07/19/2026
We've been having an intense debate and want our customers to settle this for us and it's what percentage of the credit each person gets for inventing the Crab Rangoon.
In the Summer of 2020 we were a brand new pizza shop. We had pizzas that were like Italian pizzas......... but we also had pizzas based off American foods, German foods, Mexican foods, and Cuban foods.
One person looks at this and says "Hey. We should get a pizza based off an Asian food too. Maybe something that you would get get at a Chinese restaurant. Maybe like a General Tso Chicken pizza. Or maybe General Tso sauce."
The other person takes that, determines that General Tso Sauce is not the best idea for a pizza, then has the idea to Crab Rangoon Pizza instead. This person EXTENSIVE research. Completely develops the recipe on Cream Cheese and Sweet Chili from scratch. Then came up with the idea of using Imitation Crab instead of regular Crab. Then discovered issues with burning and the need to add Panko Breadcrumbs. Developing the recipe for the Crab Rangoon. Cream Cheese/Sweet Chili pre-mixed as a base, Imitation Crab, more Sweet Chili, and Panko Breadcrumbs.
At the time, virtually no other pizza place sold a Crab Rangoon Pizza, but we decided to launch it and it became the #2 selling pizza for a couple years, until the Honey Romano Pepperoni overtook it.
I can't find any pizza shops in Ohio that were selling in July/August 2020. There was only one pizza shop in Wisconsin that had it. Theirs had real Crab and Scallions. No Sweet Chili. There was a shop somewhere in Cincinnati that sold a different version of a Crab Rangoon before we opened in 2020 in collaboration with another restaurant........ but it was just a temporary pizza.
To our best knowledge, we were the first pizza shop in Ohio or any surrounding states to put it on the menu full time. If this information is incorrect and you can find verifiable proof that there was a pizza shop selling at that time and still sells it today, we'd LOVE to see it. We've collaborated with a few restaurants on the Crab Rangoon pizza, and a few have admitted they got the idea from us but made the pizza their own.
Anyways, back to the debate. What percentage does each person get for their collaboration on the Crab Rangoon? We want our customers to settle this.