As the 20th anniversary for the DeFelice Bros. Pizza in Bethlehem approaches, the owner has decided to hand down the operation to her son, Mark Miller.
Colleen Lee and her husband, Denny, opened the franchise in December 2000, and since then Denny has purchased the Wheeling operation located along National Road in Woodsdale. Miller started working for his mother soon after the opening but did not plan to become an owner at that time.
“In the very beginning, I was already in the food industry, and I had no intentions of coming here to work,” Miller recalled. “But after she told me that they needed some help opening, I came in to do just that, but it was supposed to be temporary. So, for about a year, I worked both of my jobs.
“But then we had a discussion about me just working here full-time, so that’s what I decided to do,” he said. “Over the years I have learned as much as I could, and I have worked in every part of this business, so that experience hopefully pay off now.”
One Big Family
DeFelice Bros. Pizza first opened in Shadyside in September 1982 and was promoted as the pizza “worth going after.” Initially, there were just four employees, but now there are nine locations with five in Ohio and four in West Virginia with more than 50 employees.
“Colleen and I have known each other our whole lives, and she has worked for me or with me for a lot of years,” Dom DeFelice explained. “She had worked at the Shadyside shop, and then with catering and other operations, and when she became a franchisee with us was just an awesome moment for both of us.
“And now, to see her handing the baton over to her son is totally amazing because that’s what this is all about,” he said. “It has taken place with my brother and his son, and now my nephew has the Moundsville store. It’s exactly what I wanted to see, and it’s great to see it happening here in Bethlehem.”
DeFelice hopes in the future to see more employees make the corperation a career as Miller has in the past two decades.
“This is exactly what I try to promote as a part of our business,” he said. “You can start out with DeFelice Brothers Pizza as an employee, and you can end up being an owner if you wanted to because that opportunity is made available.
“This is all about family, and we’ve always been a family across the board,” Miller said. “And that is why, right now, our ninth store is in Granville, Ohio, very close to the Newark area, where there are a few colleges in that region, so we expect it to do very well.”
The Next Step
Miller will be 42 years old in December, and he first started working for DeFelice Bros. at the former commissary when he was just 15 and a student at Shadyside High School.
“That was a fun job to have back then, but that’s what it was … a job. But now I know that a lot of work is ahead of me, but I know the business and I am ready to take over for my mom,” Miller said. “I have been working here for the past 20 years, so I know that experience will help me. When my mother and Denny opened this shop, they had food service experience, but they had never operated a shop before.
“I know that in the long run all of the hard work will be worth it to me and my family, and I am just thankful that my mom had made this decision,” he continued. “This was the plan the whole time, and I thought she would make decision before now, but my mom has always worked very hard to make this shop a success, and that’s exactly what she has done.”
His mother continues to work at the Bethlehem shop, but now she is performing only the “prep work” and is usually finished by 11 a.m.
“I used to joke with my mom about when she was finally going to make the decision to semi-retire. I used to say, ‘When’s the day? When’s the day?’ And she would just look at me,” Millersaid with a smile. “I believe I have been making that joke for about 10 years, but now, I guess, it’s the day.
“And I know I will be here a lot more than I have been in the past, and it will be difficult at first because I have a wife and three kids at home,” he said. “I am involved with my kids’ sports programs, but everyone understands what I have to do right now, and hopefully I can get to the point to where I will be able to spend more time with my family in the future.”
