GREENVILLE, S.C. — A Neapolitan pizza chain that got its start in Greensboro, N.C., is preparing to reopen one of Greenville’s best-known restaurant sites, converting the former Tanner’s Big Orange drive-in on South Pleasantburg Drive into its first South Carolina location, The Post and Courier reported Oct. 22.
Cugino Forno Neapolitan Pizzeria is building out the property at 322 S. Pleasantburg Drive, according to the newspaper. The restaurant was originally expected to open in 2025, but construction delays pushed the timeline back, and the location still had a few more months of work ahead as of the report. The company recently showed off its new signage on Facebook while construction continued, the Post and Courier said. Square footage and project cost were not disclosed.
The Greenville restaurant will be the company’s seventh location. Cugino Forno was founded by three cousins — Joseph Ozbey, Adam Aksoy and Yilmaz Guver — who trained in pizza-making in Naples before opening their first restaurant in Greensboro in 2017, according to the Post and Courier. The chain has since expanded to other East Coast markets, and the founders picked the Upstate in part to stay within reach of their existing stores, the newspaper reported.
The Greenville menu is expected to mirror the chain’s other restaurants, including frozen pizzas for take-home sale and pizza-making classes. The company imports most of its ingredients from Italy and uses ovens built in Naples that are partly made from Mount Vesuvius stone, the Post and Courier said.
The site carries significant local history. Tanner’s Big Orange opened in Greenville in 1943 and moved to its South Pleasantburg Drive location in 1966, according to a 2023 Fox Carolina report. The family-run drive-in closed on Dec. 23, 2023, after fourth-generation owner John Zeller cited sharply higher ingredient and supply costs, a pandemic-era drop in customers and his own health, Fox Carolina reported.
For brokers and investors, the project shows a legacy single-tenant restaurant building on an established commercial arterial being reused by a second-generation food operator rather than sitting vacant or being redeveloped for another use. It also illustrates a common tradeoff with older restaurant structures: existing visibility and infrastructure can attract an operator, but build-out can take longer than planned, as this project’s delays show. An out-of-state concept choosing Greenville for its first South Carolina store also adds to the market’s track record as an entry point for expanding restaurant brands.
Sources: The Post and Courier, Fox Carolina
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