Rose Totino was born in 1915, the fourth of seven children of Italian immigrant parents. The family settled in Minneapolis. When Rose Totino was just 16 years old she dropped out of school to clean houses in order to supplement the family’s income (http://www.hbs.edu) Like many Italian-Americans she was raised with the Italian culture that was very collectivist and family centered (http://www.everyculture.com). Rose also grew up during the Great Depression which made her situation unique. During this time many young women dropped out of school, while the young men stayed in order to learn a trade and e be the bigger bread winners (http://books.google.com, Pile 1993).
Rose met Jim Totino at the Viking Dance Hall close to downtown Minneapolis, not long after the two were married. At that time he was a baker and Rose, learning from her mother, began making pizza, back then it was compared to or called “a sort of pie” with sausage, cheese, and tomato sauce (http://books.google.comPile 1993). Shortly after her marriage to Jim Totino in 1951, she and her husband opened Totino’s Italian Kitchen in Northeast Minneapolis. Using her car as collateral, she got the loan she needed to open the doors. The loan officers had never had pizza before so she brought along samples, thus securing the money she needed. The doors of Totino’s Italian Kitchen officially opened on February 7, 1951. The business was intended to be a take out pizza joint only but due to customer request the Totino’s added tables and chairs to their establishment. Their pizzas were so popular they often sold out of the 500 they made every day. They were barely able to keep up with the demand and soon found their business booming. After attending a Baker’s meeting in Dallas, Texas, Jim learned of a new way, with the help of machinery to make more crusts and meet the demand they were seeing. They also realized this would be a good way to increase their product enough that they could begin distributing the pizza to supermarkets. After retaining another loan, this time from the US government’s Small Business Administration, they were able to do just that and Totino’s Pizza became the top selling pizza in supermarkets across the US (http://books.google.com Pile, 1993).
In the early 1960s, after ten years of business Rose Totino had the idea to sell frozen pizzas so customers could bake at their pizza at home at their own convenience (http://www.hbs.edu). More women were in the working world and did not have the time to make complicated homemade meals. By the end of the 1950s television was also a common home item, with that came the popularity of TV dinners. Convenience and consumerism propelled the sale and continued growth of the frozen food business. Jim and Rose Totino sold Totino’s Italian Kitchen to their grandson to continue on the family tradition.
By the 1970s, the Totino frozen pizza was the number one frozen pizza in the United States, sold as the well known Totino’s Pizza. Rose Totino patented the dough product in 1979. In 1981, Pillsbury offered to buy Totino’s Pizza Pillsbury first offered $16 million which Totino turned down; they went on to offer $22 million which Totino accepted.
It was not long after Pillsbury bought the product from Rose that they offered her a job as Vice President of their company. Rose’s job was to ensure the quality of her product and continue with research to come up with new products. Just like that Rose Totino became one of the top female executives in the world of business. Rose was well liked and respected. She did numerous interviews during her lifetime for tv, newspapers and radio. Rose Totino was described as a warm, kind, and generous human being.
