UPDATED: Pizza Shop Reopens Monday at 11 a.m after Floor-Safe Heist

Updated (9:30 a.m. Monday): The Zza Factory will re-open at 11 a.m. Monday, instead of 10 a.m. as originally reported in the Saturday update below (now fixed).

Updated (10:30 a.m. Saturday): Monday is the new reopening day for The Zza Factory pizza shop at Holly Center in Fridley, after a burglary that left a mess as well as a hole in the floor where a mystery safe had been. Co-owner Ben Bruchert said a hoped-for Saturday reopening was postponed until Monday at 11 a.m. at the recommendation of the store's insurance company. (The article below has been changed to reflect the new reopening day.)

Updated (3:30 p.m. Friday): The tiny back office at The Zza Factory in Fridley has a hole in the floor that used to hold a safe that no one knew about.

No one, that is, except the burglar or burglars who police say broke into the Holly Center pizza shop Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

"I wonder what's in the safe," said co-owner Sonny Marrocco.

Marrocco and business partner Ben Bruchert lost money, a high-definition TV, a computer, an Xbox game system, and most of their food—after whoever ransacked the shop left freezer and refrigerator unit doors open.

But the owners said they figure the floor safe was the real target.

"They knew what they wanted," Bruchert said at the store Friday, where he and Marrocco were cleaning up for a planned Monday reopening. "They got us a bonus."

Bruchert and Marrocco showed damage to a visitor that they said suggested how the burglary happened:

A rear metal door, newly installed, appeared to have been pried with a crowbar, with a pin that helps secure it removed.

An alarm panel, also new, was conveniently located on the wall immediately inside the door. A clipped cord hung from the ceiling.

A few steps inside is the small office, barely seven feet square. Whoever broke in moved out a sizable desk that had been inside the office for at least four or five years, estimated Deanna Hegge, who manages the shop next door. (The desk used to sit in the salon's reception area, she said.)

The Zza Factory's main safe sat on top of the hidden floor safe along with the desk. It was pried open and the contents taken.

The square hole in the office floor, apparently created by chiseling floor tiles, was surrounded by debris and dirt—so much dirt that the hole was six inches shallower after Marrocco swept it back into the hole, he said. (He speculated that there may have been something under the safe that required deeper digging.)

The floor safe's round metal cover "just looked like a cap on the floor," Marrocco said.

Not far away stood the two freezer/regrigerator units. Why had the intruders rifled through the frozen ingredients for making pizza?

Bruchert had a theory. He said a previous owner told him he had kept cash hidden among the food—where no one would ever look.

Hegge, at the Cost Cutters next door, said she has worked at the Holly Center  off and on for 15 years, and could recount the pizza businesses that occupied the Zza Factory space at the strip mall's west end (in chronological order): Little Caesar's, Broadway Pizza, Rocco's, Mojo's and The Zza Factory. 

Updated (10:30 a.m. Friday): Someone broke in and dug out a floor safe at a Fridley pizza place that the Zza Factory's owners didn't know was there, according to police.

The burglary took place at the Holly Center storefront on Wednesday night or Thursday morning, Fridley Police Capt. Bob Rewitzer said. Left behind: a one-and-a-half-foot hole in the floor with a pile of rubble beside it.

Rewitzer said that whoever broke in gained entry through a rear metal door, which was damaged. An alarm panel showed signs of having been tampered with, he said, but the alarm company reported not having received any alarm or trouble signals.

The burglar or burglars included "presumably somebody who had some prior knowledge" about the safe and the storefront, Rewitzer said.

So that narrows the range of possible suspects police might be interested in?

"Or broadens it," Rewitzer said—considering all the people who have worked at the succession of businesses at the location over the years.

Current owners Ben Bruchert and Sonny Marrocco have operated The Zza Factory for eight months, Bruchert said. Before that the site was home to Mojo's Pizza.

The incident is under investigation, Rewitzer said, but there are "no hot leads at the moment." Among other items damaged or disturbed in the break-in were a couple of other safes and a desk, he said.

The Zza Factory is set to reopen on Monday after two days of cleanup (see original post below), according to co-owner Bruchert.

An effort to support the store by ordering food there once it reopens is underway on Facebook and on Twitter.

Original post (5 p.m. Thursday): Someone broke into the Zza Factory at Holly Center Wednesday night or Thursday morning, according to co-owner Ben Bruchert.

"They ransacked our entire store," Bruchert said. "We're pretty in debt because of it. But we'll survive."

Bruchert said plans are to reopen for business on Monday.

Fridley police weren't immediately available for comment Thursday.

Bruchert and business partner Sonny Marrocco opened the Zza Factory in the former space last summer.

"I didn't think anyone would rob an independent business," Bruchert said. "I thought this was a nice suburban area."

The business has insurance, "but insurance isn't going to cover (all of) what we lost," said Bruchert, who spent Thursday making a list of missing or damaged items to give to insurance company representatives Friday.

Missing items included Bruchert's computer. Also lost were basic ingredients for a pizza shop. "I had to throw away almost all of my food," he said. "They left a couple doors open to the cooler and the freezer."