storage. In exchange they were given control of the 10 restaurants in Madison, which had about 500 employees, and three in La Crosse. The corporation's headquarters, with about 45 employees, was then at 340 W. Washington Ave., and its president was Thomas Hester. A later account describes the buyers as the founders' minority partners, Hester and his family. The corporation later moved to Oconomowoc.

The chain had grown to 120 restaurants by 1988. Brown later put the peak at 125, "from Spokane, Washington, to Puerto Rico".

The founders' restaurants

Mosley and Brown continued as franchisees of the company they had founded, under the name First Madco. They had 17 restaurants in 1992, 15 in 1997, and 11 in 2009, of which eight were in Madison.

In 2017 Brown closed the restaurant at Westgate Mall and the food court counters at West Towne Mall and in La Crosse, saying mall traffic was "way down". The large Party Pizzeria East near East Towne closed on May 13, 2018. Mosley died in November 2017.

From about 2022 Brown sold his remaining restaurants to longtime managers. The last, on the Beltline, was sold on December 20, 2024. There were then 30 Rocky Rococo restaurants in Wisconsin and one in Minnesota, four of them in the Madison area.

Sauce

Rocky Rococo’s pizza sauce seems to be of the cooked variety, has an intense tomato flavor but also strong herb notes. It’s also a pizza sauce that is less sweet than others. The sauce is featured as the main condiment for the popular bread sticks.

The pizza sauce has become popular enough that it is retailed in grocery stores, sold in 15 oz jars.

Special Pizzas

Heart-shaped pizza

One of the busiest days of the year for Rocky Rococo is St. Valentine’s Day, where they feature a heart-shaped pizza for sale.

Trivia

• Brown said in 2024 that two things set Rocky's apart at the start: "selling pizza by the slice and using unusually good sausage". The sausage is hand-formed, with fennel seed, black pepper and garlic powder. He credits it to his wife, Patricia Charley, who worked at the original restaurant and was the company's quality control director in 1982.
• Jim Pederson was the face of Rocky Rococo on television and its voice on radio for 40 years. He died in 2016.
• Craig Culver, co-founder of Culver's, once ran the Monona Drive restaurant for a year.
• A joint venture with Oscar Mayer opened five restaurants in Minneapolis; it "didn't work out".
• The 1978 menu had thick crust in regular or whole wheat, a meatball sandwich, salad and "Mama's Lasagna".
• "The fact is, we were not hippies and we are not billionaires," Brown said in 1988. In 1982 Mosley had said of the two of them in 1974, with shoulder-length hair and patched jeans: "Looking back, I'm surprised any bankers talked to us".
• Party Pizzeria East opened in 2000 in the former Sergio's nightclub after a $900,000 remodeling. It had video games and showed family movies.
• The restaurant at 694 S. Whitney Way was robbed on the night of October 31, 1995, by three masked men who took about $900 and beat three employees. All three were convicted.
• In 1999 Brown told a reporter that Madison was one of Pizza Hut's top markets in the country.

Locations

Restaurants in the Madison area, with the latest date each is known to have been open:

• 1618 W. Beltline Hwy. (opened between June 1976 and May 1978; licensed in May 2026).
• 7952 Tree Lane, "Party Pizzeria West" (by 2009; open in 2018).
• Monona Drive (4556 Monona Dr. by August 1978; sold to its new owners in August 2024).
• 2828 Prairie Lakes Dr., Sun Prairie (opened April 2014).

Former Locations

• 411 W. Gilman St. (April 4, 1974; still licensed in May 1978). The first restaurant.
• 651 State St. (1975 to before September 2004).
• 694 S. Whitney Way, at Odana Road (by August 1978; closed by July 9, 1997, when it moved across the street).
• Westgate Mall, in the former B. Dalton Bookseller space (July 9, 1997 to May 2017).
• 3730 University Ave. (closed by July 9, 1997).
• 4002 E. Washington Ave. (licensed in May 1980).
• Party Pizzeria East, Thierer Road near East Towne (2000 to May 13, 2018). It replaced an earlier restaurant kitty-corner from it on East Washington Avenue.
• West Towne Mall (licence applied for in May 1983; the food court counter closed in 2017).
• Regent Street (open in 2018, run by Sam Brown). A directory lists it at 1301 Regent St. and marks it closed.

External links

• Rocky's Madison website
• Rocky's Wikipedia page

See also

• Rocky Rococo in the Pizzapedia database