Why does business suddenly start booming just as a pizzeria is set to close its doors forever?
It’s a familiar pattern. The pizzeria isn’t making enough money to stay open, so, after a lot of agonizing, the owners finally make up their minds to shut it down, often after decades in business. When the closing is officially announced, customers start showing up in droves, lamenting the shop’s pending demise on social media and proclaiming it their favorite pizza spot.
And the owners are left to wonder: “Where were all these people six months ago?”
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That was the case for The Pizza Joint, with two locations—now closed—in Portland, Maine. The restaurant had survived for 47 years, only to fire up its last pie on April 14.
The management announced the closure on April 3 via Facebook, sparking a total of 665 comments from saddened followers. Due to overwhelming demand, Patty Young, the general manager for one of the stores, put in more than 170 hours at the pizzeria in its final two weeks, she told the Portland Press Herald.
The stores got so busy, all four phones had to be left off the hook. And there were so many questions, Young finally posted an FAQ on Facebook.
“Since we announced closing, wait times for pizza have averaged ninety minutes to two hours, all day, every day,” the FAQ noted. “That’s without the phones. Even if we put them on, we wouldn’t have time to answer them. Any time the wait dips below 45 minutes, we put the phones on for a few minutes, and the time shoots right back up again. We’ll take as many orders as possible.”
Clearly, The Pizza Joint was well-loved. Which is nice and all, but where were all those customers when the company really needed them?
That question “certainly did cross my mind,” Young told the Press Herald.
Would The Pizza Joint still be going strong if those guests had been showing up all along?
To that question, Young replied, “If even 10% of the people who came out [after the closing was announced] had been coming in on a regular basis, maybe.”
So exactly why are both stores closing? It’s the same old story, of course. “Supply costs are up for us the same as everyone else,” the Facebook post read. “Labor costs have increased dramatically in recent years. Revenue is down. Any one of those would be a problem. We have all three.”
The post also points out that the restaurant’s long-time owners had retired several years earlier. Everyone else “will seek new employment. None of us is retirement age and none of us has the money to retire decades early. Rumors that the operators of such a place must surely swim in pools of cash like Scrooge McDuck are completely unfounded.”
The pizzeria’s management gave candid—even blunt—responses to other commonly asked questions in the Facebook post. For example, no, the restaurant’s name and brand are not up for sale. But one of the answers implied a much larger question.
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.
It’s unclear whether The Pizza Joint offered a loyalty program, and its website does not support online ordering. The company’s management appears to have used Instagram infrequently and only made its first post there on September 13, 2023. For social media, the company leaned more heavily into older-skewing Facebook, where it has more than 2,900 followers.
