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John Roberds owned and operated the popular eatery from 1977 until he sold it in 2004. Customers and employees raved about the original recipes, Charles Wiggins said, including sauce for the wings.
“John wanted us to buy it back then but me and my wife were too young,” Charles Wiggins said. “I had worked with him at the place for about 10 years or so. Now, we were able to make a deal for me and my wife to buy it now and it is a dream come true.”
Right after the deal was done, the Wiggins took to social media to find out what people in the community wanted from the the pizza joint.
“People were posting and telling us they wanted us to go back to things the way they used to be,” Charles Wiggins said. “They didn’t want pizza tasting like they came out of conveyor belt ovens that a lot of the modern pizza shops use. They wanted us to go back to the way things were when it was the original place.”
So a 40-year-old oven stayed and out marched the recipes from the 1970s that had drawn people in to the pizza shop for decades. Tracy Wiggins said customers have responded with positive feedback.
“We are really enjoying this and it makes it so worth it when you get a call back from a customer like we did the other day who said ‘this is the best pizza I’ve had in years,’” she said.
The menu currently includes sandwiches and hoagies in the $7.50 price range and wings from a small order of $5 to the largest jumbo size for $17.50. The pizza starts at $7 for a small cheese to the ultimate deluxe for $17. Side items like fries, cheese sticks fried mushrooms range from $2 to $4.
“We also had a customer that picked up his pizza and just starting eating it before he got to the door,” Charles Wiggins said.
The business employs five people currently — two drivers and three people on staff who are cross-trained to handle all in-house duties.
Pizza and Company is open for business Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to midnight and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.
Those hours may change as the first 30 days of business has had a few stretches of slow sales. Charles Wiggins said the lunch crowd has been a bit slow and later in the evening the phone rings slower for the pick-up and delivery pizza shop.
The Wiggins said if business continues to grow, they will consider dine-in opportunities down the road.
“We have been able to start to get the word out by social media and word-of-mouth, but as we get it out there more I think things will really pick-up,” he said.
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