Quite literally, the owner wanted to go fishing.
But that part of the story is near the end of the tale as far as how Wheeling residents Rob and Erika Donaghy came to own the Original PJ’s Pizza in New Martinsville.
So, to be fair, let’s begin at, well, the beginning.
“I was working in graphic arts, and I decided if I was going to continue doing it, I was going to work for myself and work for people of my choosing,” Donaghy explained. “So that’s when I started my own company, Tavi Design. But then one night after he came home from work, my husband asked me a question he’d never asked me before.”
The question?
“He asked me one day if I wanted to buy a restaurant, and my immediate answer to him was, ‘No, I do not want to buy a restaurant,” she said as if it took place yesterday. “I thought that was it, but he kept asking me. And then, you know, you start looking at numbers, and things like that.
“And, well, before I knew it, really, we had bought a restaurant.”
Wait, that’s the very end of the first part of this story.
“OK, so Rob knew the guy who owned PJ’s in New Martinsville because he would stop in to try and sell him food from Sysco all of the time. The guy always said no because he had been in business for a while and knew the products he wanted to use already, but Rob just kept on stopping to see him,” Erika recalled. “After a few years, the time arrived that Dan (Welsch wanted to retire because he was a fisherman, too, and that’s what he wanted to spend his time doing.)
“I guess he liked Rob’s tenaciousness, so he and his wife, Nancy, offered the pizza shop to Rob, so the offer was made, and we made the move,” she said. “It’s a lot of hours, and it was a lot of driving in the first couple of years, but now we work for ourselves and not someone else, and that makes it worth it; it really does.”
No. 2?
In the very beginning, Donaghy painted a five-year picture as far as when their employees were capable of operating the New Martinsville store as a staff … and most importantly, without their help. At the end of those five years, the Donaghys thought that maybe, just maybe, it would be time to look for a second location.
Well, five years and three days had passed before one of Erika’s friends messaged her about a shop in Moundsville.
“Her message actually said, ‘Please save Varsity.’ It was a very popular pizza shop in Moundsville that was closing because the owners were done, and they were closing and selling if they could,” Erika explained. “This one is all on me. I wanted it, and I had to talk Rob into it.
“It did take a while to get it ready because of the amount of work in the interior needs and the equipment that needed to be replaced or fixed. We closed on it in October, and it didn’t open until just before the new year, but there was a line of people waiting to get in when we had our soft opening,” she said. “That made us feel really great; it really did.”
The employees at the Original PJ’s Varsity Pizza operate a dining room, but the folks at the New Martinsville shop do not, so that was a new aspect of the eatery business the Donaghy’s encountered in Marshall County.
“It does add to the numbers of employees, and it adds to the customer service part of the restaurant business, but Varsity has a different menu than we do in New Martinsville,” Erika said. “The shop in New Martinsville just has our pizza ovens, so we can do the pies and the subs and a few other things.,
“But in Moundsville, our kitchen is much bigger and capable, and that allows us to have a much different menu,” she continued. “We did keep a lot of the customers’ favorites on the menu, but the pizza is ours. The pizza is PJ’s.”
So, Wait. No. 3?
So, does that mean No. 3 is coming?
“Sure,” Erika said with a smile. “We always keep our ears to the ground, and right now we’re hearing some things, so we’ll check it out and see what’s possible. Now that we are in the pizza business, I see a lot of potential for growth here in the Upper Ohio Valley.
“Yes, Varsity was a challenge, but it’s been worth it; it really has been. And the people have been great and so appreciative. With both shops, we’ve had the chance to meet entire communities,” Donaghy said. “And sure, we’ve had some issues we didn’t expect to have, but we have handled those things, and we are now to the point where we have a great staff in New Martinsville that has allowed us to expand into Moundsville. And that staff is doing great, too.”
Staffing, though, has been difficult at times for more than a few reasons. The pandemic certainly has caused issues, but so have, drug abuse and a weakened work ethic, the entrepreneur insisted.
“Staffing has been our biggest issue, but it’s been the same countrywide, too,” Donaghy said. “At least here, though, a lot of the issue is connected to drug use, and there’s also a different level of work ethic with younger people these days than what I remember when I was that age. I do believe a person’s work ethic improves with age because I have seen it with some of our employees who now truly bust their butts.
“But some people just don’t want to work, and it’s not something I really understand because I’ve never felt that way,” she added. “Right now, we both feel as if we need to be on-site in Moundsville a good bit just like we did in New Martinsville in the beginning. That’s the way it works, but once that foundation is there, then our employees will be able to handle the day-to-day operations. And then? Maybe No. 3.”
