The family that founded Red’s Savoy Pizza in 1965 has sold the brand to company president Reed Daniels, who has been with the pizza chain since 2012.

Edina-based Red’s Savoy, which has 18 Minnesota locations, was started by Earl “Red” Schoenheider, who died in August 2017 at the age of 82.

For 52 years, Schoenheider was a seven-day-a-week fixture at the original Red’s Savoy restaurant on East Seventh Street, located at the outskirts of downtown St. Paul. The site closed a few weeks after his death.

New locations continue to emerge, including a new St. Paul franchise scheduled to open in eight weeks near Selby and Snelling avenues.

“Reed started with Red’s Savoy as a marketing consultant and gradually climbed the ranks of the company because of his business smarts and passion for the brand,” Rory Schoenheider said in a written statement. “We could not think of a better person to carry on the legacy our father started in 1965.”

The thin-crust, square-cut pizza comes loaded with cheese and a distinctively-spiced pizza sauce.

Said Daniels, in a written statement on Wednesday: “As we continue to grow and evolve as a company, the one thing that will never change is the promise I made to Red before he passed away: We will not mess with his pizza recipe!”