Pizza Pub marks 50 years in Clarion

THE PIZZA PUB, located along Route 322 in Clarion, recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.

CLARION – Three generations of the Schill family have supplied the Clarion area with pizza for over a half-century. That's a lot of pizza and memories for those who have visited and continue to return.

The Pizza Pub, opening April 10, 1973, recently celebrated its 50th anniversary; but Pete and Germaine Schill first brought pizza to Clarion in 1960 with Harry's Pizza on Main Street. Son Mike and his wife, Jean, bought the Pub 18 years ago. Mike and Jean's children have grown up working there.

The Pub still sells the original Harry's Pizza Monday through Wednesday, but also offers specialty pies, strombolis and subs all week.

For the 50th anniversary celebration in May, specials were offered each day, drawing crowds from far and wide. The day that featured trays of Harry's Pizza may have been the most challenging, and members of the Schill family returned to help with the production.

"My brother Dan was in at 5 a.m. with Mike to start rolling the trays — 70 trays from the Pub and 30 borrowed trays," Mike said. "We rolled the first hundred, and that's all of the pans we had. I rolled pizza until 8 p.m. that night. My son Eric and I went and timed the ovens and everything, so we knew exactly what our capacity was for Monday. My wife, Jean, brothers Ray, Dan and Tom, and sisters Donna and Karen worked alongside the staff all day."

Mike said it all worked out the best that it could, but unfortunately, some people couldn't get some Harry's. There were too many phone calls and only so much room in the oven. Orders doubled from past anniversaries.

The family is grateful for community support.

While everyone is just wild about Harry's, one machine from the original Clarion location of Harry's Pizza makes it all possible.

"The machine I rolled dough on the other day came out of Harry's pizza shop," Mike explained. "It's the same original machine since I’ve been here, and I’ve been working here since I was 16, and I’m 57 now. I have never changed the belt, chain, gearbox or motor. They don't make things like that anymore."

Pizza has always been part of Mike's life — he has always been at the Pizza Pub.

"We opened, and I was only seven years old, and I remember running around in the place," said Schill. "I’m 57, and I’ve been here now ... well, I’ve always been here, but I started working when I was 16, so I’ve already been here 41 years myself."

Transformation Into

The Pizza Pub

The Pizza Pub building, along Route 322 across from Clarion Ford, previously served as a laundromat and a service station that sold Studebakers.

The red bricks inside and outside the Pub were repurposed from a collapsed portion of a home on Route 322 in Strattanville. The bricks were initially brought from Philadelphia in the early 1800s in Conestoga wagons. Legend has it that this home was used as part of the Underground Railroad.

The Pizza Pub logo, featuring a relaxing dog, is a tribute to a favorite pet of Bernice Bowser, a poodle named Pixie.

The interior of the Pub has mostly stayed the same over the years.

"The walls are the same, and we’ve changed the carpet and put in a new glass door," said Mike. "We’ve added some new chairs and painting, but nothing major.

"Whenever I think about maybe brightening up the inside, people tell me not to change a thing. They say it wouldn't be the Pub, and I hear that all the time," he explained.

The conversion of the building from a Laundromat to the Pizza Pub was meant to last a long time and withstand a lot of traffic over the years.

Many people have seen a coin embedded in the bar/counter near the checkout, and Mike offers a story on how that happened.

"When building the place, Dan Schill burned a hole in the countertop with the treble light," he said. "They couldn't think of any other way to fix that, and Henry Shaffer said, ‘I’ll fix that,’ and he just cut that out with a perfect saw. We found a 1973 fifty-cent piece and put it in there instead of throwing the whole thing out. Back then, that's what they did."

Education Leads

to Dough

After graduating from Clarion-Limestone, Mike went to Clarion University and earned a marketing degree. He looked at his options but decided to stay with the family business.

He also got a chance to further his education when his dad decided to send him to baking school.

"We never made our dough here back then and bought everything through Harry's Pizza franchise, and it had to be trucked in," Mike said. "My dad sent me to the America Institute of Baking in 1989 or 1990 in Manhattan, Kansas, to learn how to make pizza. After my aunt left the business and sold out, we started making the dough here ourselves. My aunt is the one who came up with the actual Harry's Pizza, and we did the formula from her after she sold out, but we just decided we were going to make it ourselves.

"I go every year to the pizza conventions in Las Vegas. I was out there this year, and the guy that teaches at that school, Tom Lehmann, always has a seminar there called the Dough Doctor. You always pick up little things here and there. Everybody does something different in the pizza business, and there is no wrong way. Some hand toss their pizza, Chicago likes their deep pizza dish, New York wants their thin style, San Francisco has sourdough, and every area has their own little thing."

Keep It Simple Stupid

"We stay with the basics at the Pub, which was one thing that the Dough Doctor stressed out there. He said to keep it simple; don't try to get fancy and add a bunch of this or that," Mike Schill explained.

He said he gets requests for different menu items, but he remembers the KISS method and looks at the requested items. Take spaghetti, for instance.

"Many people, including my friends, will ask, ‘When are you going to do spaghetti?’ First of all, we need more room for that. Our kitchen is straightforward; we run everything through two conveyer ovens. There's no deep fryer in here or stove in here. I would only be able to boil water here if I brought my induction plate. I have no reason to do that."

The two conveyer ovens replaced the original deck ovens in 1993, and they’ve been running constantly since then.

The Pub's philosophy is that they are not fast food, but customers know they can come in, get waited on in a hurry, eat, and get out.

"The main reason we’ve been successful over the years is our good employees, who’ve made a difference," Mike said, noting that the Pub employs around 25 people. "They’ve been very loyal over the years. Several people have been here for a long time. I think we’ve treated them well, and they treat us well."

Supporting

The Community

Mike says the Pub has been good for him, and he tries to give back to the community as much as possible. The Pub goes through many oven-ready pizzas for fundraisers by community organizations.

"The Pub makes a little money, but we do it for the organizations," he said. "It's a great, easy fundraiser. People have to eat; they like the pizza and sell themselves. Many people put them in the freezer and get them out when they want."

The origins of the fundraiser started many years ago and took off by itself.

"Even when we had Harry's, we had take-and-bake pizzas. Back then, we made them at home on our kitchen table, boxed them, and took them back to the shop in the 1960s. We only sold a few back then, maybe 10 here and 10 there. We never got into it as doing it as a fundraiser business. I remember doing one for our varsity club in high school for a fundraiser. A few years later, the C-L Cheerleaders started doing it once a year. It got the ball rolling, and people would ask how they do their fundraisers. We never pushed it, and to this day, I don't push it. If anyone wants to do it, that's fine."

The Pub isn't just a Clarion restaurant. People who travel from Pittsburgh through the area often stop at the Pub. Mike says he gets customers all the time from Brookville, Oil City, Karns City, Moniteau and elsewhere, especially when there are a lot of sporting events in town.

And he still gets quite a few people asking about when he will open a Pub in their hometown, but that's outside the cards. He wants to keep it simple, and sometimes bigger is not better.

In terms of the future, Mike likes what he's doing, and he's not planning to stop.

All three of his children have worked at the store, as well as his wife Jean who manages the bookkeeping.

His youngest daughter, Maddie, is a student at Duquesne, and his son, Eric, worked there off and on for 15 years and changed direction to work in wildlife management. Mike's middle daughter, Marisa, has taken on a greater role in the business and some day may follow in her dad's footsteps.

The family thanks the community for the continued success and hopes to be around for 50 years to come.

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