Eugene's: State's Best Pizza

Unusual circumstances tied the day together. On the five-year anniversary of the passing of their father, Arlie Knodel – the Knodel family's Eugene's Pizza was named the best pizza in Montana and Arlie’s favorite basketball team, the Duke Blue Devils, took a championship.

Eugene’s Pizza has been in business since 1962, with the Knodel family as owners since 1967, and a story of kids traveling hundreds miles for a slice isn’t completely uncommon. During March Madness, Montana Mint started a bracket on best pizza in the state. Eugene’s started under a few different categories, like best pepperoni and continued to move up the bracket as votes came in online.

Those votes kept pushing the business up into the next bracket. Radio host Aaron Flint was given some credit for promoting Eugene’s over his radio show. They also got a little press on Canadian airwaves. A radio host out of Regina wrote about a great experience at Eugene’s during the Jeff Jurgens basketball tournament. Co-owner Sam Knodel said he was planning on writing a response letter to the radio station, and said he did remember the 45 kids that hopped off the bus for pizza.

Sam said that initially they didn’t know about the votes online. But they started to see it pop up on Facebook as locals and people from all over the nation started voting on what they thought was the best pizza. Co-owner Jeff Knodel said that he wasn’t actually able to vote for their business as he couldn’t quite figure out how to vote online. But both brothers said that they could see votes pouring in from all over.

As the business came up with 48 percent in the final four bracket, it was a landslide win. Nalivka’s of Havre came in second with 34 percent of the vote, Howard’s of Great Falls came in with 11 percent of the vote and Me Too Pizza of Culbertson took 7 percent.

While they aren’t able to say whether or not business has picked up – they’re almost always busy – they did say that their online orders have increased. Mint Montana mentioned that they could order pizzas to be shipped across state, which Sam said is actually more of a winter activity. The pizzas are frozen when they leave Glasgow, but they are often thawed out by the time they reach their destination. They said they’ll ship one-day or two-day shipping, but because shipping can be expensive sometimes the costs can add up to $80 a pie.

The Knodels are also just past the year mark on selling their barbecue sauce. They started bottling their own sauce, made in the kitchen at their restaurant on Klein Avenue. While Sam said bottling is a little expensive, the barbecue sauce, which is one of their trademarks, is doing quite well. When they started out they thought they might only sell locally, but with the help of a few people the sauce has made it to a few places across the state.

Sam said that Terry from Reynolds was instrumental in helping move some product and Kenny Rinky has also been a big help getting the product to Billings. It’s now being sold in Glendive, Miles City, Baker and for a short time was found in Swan Lake. Sam said he also takes a few cases with him whenever he takes a trip and will pitch the sauce to people. Perhaps with the new title of Best Pizza in Montana he might be able to see some additional sales.

They started out ordering seven pallets of bottles, which is 912 bottles, and they’ve gone through much of the bottles. Jeff said that they could sell almost a full box a day and added that it wasn’t unusual to see people drink the leftover sauce at their pizza shop. The barbecue sauce also moves a lot faster in the summer as barbecue season picks up. They said one local barbecued frequently last summer with their sauce and posted several pictures on social media. An employee works a few days a week to fill the bottles up with sauce and keep them stocked.

When asked about expanding, they said that there’s not much room at their current location. They thought about buying new bottling equipment, but there’s just no where to put it for now. Sam also said that they’re thinking about becoming a franchise, pizza only, and they’re looking at college towns as a good location. You also might spot a new logo worn on employee t-shirts, designed by Donna Roness. The logo was given a more retro look to match the sign above their restaurant.