Thanksgiving pizza? A Rhode Island shop’s turkey-filled pie is so popular it sells out months in advance

This Rhode Island pizza joint serves up a pie to gobble for.

Fellini’s Pizzeria offers a Thanksgiving pizza each year that’s so popular patrons need to place their orders months in advance.

Throngs of customers will then stand on long lines the day before Thanksgiving for the chance to buy a slice if they missed out on the pre-orders at the pizzeria with locations in Providence and Cranston.

The pie’s whole wheat crust is filled with mozzarella cheese, mashed potato, stuffing, gravy and of course turkey, according to a Providence Journal report from 2022. A scoop of cranberry jelly sauce is optional.

And competition to buy the pie is fierce.

Pre-orders began at 11 a.m. Sept. 25 this year and sold out a few hours later.  

“It’s like a hotline,” Fellini’s owner Kristy Knoedler told the newspaper in 2022.

“People try and call us. It’s like winning something on the radio back in the day. You try and call and it’s busy, busy, busy. We have people calling for hours sometimes. It’s very frustrating for them, but it makes it more fun, I think.”

One customer claimed on Fellini’s Facebook page it took four people in her circle calling 22 minutes straight to place an order. Other social media users said they called more than 200 times in hopes of securing the prized pie.

The tradition began a decade ago when Knoedler brought Thanksgiving leftovers from her house and baked a pie for her staff from the scraps.

“And it was incredible,” Knoedler told the newspaper last year. “So we’re like, all right, we’ve gotta do this, and we did it the following year.”

About 2,000 pies were sold last year.

“Every year it got bigger and bigger and bigger, and now we’re pretty much maxed out for the space we have and the amount of oven space to cook as many as we can,” Knoedler explained to the Providence Journal. “We get a lot of upset people, because they can’t get the time slot in, but we do our best.”

Bruce Kane, who is a Brown University administrator, told the newspaper he tried to get through over the phone for 2 ½ hours.

 “One slice is like a whole Thanksgiving meal,” Kane said last year.