It’s nearly noon on a Monday in Shadyside, Ohio, so that means some of the high school students soon will fill the four tables in the small dining room at the DeFelice Brothers shop.
It’s pizza by the slice at lunchtime, too, and those teenagers inhaled those pan-fried pieces of pizza, the same ones that have made Shadyside famous for a little more than 40 years.
“I did it, too,” remembered Shadyside alumni Keene Barnett (2003), the franchise owner of Tiger Town’s DeFeIice Bros. Pizza shop since October 2021. “I have eaten DeFelice my entire life, and I’ve always loved it. When I was in high school, I stayed at school on the rainy days, but I walked here for lunch when the sun was shining.
“I loved the pizza, and I’ve always been big on pepperoni rolls and I’ve always thought the best ones have been right here,” he insisted. “I remember back then I wanted them to be huge with a ton of pepperoni in every one of them. Now that I make them for a living, I understand why they are the size they are with as much pepperoni that there is in each one.”
It was 1982 when Dominic and T.J. DeFelice opened DeFelice Brothers Pizza along “The Loop” in Shadyside, and it soon became known as “the pizza worth going after” thanks to an iconic marketing campaign, and that expectation, Barnett confirmed, remains today.
“And there is some pressure to live up to that company slogan because you have to make sure it’s still true every single day we open those doors,” Barnett said with a smile. “But that’s the key, consistency. Our pizza is pan-fried and it’s delicious, and right now, because of a lack of (delivery) drivers, a lot of our customers are picking up their orders, so it better be worth going after, right?
“We do have some job opportunities available right now, and that includes delivery drivers,” he said. “We’re hoping to find some great people so we can get a team working together on a consistent basis.”
The Boss at Biggy’s
Barnett has been a firefighter and an EMT since he graduated from high school, and he’s still an active first responder in Shadyside.
In 2017, he fulfilled a life’s goal when he purchased a pizza shop in Claysville, Ohio. Initially, the entrepreneur wanted to expand to a four-to-five “Biggy’s Pizza” locations, and he did open a second store near downtown Wheeling.
“As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to have a business and work for myself. That’s always been a goal of mine,” Barnett said. “Now, out of high school, I got involved with the first-responder agencies, but always in the back of my mind, I knew I wanted to own my own business someday. And, to be honest, my dream wasn’t always to have a pizza shop.
“For several years I would see a vacant building and think of a business that could work there. I always thought about what that particular area needed,” he said. “I knew you had to be smart about what was needed in an area for any business to actually work. So, in 2017, that’s when I started looking at the Biggy’s Pizza business in Claysville, Pa. Right at that time, my mom passed away, and that reminded me that life is always too short.”
Big decisions were made, too.
“I decided to cash out my retirement fund after 11 years and I bought the business in Claysville,” Barnett explained. “After a couple of years, we expanded Biggy’s into Wheeling, and people really liked our product in that (East Wheeling) neighborhood and throughout the city, but we had a very difficult time getting people to work at that shop. It was a real struggle and that’s when we closed Biggy’s, and when I started looking at another change.
“At that time, I knew Tony DeFelice because our children were on similar teams, and I started asking him some questions,” he recalled. “When he decided to sell his shop in Shadyside, and move to a new location, I bought the DeFelice shop in Shadyside and here I am today.”
And pretty much every day, too, and that’s because it’s what young business owners must do if they plan to be successful, but also because of the same workforce issues most businesses have experienced since the pandemic ended.
“There have been a lot of personnel changes here since I purchased the shop, so it’s been a process of getting everything to where it needs to be schedule-wise, and things like that,” Barnett said. “Our number one goal every single day is to be consistent, and I’ve worked with Dom (DeFelice) a lot and I’m always asking questions to make sure our product meets expectations.
“I knew working hard would be a big part of owning my own business, and I am here almost every day,” he added. “And it’s a great company that offers terrific products on a daily basis and that’s what I’ve wanted to do as a business owner.”
