Editor’s Note: Flatwater Explains is an occasional series during which FFP reporters explain the people, places and things that make Nebraska what it is, while answering questions that both longtime residents and first-time visitors might have.
The handheld meal keeps football fans warm at Memorial Stadium during chilly Husker games. Drivers chow down on them straight from the bag on long drives down Interstate 80. Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz went viral for spending hundreds at the fast food chain during an Omaha campaign stop in 2024.
It’s a little pillow of dough and meat. It’s quintessentially Nebraska. It’s the Runza.
So what is a Runza?
Technically, “Runza” is the trademarked word for a bierock.
The German Russian pastry features a mix of spiced ground beef, cabbage and onions, all encased in a soft yeasty dough, said Emily Gengenbach, librarian and program coordinator for the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia in Lincoln.
Photo courtesy of Runza Restaurants
Their shape varies — a traditional bierock is often rounded, while the trademarked Runza is more of a rectangle. And while bierocks are eaten by German Russian descendants throughout the Midwest, Runzas are a uniquely Nebraskan staple.
How did the food end up in Nebraska?
You have to go back a few centuries to answer this.
In the 1700s, Germans started moving to Russia. German princess Catherine the Great had married into the Russian royal family, and was inviting her countrymen to move east. She offered free land for each family, and the promise to practice religion freely and no requirement to serve in the Russian military.
Once settled near the Volga River in southern Russia, they picked up on Russian cooking. Russians had the pirozhki — a baked or fried hand pie that can be stuffed with savory or sweet fillings.
The Germans made it their own, and with that, the bierock was born. The handheld meal was perfect for farmers needing a hot lunch in the fields.
By the late 1800s, there was pressure for German Russians to assimilate to Russian culture and religion. The Russian military planned to start drafting German Russians. Many German Russians fled the country, ending up in the Great Plains.
“When they left, they brought their different cultural foods and traditions,” Gengenbach said. “One of the cultural foods was the bierock, so that’s how it ended up in Nebraska.”
Why do Nebraskans call it a Runza and not a bierock?
That’s where the fast food chain comes in. In the 1940s, Lincolnite Sally Everett and her brother Alex Brening started selling homemade bierocks to factory workers on lunch break, Gengenbach said. By 1949, Everett and Brening opened their first location in Lincoln.
The pair wanted to trademark their recipe. But they couldn’t trademark the word “bierock” — it was too general of a cultural term.
So they dubbed their pockets of meat the “Runza.” The name is believed to have been inspired by “krautrunz,” another German word for bierocks, or “runsa,” a German word for belly, because of the round pouch shape of the pastry, Gengenbach said.
By 1966, Everett and Brening opened their second location. In 1979, Runza Restaurants began franchising.
Today, there are 85 Runza locations throughout Nebraska. There are six more in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota.
What makes a Runza so special to Nebraska?
When Becky Perrett tells people she works for Runza, stories come pouring out. Runza eaters tell the company’s director of marketing about how Runza is the first stop after picking up family members from the Omaha airport. Or how they buy frozen Runzas to take to relatives out of state.
“It’s almost like people have an ownership of the brand,” Perrett said. “They’ve seen us grow along the way.”
By 1940, about 450,000 German Russians had emigrated to the United States. Most of them ended up in the Great Plains. In Lincoln alone, there were 20,000 German Russians by 1920, according to the museum there.
Many of their descendants — like the Everett family that founded Runza — still call Nebraska home.
“They can relate to having a Runza. It’s something that their grandmother or their mother made growing up,” Gengenbach said. “It’s kind of like having a sliver of homemade cooking from when they were a kid.”
12 Comments
The tasty reality is so very much more than history. Did the writer even eat a Runza? Maybe more than once to be able to really enjoy its taste?
A picture does not convey the cooking reality. It is just a view which was an easy means, which failed to explain.
How are they put together?
Great article! I have been eating these for 40 years and always wondered about the back story.
Both my German parents were born in different small villages on the Volga River. My dad at age 13 and mother at age 9 migrated with their parents to Chicago. In 1922 they married. My mother was the oldest of 20 kids and she cooked the meals for the family while the parents worked. She was a fantastic cook and baker and made Runzas but called them Grautbrok. Main ingredients were ground beef, onion, cabbage and rice. Any chance Grautbrok was the original name of Runza’s bierock?
Definitely no rice in our Midwestern bierocks or Runzas, so this sounds just a little different.
Probably your mother called them Krautbierok (which, when said or heard quickly, sounds like “Grautbrok”). Kraut is the German word for cabbage. Yes, what your mom and my mom and grandma called Krautbierok is the same as the Runza. Runza is just the name they used at a restaurant in Nebraska for Kraut bierok.
My grandmother’s family were Germans from Russian and she used to make ‘runza’s for the big family holiday meals; Thanksgiving or Christmas. Hers had a little more pepper than what is sold today in the Runza stores, and her dough incorporated mashed potatoes which she said was the secret to being able to roll the dough very thin. She’d have the bread of the runza so thin that you could see through it to the burger, onion and burger filling. I think she also used a greater proportion of cabbage than is in the modern Runza. I still love them too. And yes, we have a relative coming from as far away as Florida who always buys frozen ones to take back home.
I grew up in Lincoln’s Franker or South ’Rooshian’ Bottom. We called them ‘krautrunzas’ and my grandma’s also had dough that was almost transparent! In the early70s my uncle from California was back in Lincoln to visit and we went to the new runza stand on South St on the way to Pioneers Park. What a disappointment and when grandma heard about it! Ach duliever seit! I was back in Lincoln maybe about 15 yrs ago and went to a runza joint with a childhood Franker Bottom buddy and we found the runza nearly inedible and couldn’t finish. They’re nothing like the ones that the Franker Bottom ladies used to make!
Part of the Runza story that seems to have been forgotten… Sally Everett left the recipe and business model to her two sons who didn’t get along so well, so there were two competing (!!) Runza businesses in Nebraska, Runza Drive-Inn and Runza Hut. The menus were slightly different and the restaurants used different suppliers so the offerings weren’t quite the same. I worked at Runza Hut in Omaha near to 72nd and Dodge in 1984-5 and at the time considered their Runzas slightly superior to Runza Drive-Inn, although I ate at both restaurants at the time. Eventually Runza Hut lost the competition and Runza Drive-Inn eventually changed its name to just “Runza Restaurant”. They now have locations outside of Nebraska in several neighboring states as well.
My Czech mother made cabbage rolls, meat and onions in a cabbage leaf. I’d never heard of bierocks until I moved to Gothenburg and learned how to make them from Swedes.
Those people who insist on cheese or sauerkraut are heretics.
The things are GROSS ! Runza makes me runza to the bathroom. Rehydrated onions, rehydrated hamburger, pretty much flavorless mush in a Hot Pocket
My grandfather emigrated as a German Russian from the city of Balzar on the Volga. Initially through Canada to Nebraska where he delivered Ice. The family then moved to Portland Oregon where there was a large German Russian community. My grandfather’s wife died when my mother was 12 and she took over the cooking until my grandfather remarried 4 years later. My mother always made platters of Runza for my grandfather but never made them with hamburger. She made a seasoned pot roast and when it was cooled she put it through a meat grinder and it was always very flavorful. My mother passed away in 2013 and tomorrow I will be making my first attempt at Runza. Tomorrow with hamburger and Rhodes Texas rolls to get the process down, but then her dough recipe and roasted ground beef. Wish me luck! Ohne ein gut Runza can Mann night mehr auskommen.
Definitely not the same product from my youth (1970s). But I still get cravings. Love their products.
Our last visit shocked us with prices…. hopefully it doesn’t create a small future for Runza