Chance Hippler and Jeff O’Brien meet while attending college at The University of Florida

Hippler and O’Brien agree to launch a pizza concept centered around the Gumby character brand.

Hippler and O’Brien obtain an initial two-year license from Art Clokey, creator of the Gumby characters, to use Gumby and Pokey for a pizza restaurant concept.

First Gumby’s Pizza location opens in Gainesville, Florida. Chance and Jeff work 100 hour weeks and eventually are able to squeeze out $50/week in salary.

Art and Gloria Clokey travel to Gainesville, Florida to meet with Chance Hippler and Jeff O’Brien and to see the very first Gumby’s Pizza location in person. Walking into the small but energetic college-town shop, the creators of the beloved clay character were able to see how their creation had already taken on a new life with students and late-night pizza crowds. The meeting was enthusiastic and optimistic, with the parties excitedly discussing the possibility of a long-term licensing agreement for the United States. What began as a simple visit quickly turned into a bigger conversation about the future of the brand and how Gumby and Pokey could grow alongside the expanding Gumby’s Pizza concept.

On June 27, 1986, Art Clokey and Gumby’s sign the license agreement that, together with the 1991 memorialization, would quietly shape the direction of the brand for more than three decades, a long stretch during which the relationship operated smoothly and without incident. License Agreement 6.27.86

Gumby’s Pizza's second location opens at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. Chance and Jeff would fondly remember this as a huge milestone in the history of Gumby’s Pizza.

Joe O’Brien, Jeff’s father, becomes a long time advisor to the company and eventually acquires an equity stake in the company. Joe, a US Naval Academy graduate, Navy test pilot, and war hero with tours in Viet Nam, was very much welcomed with his vast experience as an operator of Hardees and Fuddruckers restaurants. In an ironic twist that adds intrigue to the story four decades later, Joe O’Brien would go on to marry Mary Lou Riggins, the former wife of NFL Super Bowl MVP John Riggins. Mary Lou and Riggins share four children together, all of whom hold a vested interest connected to the Gumby license. Riggins later married attorney Lisa Marie Riggins, who in 2017 founded Fairness for Athletes in Retirement (FAIR), an organization created to advocate for pension equality for NFL players who retired before 1993 and often received minimal benefits despite long careers in the league. Through FAIR, Lisa Marie Riggins led a sometimes combative national campaign pushing for pension reform, working with former players and public advocates to pressure the National Football League and the National Football League Players Association during collective bargaining negotiations. Those efforts contributed to a major breakthrough when the NFL and NFLPA committed more than $1 billion to increase pensions for pre-1993 retirees. Fox Corporation is a decades-old partner with the NFL, who has a very contentious relationship with the Riggins family. https://washingtonian.com/2019/02/10/bad-news-for-the-nfl-john-riggins-wife-lisa-marie-riggins-is-a-lawyer/

Gumby’s accelerates its national expansion with new locations opening in major college markets including the University of Georgia, Texas A&M, UNC–Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, Arizona State University, University of Texas–Austin, University of Illinois, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, North Carolina State University, University of South Florida, University of Connecticut, and Alexandria, Virginia. By targeting large university communities known for late-night food culture and passionate sports fan bases, Gumby’s positioned itself squarely in the heart of America’s college-town economy.

Throughout the decade, Gumby’s Pizza continued its steady expansion into major college towns and vibrant urban neighborhoods across the United States, building a reputation as a late-night staple for students and sports fans alike. New locations opened at the University of Missouri, Iowa State University, Emory University in Atlanta, University of California–Berkeley, Virginia Tech University, University of Virginia, University of Colorado–Boulder, East Carolina University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Hartford, Connecticut, University of Iowa, University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Madison – Lake Monona, South Tampa, Penn State University, South Austin, Texas, SW Texas – San Marcos, UNC Wilmington, University of Alabama, and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Throughout the decade, Gumby’s Pizza was consistently ranked on Pizza Today magazine’s Top 100 list of largest pizza chains in America, a reflection of the brand’s growing footprint and the remarkable success of a company that began as a single college-town pizza shop. 🍕

The Siege on the Statehouse In the early morning of June 14, 1991, Marshall Ledbetter, then a student at Florida State University, broke into the Florida State Capitol building, barricaded himself in a room, and made a number of odd demands This triggered a police standoff that eventually ended peacefully. Ledbetter told them that he wanted a 20” veggie pizza from Gumby's Pizza(first on the list), a case of beer, a CNN news crew,and $100 worth of Chinese food. The demand note was not sent directly to the police but was faxed to the song request fax line of Gulf 104, a local rock station. The police surrounded the capitol building and set up SWAT teams and snipers throughout the area, while Marshall Ledbetter demanded that the police get the following people on the telephone so that he could talk to them: Timothy Leary, Jello Biafra, Ice Cube and Lemmy Kilmister. Over 1,000 of the exact same pizza would be ordered over the next week throughout the Gumby’s Pizza chain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Ledbetter
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Marshall-Ledbetter-Political/dp/0813060168?tag=ustxtaddt-20
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o8WUE1bf6SxcIjzcK8muGqGJLziT5q7C/view?usp=sharing

Gumby’s Pizza launches an ambitious co-branding deal with Fuddrucker’s Gourmet Burgers with a location inside the Fuddrucker’s in Overland Park, Kansas. Art Clokey travels to the grand opening and stays a week at the home of Joe O’Brien. Art, Joe, Chance, and Jeff use this opportunity to capitalize on a frozen pizza deal with Kroger Supermarkets. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uThEP4qiK6oYdeuOVXSn1rrGxvVp_RCf/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WhMR7xEIkVVfL71BMKsvRZUS7ljYFKIx/view?usp=sharing

Gumby’s Pizza launches locations at Illinois State University, University of Madison - Downtown, Tampa - Bayside, Southern Illinois University, South Tampa, West Virginia University, St Petersburg, FL, Western Michigan University, University of Madison - East Towne

The Gumby cartoon character is recognized in a CNN and TV Guide poll as the 16th most iconic character of all time, placing the small green clay figure among some of the most recognizable characters in entertainment history. The ranking highlighted how deeply Gumby had embedded himself in American pop culture since his debut in the 1950s. Creator Art Clokey personally thanks Chance & Jeff for reviving the character and keeping Gumby popular with a new generation.
https://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/30/cartoon.characters.list/

Chance and Jeff celebrate the 30 year anniversary of Gumby’s Pizza with a packed celebration at their flagship restaurant in Gainesville. The party brings together longtime employees, loyal customers, and friends who had been part of the brand’s journey since its early college-town days. Stories from the early years are shared over slices of pizza and Pokey Stix, as the founders reflect on how two college friends who started with a single shop in the 1980s had built a business that became a staple in college towns across the country. The night feels less like a corporate milestone and more like a hometown reunion for the extended Gumby’s family. 🍕🎉
https://www.gainesville.com/story/business/economy/2015/11/01/uf-dropouts-celebrate-30-years-of-gumbys-pizza/31224328007/
https://www.alligator.org/article/2015/10/30-years-of-pizza-at-gumby-s

After being contacted by executives at Goldbelly, a company that works with many of the most well-known restaurant brands in the United States to ship their signature foods nationwide through FedEx, Gumby’s Pizza agreed to launch on the platform. The response was immediate. Orders started coming in from all over the country as longtime fans and curious first-time customers rushed to have the world famous Gumby’s Pizza famous pizza shipped straight to their homes. Demand quickly became so strong that founder Chance Hippler had to step in and limit shipments to 50 orders per week because the volume was beginning to interfere with the normal day-to-day operations of the restaurants. Even with that limit, the first year on Goldbelly turned into a milestone for the brand. Gumby’s Pizza shipped its famous pizza, Pokey Stix, and Pepperoni Rolls to customers in all 50 states - twice, proving that what started as a college-town pizza shop had grown into something with a truly national following.

Gumby’s Pizza begins work on a digital gift card and rewards program designed for the modern online ordering era. As development progresses, the concept evolves beyond a simple stored-value card into a broader digital coin ecosystem that could be used for promotions, loyalty rewards, and customer engagement across the brand’s platforms. These coins would become known as Gumby Coin, Pokey Coin, Blockhead Coin, and Gumby Metaverse Coin, representing a new experimental way for fans of the 40-year-old pizza brand to interact with the Gumby universe in a digital format while earning and redeeming value tied to food and beverage purchases.

Gumby Coin officially goes live on Thanksgiving Day 2021, marking the public launch of Gumby’s Pizza’s digital coin and loyalty ecosystem. The holiday timing was intentional — a symbolic nod to gratitude for the loyal customers who helped build the brand over decades, while also celebrating the start of a new digital chapter for the company. On the same day families across America were gathering for Thanksgiving dinner, Gumby fans were discovering a new way to interact with the brand online through Gumby Coin, Pokey Coin, Blockhead Coin, and Gumby Metaverse Coin, which were designed to function as digital gift cards, promotional rewards, and future ecosystem tokens tied to the Gumby’s Pizza universe. Extreme Compressed Merged White Paper