After many years serving Greek-style pizza from their brickhouse restaurant on the corner of Greenwood Avenue and P.T. Barnum Square in Bethel, Famous Pizza”™s storefront moved to a slightly new location right next door in an adjacent space on the square. The construction of the new storefront was completed this past December, with partners and brothers-in-law Perry Anastasakis and Anthony Caffrey satisfied with the modern and more minimalistic venue.
This change is the beginning of a new chapter for the family-owned pizza parlor that first opened in 1982. And while their downscaling was spurred on in part by Covid-19, the family”™s philosophy of respecting and paying tribute to their community continues unabated.
But what was the previous incarnation of Famous Pizza like before the location change just a few months ago? Anastasakis highlights the relationship between the pizzeria, the family and Bethel as crucial in understanding how the restaurant has operated before, and into the present.
“They came through a town that they thought would be a good place to raise their children and operate a business,” he said of his parents, George and Pauline Anastasakis.
With such a simple goal, the first-generation owners went to work, founding the restaurant and establishing themselves in Bethel by sending their children off to school and by performing community outreach by sponsoring local sports teams.
Bethel, in turn, appreciated the family”™s services, with satisfied and loyal customers frequenting time and again, discovering their favorite dishes and building a lively rapport with the owners, both past and present. Anastasakis contrasted these jovial interactions with his time as an auditor in a corporate environment ”” while that work paid good money and was respectable in his eyes, it lacked the warmth he has come to associate with working at Famous Pizza.
“It”™s much different from providing something as comforting as a pizza,” he related.
Key to Famous Pizza”™s continued success, even as it metamorphizes into a downscaled restaurant, is their eye for quality control. Anastasakis and Caffrey prefer a hands-on approach in their kitchen, overseeing the use of ingredients and adherence to recipes. The duo”™s presence on-site allows for this level of control, and they believe attempts to franchise or expand may result in reduced quality.
“I think that pride in our town forces us to really be cognizant of how we operate,” Anastasakis stated.
But customers aren”™t the only people on the minds of Anastasakis and Caffrey. The opening of another restaurant would also mean assembling a new team as cohesive and motivated as their current team, and that would not be an easy task ”” most members have accumulated 10 to 20 years of experience at Famous Pizza. The partners believe this dedication to craft is the result of good compensation, adequate time off, and in general treating employees like an extension of the family rather than replaceable, invisible components.
The mutual loyalty paid off when Covid-19 first hit. Where many businesses had and continue to see a huge amount of employee turnover, Famous Pizza held together internally. It was clear, however, that merely sticking together and continuing business as usual would not suffice.
“We actually shut down entrance to our restaurant before any of the mandates,” Anastasakis recalled. “We were probably one of the first businesses in the area that did that.”
The team changed their business model temporarily to that of delivery and curbside pickup only. While this move may have disappointed some customers, the community was overall receptive toward these efforts.
This period signaled a need for change at Famous Pizza. They managed to avoid much of the pandemic”™s brutal impact in the meantime with their temporary pivot toward delivery and curbside pickup, but they also acknowledged shifting market forces ”” many customers, particularly millennials, have come to prefer eating at home or at work over dining in at a restaurant.
“We didn”™t wait for the restaurant landscape to change. We took that time to plan for the future,” Anastasakis said. “We saw the signs that the dining room business was on a decline, and delivery was on the rise.”
Rather than hunker down and then open up, business as usual, with the end of mandates, Anastasakis and Caffrey concluded that Covid-19 merely accelerated the inevitable. Famous Pizza would likewise need to keep up with the changing landscape by downscaling the restaurant space and permanently orienting more toward the delivery and pickup side of the business.
There has also been a shift in taste that Famous Pizza could no longer ignore. Though their thick-crust, Greek-style pizza had been served since the beginning and was beloved by customers, it was decided that a thin-crust, Italian style would cater to more customers. To not alienate longtime patrons, ingredients and recipes remained the same, with only the cooking process altered.
The change was not without some initial skepticism, especially within the team and family, but the vast majority of customers love the new pizza. And along with staples such as chicken parmesan and homemade mozzarella sticks, new food items now populate Famous Pizza”™s menu, with the upside-down Sicilian pie, featuring cheese underneath the sauce, proving a popular addition.
