By Rick Hynum
When Joey Karvelas describes his pizza brand’s humble beginnings in western Georgia, he’s not just whistling Dixie. Picture a ramshackle 900-square-foot shop squatting in the middle of a trailer park just 40 miles from the Alabama state line. Delivery and carryout only, with a few picnic tables for al fresco dining. And on a chilly winter’s day, perhaps a knife-wielding hunter nearby, skinning and gutting a deer.
Now that’s humble. But Karvelas Pizza Co. has come a long way since 2014. And Karvelas himself has come even further, after a troubled youth that landed him in prison for three years. Today, he’s a family man with five kids, strong faith in God, an abundance of self-confidence and charisma—and a six-store company that reaps $10 million in annual sales.
At first glance, he’s the antithesis of the traditional pizzaiolo. He has a real-deal southern drawl, wears a camo cap and puts on no airs. But he’s one of Georgia’s heavy hitters, building out high-volume shops in small towns you might be hard-pressed to find on the map.
And he came by it honestly. By the age of 12 he was washing dishes in his dad’s pizzeria, called Pizza Stop, in Hogansville, Georgia, and, before long, making pies on his own. “I’d see the pizzas getting tossed in the air and thrown in the brick oven, and I was just so intrigued,” Karvelas recalls. “Like, this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, you know? My dad had an infatuation with pizza. He loved it, man. Everywhere we’d go, he’d stop at pizza shops and have conversations about it….And I’m, like, 16 years old, telling him, ‘Man, we should open up more shops.’ He’d say, ‘I can’t afford that.’ But he always wanted to.”
The dream of owning multiple locations was left to Karvelas, who might have seemed the least likely candidate to fulfill it. First, he had a demon to wrestle with—and hard lessons to learn.
A Party Animal
That demon was drugs. As a high schooler, Karvelas was an all-star athlete, but a laggard in the classroom. “I was a jokester,” he says. “I had a lot of friends, and I would just cut up….I got into a lot of trouble. I spent most of my time in in-school suspension.”
Karvelas’s mind tended to wander away from his studies…straight to pizza. “I draw, and I remember pretty vividly drawing up a menu for my future pizza place and everything that would be on that menu.” But algebra and history teachers don’t give out As for menu design. As his classwork suffered and the Fs proliferated, he got booted off the football and baseball teams. “I remember the coaches getting really mad at me. Like, ‘What are you doing? You’re throwing your life away.’ So I went down the wrong path.”
At 18, he gave drugs a try—and he liked them. “I was a party animal, man,” he says. “I’d spend all the money from one paycheck in one weekend, doing drugs, getting drunk, just partying.” Authorities busted him first for possession of ecstasy, a felony. He was placed on five years’ probation, only to get caught again with methamphetamines—and that meant a stint in the slammer. He spent three years behind bars and earned his release. Lesson learned? Nope. Karvelas was arrested for drugs a third time. “I was facing going back to prison,” he says, “but my parole officer suggested rehab. That’s a long story. I was scared for my life. I thought it was over, man. But I got that mandate to go to Christian-based rehab [or return to prison], and, man, I took it. I bought into it 100%.
“It was an 18-month program. I wanted to change my life. I wanted to get married, have children and open a pizza shop. That’s where I met God and built a great relationship with Him and with a lot of good people. It just got me on track. I haven’t done drugs since.”
Not Real Glamorous
His dad, known as Big Jim, had sold his pizzeria by that time, so Karvelas didn’t have a job waiting for him. But when he learned that the pizzeria he grew up in was for sale, Karvelas took action. The current owner wanted $100,000. With a loan from a family friend—a doctor willing to take a risk on the amiable Karvelas—he scraped up $20,000 and made an offer, take it or leave it.
Call it the good Lord working in mysterious ways, but, surprisingly, the owner took it, setting the stage for a remarkable comeback that began in 2014. Big Jim had passed away by then, so Karvelas was on his own. “I didn’t have any money, zero,” he remembers. “All the inventory that came with the business were ingredients that I was not going to use [over the long term]. For the first two or three weeks, I had to use them anyway just to make the money I needed to buy ingredients for my own recipes. But it worked out.”
Karvelas and his wife, Emily, ran that first little shop together. “We were in this little shack, with a trailer park around us. There was a hunter, and he would be gutting a big deer while customers sat out there, eating and watching him. It was a really bad [building], falling apart….But people loved it, man. They loved how janky it was.”
That’s when Emily dreamed up the motto that defines Karvelas Pizza Co. to this day: “Not Real Glamorous, but Dang Sure Delicious.” It’s funny, straightforward and unpretentious—just like Karvelas himself. In fact, he was more than happy to make topnotch New York-style pies five days a week, stay home on Sundays and Mondays, and raise babies with Emily. For a while, anyway.
“I was good with just making 40 grand a year,” he says. “But within a few years, I was making a lot more than that. I thought, this [concept] is really hot. I could take it to other towns, and I know it’ll hit. I’ve got a brand here that we could grow.”
Soon, his oldest brother, Manny, a senior manager at FedEx, joined the business. “He was really good at developing people, building teams and trusting them,” Karvelas says. “And that’s something I didn’t really get. I was still rough around the edges. I ran people off….I’m an outspoken person, especially if I get frustrated. I’d just speak my mind, and it would rub people the wrong way. So I thought if I could just focus on the cooking, the finances, setting up the kitchen flow and fast service, and let Manny handle the employees and customers, we could do this.”
In 2018, Karvelas Pizza Co. moved out of the trailer park and into a larger—and far less “janky”—space in Hogansville. The next year brought store No. 2 in LaGrange, followed by a third store in Newnan in 2020. His younger brother, Charlie, signed on as well to focus on the customer experience, and new stores kept doing bang-up business. The latest opened in February, as Karvelas Pizza Co. leapt across the state line into Opelika, Alabama. Another Alabama store will open near Auburn University this fall.
@karvelaspizzaco Keeping busy, and hyping up our menu! Check out another edition of #micdupmoments at #KPCO #pizza #wings #beer ♬ let’s go (instrumental) – no/vox & karaokey
“Micd Up”
And whenever a store opens in a new town, many locals already know Karvelas by face and by name. He pioneered video marketing via social media with his first location, mostly, he says, because he didn’t have the time or the inclination to compose text-heavy posts, which were standard for Facebook in those days. Instead, he just spoke directly into the camera, using his folksy wit, warmth and authenticity to engage and entertain.
Karvelas’s video posts proved to be catnip for the algorithms. That formula still works for Karvelas Pizza Co. to this day, especially when he’s ready to open a new location. The videos never feel scripted or rehearsed—just Karvelas being Karvelas. “I’d like to see a line down the street,” he says in a video promoting the Opelika store’s grand opening. “Let me tell ya something: We’re gonna throw down!”
The “Micd Up” series might be Karvelas’s masterstroke. Sometimes it’s high-spirited teenage servers wearing the microphones, sometimes Karvelas himself, while the camera tags along to capture spontaneous behind-the-scenes humor. At the LaGrange store, team members Lynsey and Hugo bicker hilariously—and with clear affection—in the kitchen. “She’s been on me all day, guys,” Hugo laments drily at one point. “It was supposed to be a good day.” To which Lynsey responds, “I literally asked him to sweep the floor. That’s it.” But later, Hugo describes Lynsey in one word: “Awesome-sauce.”
@karvelaspizzaco There’s always that one person every shift, like he says, you’ll never meet another! Join another #micdupmoments in LG! #KPCO #restaurantlife #serverlife #pizza #eatlocal #supportlocal ♬ Fuel – Metallica
Another server, Merideth, walks up to a table of regulars and says, “Y’all, I’m miked up. Don’t say nothing crazy.” One customer calls out: “She goes to church, and she’s a good girl!” Later, Merideth bursts into song and says, “American Idol’s calling my name. Everywhere I go, they ask me that, but I’m, like, I gotta be at Karvelas, I can’t.”
Clip a mike on Karvelas, and he’ll go around joking with customers, teasing employees or peppering line cooks and servers with quick tips, from proper topping techniques to memorizing table numbers. In one video, he jumps on the make line during a rush period and tells his team, “See, if I hadn’t come in, y’all would have been over here crying.” As he’s slapping out dough for an order, someone hollers, “Don’t make it. She called back and said she didn’t want it.” Karvelas responds, “Call her back. Tell her, hell, naw.”
‘Learn to Trust People’
The “Micd Up” series is pizzeria marketing at its finest, not so much about promoting the food itself—other posts serve that function—but capturing the Karvelas Pizza Co. experience. What you’ve got here, the videos proclaim, is a fun place to work, to go for lunch or dinner, to just hang out. The positive energy is palpable. You want to meet these kids. You want them to wait on your table. You want them to make your pie.
And you want to meet Karvelas himself. “If I’m in a grocery store in Opelika, people know who I am,” he notes. “And I say that in a humble way—I don’t think of myself as a celebrity at all. But they come up and say, ‘I just want to take a picture with you. I’ve been seeing you all over social media.’ It really hit home with the Opelika store. I was boosting video posts about the grand opening, and 100% of the people that came in said, ‘I saw your social media and had to see what you have going on here.’ I’m, like, damn, this is crazy.”
Crazy smart, actually. When it’s time to staff up for store No. 7, Karvelas will likely have his pick of the best, thanks to social media. And once they’re on board and fully trained, he will get back to big-picture planning. The key to growth, he believes, is to let your team handle the day-to-day work. “You need to learn to trust people,” he says. “If you think you’re ready to open a second location, take a month off and don’t go into the restaurant at all. Just tell them to call you if they need you. If you open a second store, you’re not going to be at the first one as often, right? Maybe not for a whole month. So if you can take a month off and everything’s still good, you’re ready to go.”
That’s the thing about Karvelas. His faith in God is strong, yes, but he believes in people, too. “If you put them in the right place and the right atmosphere, they want to do a good job. When I talk to some restaurant owners who have one store, that’s usually the common thread: They don’t trust people. They think everyone’s out to get them or to steal from them. That’s just not true, man. Or they’re just not willing to walk away and say [to their staff], ‘I know you can do it. I’m going to let you do it.’ If it’s so hard to train somebody to do what you do, maybe you need to figure out how to make it easier. Make things more systematic, reduce your menu a little bit, get rid of things that are slowing you down. Just make it easier on the people you have. If their job’s easy, you’re probably going to retain more people, too.”
With the Opelika store now open, Karvelas Pizza Co. has around 320 employees, most of whom work part-time (typically 15 hours a week). Even with the seventh store opening in October, Karvelas feels like he’s just getting started. “I really want to focus on growth,” he says. “I’ve built up what I need with the food and the recipes. Now let’s open more stores and build our revenue up. I’d like to get to $30 million in the next 10 years.”
Back in the long, dark days of his incarceration, did Karvelas imagine he’d ever achieve this kind of success? “I’m a dreamer, man,” he says. “That got me through those moments. Prison was a rough place to be. But I would envision myself marrying some pretty girl, having a nice house full of kids, owning a restaurant. If someone had told me then that one day I’d be where I am now, man, that would have just given me more to dream about.”
Rick Hynum is PMQ Pizza’s editor in chief.
