Pizza Joint becomes latest Portland-area business to feel a lot of love … a little too late

A long row of order tickets nearly obscures Joe Poliquin and Patty Young as they prepare food at Pizza Joint in South Portland on the restaurant’s last day, April 14. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

SOUTH PORTLAND — By 9 a.m. the day before the Pizza Joint was closing for good, about a dozen people had lined up outside.

Some had been trying for days to place one last order, but phone lines were jammed or had been taken off the hook by swamped staffers. So customers went out at breakfast time on a Saturday to place a pizza order for lunch or dinner, or for the next day’s lunch or dinner. Some drove 45 minutes for the chance to get one last Pizza Joint pie.

It was like that for the final week and a half at the Pizza Joint shops in Portland and South Portland – since the owners announced that the 47-year-old business would close for good on April 14. Both locations were soon four times busier than usual. During that time, South Portland manager Patty Young and her staff worked hard to try and keep up with the barrage of orders, with Young putting in more than 170 hours over the last couple of weeks.

It was heartwarming, she says, to see how much customers loved the place and to hear how sad they were to see it go. But Young and other staffers couldn’t help wonder if the outpouring of love, and pizza orders, had come a little too late. Would an earlier burst of business have kept the place open?

“It certainly did cross my mind. If even 10% of the people who came out had been coming in on a regular basis, maybe,” said Young, who worked at the South Portland location for 31 years.

Pizza Joint is the latest longtime Portland-area business to receive a rush of customers and an outpouring of grief and love from the public right before shutting its doors. Its Facebook announcement on April 3 amassed 665 comments.

The pattern has become familiar. A business announces on social media that it’s closing, and immediately hundreds of people comment about how much they’ll miss the place and how sad they are. Many will lament that Portland is changing for the worse, and the closing of another of their favorite places proves this point.

Then the business will get one last rush of customers and close. Some restaurant owners say the scenario shows the importance of having loyal regulars who show up often before it’s too late to make a difference.

“Repeat business is super important to anyone in food service. The regular customers, they’re the ones that keep you going through the slow times,” said Zack Rand, general manager of Becky’s Diner on Portland’s waterfront. “They’re a good barometer of how you’re doing, too. If somebody’s willing to keep coming back, and they’re happy with the quality and the price point, then you’re doing something right.”

Kait Gurney, left, hugs manager Patty Young on April 12 at Pizza Joint in South Portland. Michele McDonald/Staff Editor

EVERYBODY’S FAVORITE

Dennis Fogg announced in May 2020 that he was closing Uncle Andy’s Diner in South Portland after 66 years. Business had been off for a while, and the pandemic was the last financial straw. In those last couple of weeks open, Fogg said people were “coming in continually” to eat and tell Fogg that Uncle Andy’s was their all-time favorite place.

“So part of me appreciated that and part of me asked, ‘What happened? If it was everybody’s favorite place, then why did we fall off so much?’” Fogg said. “To this day, my wife and I can’t go out without someone telling us how much they miss the place. It’s heartwarming, but I wasn’t making any money.”

Fogg thinks part of the reason that more traditional eateries like his and Pizza Joint closed in recent years is because Greater Portland has become saturated with all kinds of restaurants – including ones doing newer, more sophisticated takes on pizza, burgers or diner food – so it’s harder and harder for old-school joints to compete. The increasing cost of everything, the tight labor market and the business lost during COVID-19 do not help, either.

Rand, whose mother, Becky Rand, started her namesake diner in 1991, said that, while Greater Portland has seen an increase in competition among restaurants, there seem to be fewer places offering prices that would allow the average Mainer to become a repeat customer.

“I’m sure there a lot of new places that people would love to be a regular at, but can they afford to pay $150 for two people every time they go?” Rand said.

The Pizza Joint’s owners did not return a message left through Young or respond to emailed questions about the closing, including whether they thought an earlier increase of business could have kept the business open longer.

Pizza Joint managers got so many questions about the closing from customers that they decided to post a Q-and-A on Facebook to share some of the answers. To the question “Why are you closing?,” the answer was: “Supply costs are up for us the same as for everyone else. Labor costs have increased dramatically in recent years. Revenue is down. Any one of those would be a problem. We have all three.”

Another question and answer in the post summed up what Pizza Joint – and other beloved Portland-area businesses – went through in their final days:

“Q. You can’t close!
A. I assure you we can.
Q. But you’re so busy!
A. We’re busy BECAUSE we’re closing.”

On the Saturday morning when people lined up outside the South Portland location, Julia Leighton, of New Gloucester, had driven about 40 minutes from her home to place an order for later in the day. She had tried calling earlier Saturday morning, but when the line was busy, she jumped in her car and raced to South Portland.

She had also driven to Pizza Joint on Friday at 11 a.m., but the overworked kitchen was no longer taking orders. Leighton, 30, grew up in South Portland and used to come to Pizza Joint every couple of weeks on average. But since moving to New Gloucester in 2021, she hadn’t come as often. So she felt compelled to grab one more pie, a large pepperoni.

Leighton’s story of persistence was pretty common among others placing orders that morning. Michelle Bracy, of Buxton, had been trying to place a phone order for several days and had come in person Friday, only to be shut out. On Saturday morning, she and her daughter, Natalie Sok, drove in about 10 a.m. to place an order for three pizzas to be picked up about an hour later.  The restaurant was no longer taking dinner orders for that day.

Bracy said she had last ordered from Pizza Joint about three weeks earlier. But living in Buxton, she only got the food there “every once in a while.”

“The Pizza Joint has been a family tradition for us for so long,” said Bracy, 42, who grew up in Portland. “They’ve always been so consistent with their food; you can trust them. Some of the new Portland places aren’t always consistent.”

Heidi Norman, of South Portland, came to the restaurant Saturday morning to order three pizzas – one Hawaiian, one pepperoni, and one sausage and onion – for one final Pizza Joint dinner with neighbors. Norman, 57, said she usually comes to Pizza Joint every couple of weeks. In the past week or so, she had driven there three or four times to try to place an order, but each time, she arrived after the shop had stopped taking them.

Lines were even longer on Sunday morning, the last day, than they were Saturday. Some Facebook posts show two dozen people or more in line outside the South Portland location at various times.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The idea of eating at a favorite place to keep it in business seemed top-of-mind during the pandemic, when so many restaurants were fighting for their survival. Many people got in the habit of ordering takeout from a favorite spot to help it weather the COVID-19 storm. Most people were spending less on going out and got pandemic assistance checks, so it wasn’t a difficult thing for some to do. But now many people seem to have fallen out of the habit.

Jeff Kline, of Cape Elizabeth, has not. He and his wife, Cathy Kline, eat out two to three times a week. While they like to try new places, Kline says they make an effort to frequent places they want to stay in business. During the 15-plus years he’s lived in the area, Kline has seen several of his favorite spots close, including two diners: Rudy’s of the Cape in Cape Elizabeth and Rudy’s All-Star Diner in South Portland.

He used to go to another old-school place, Pizza by Angelone in South Portland, before it closed about a dozen years ago. He and his wife now make an effort to go to the Pizza by Angelone in Westbrook, the last remaining location of what was once a three-restaurant Maine chain.

“It’s so hard when a place you love disappears, so we try to revisit favorite places,” said Kline, 58, who works as a television writer. “We will make a conscious decision to go to a place because maybe the last time we were there, it was not so busy.”

Jim Kachmar, center, of Buxton, waits in line for his final order from Pizza Joint in South Portland, which closed its doors for good on April 14. In the last days it was open, people were driving in by 9 a.m. or so to place orders to be picked up later. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

While a loyal customer base is important, it’s definitely not the only factor that keeps longtime places in business.

When Doug Fuss announced in March 2023 that he was closing the popular Old Port restaurant and pub Bull Feeney’s after 21 years, the reaction was “massive and very positive,” Fuss said. The last weekend the place was open, business just about doubled.

But even if business had been doubling for months earlier, Fuss doubts he would have been able to stay open. His main problem was recruiting and maintaining managers in the tight labor market.

The last-minute-rush phenomenon doesn’t only happen at restaurants. When Maine record store chain Bull Moose closed its Old Port store in November 2020, people streamed in to share stories and memories, said Chris Brown, its vice president of finance.

The shop had been a destination and hangout on Middle Street since the mid-’90s, but a decrease in foot traffic in the area, as well as an expiring lease, led to the closing. Brown has a hard time imagining it would have made much of a difference if those folks had come to the Portland store more often. Many of them were longtime Bull Moose customers who maybe now lived in a suburb and shopped at one of its 11 other stores, where it’s easier to park.

“We saw the patterns changing, and we knew our customers wanted to go to other (Bull Moose) stores,” Brown said.

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