A slice of family life

The traditional Greek kalamata olive has served the Panagopoulos family well over the last 70 years.

More than a sustenance, it has provided a way of life for grandfather James Panagopoulos, who owned olive groves on the outskirts of Athens and sold the wondrous oil. He, in turn, set up his son, Peter, selling olives, oil, cheeses and even canned goods in a local general store in Greece.  

That old country shop in the 1930s and 1940s eventually spawned the mom-and-pop known today as Avon House of Pizza on Main Street, Avon. Grandson James Panagopoulos now happily and proudly runs it with his wife, Maria.

Jimmy spins fresh heads of lettuce and the childhood stories that brought him behind the tall store counter that has been a major part of his life for almost 30 years. Then a 15-year-old Randolph High School student, the only child worked daily from 2-7 p.m. on Saturdays to help dad, Peter, and his mom, Kiki, build a successful small restaurant business in nearby Avon.

Flash forward: Peter, now 82, enjoys his 10 y ears of retirement... but is hardly retired from life or the business.

As Jimmy tells it, after arriving in the United States in 1959 and working several years as a cook at the famed Jimmy's Harborside Restaurant in downtown Boston, Peter decided to try his own hand at business ownership, pulling all his experience and observation of the food industry together and, fortuitously, drawing from another family member's restaurant ownership in New Bedford at that time. That eatery was a pizza shop and provided Peter with the model – and the recipe - to establish Avon House of Pizza in 1978.   

Helping in the restaurant, cleaning or making the pizza, was Jimmy's earlier, teen responsibility in the family. Once graduated from high school, the next task was a college education at Boston University with an ambitious premedical direction, which Jimmy later changed to a dental technician track, all the while working Saturdays at the restaurant.

Jimmy made the ultimate decision that changed his professional life (“That just wasn't me,” he said) as he accepted the far more comfortable and satisfying environment of food, hospitality and the warm sociability of a local, small-town, walk-in, family business. 

Peter had created a happy, drop-in atmosphere, with parents talking as they ordered pizza or hot dogs, children running about, playing with the cash register before they played the pinball machine.

“The town was so small then that everyone knew everyone else,” said Jimmy, who is amazed now to see “adults coming in who were kids then.”

But progress has its challenges and downside as Avon has grown industrially over the years, pushing the boundaries beyond the main street and taking with it many of the downtown stores.

“There's only a handful of businesses that hold the center together,” Jimmy said.

Especially difficult for the House of Pizza is the change to parallel parking which eats up spaces in front of the store and denying the angle parking which allowed customers to quickly pick up their orders. Many customers now must park in the public lot down the road.

So what's a breakfast, lunch and dinner restaurant to do to remain in business? Deliver.

Jimmy hired drivers and faxed area companies weekly menus and food specials to whet their appetite.

On the walls of this multi-paned glass store, there are signs of the Panagopoulos family pride in its local Little League chapter, in which Jimmy’s son, Peter, 8, participates. Peter 's face pops out in several of the last years' annual team pictures, and Jimmy mentioned that the restaurant once hosted an end-of-the-year party for the team.

The memories are long and the challenges are ongoing. Jimmy recounts his father buying this location, but that it had been a beauty salon and had to be physically adapted to a restaurant. Former Building Inspector Bob Mottau helped Peter in the conversion. 

Jimmy met his wife, Maria, 12 years ago and learned she is from a restaurant family which owns the Liberty Bell locations north of Boston. Maria has been a knowledgeable and steady hand at House, assisting where needed, relying on Jimmy's mother to babysit Peter and Andrew, 4.

With the retirement of father Peter 10 years ago, and the passing of Jimmy's mother four years ago, Maria now assumes more of the dough-making and lunchtime help, while Jimmy attends to shopping and worrying if the five drivers - and the cars – can make their shifts.

Eight-year employee Suzanne Sommer, of New Bedford, has been their reliable behind-the-counter help, allowing the family to take Sundays off.

But menus, décor, and recipes must be gently shaken and altered from time to time. Jimmy admits that changes were needed in his uncle's original pizza sauce which “played well in New Bedford” in those early years, but needed a tweaking in Avon over time. He only has changed the recipe twice in 28 years, arguing that consistency is critical to the devoted customers. 

Jimmy walks the delicate line of catering to new food trends and keeping the prices down. He laughs as he talks about some of those additions: “What's a wrap? Everyone wants a wrap today.”

Jimmy talks about framing new Little League pictures and putting up photos from the past even as he has remodeled the eatery with new window shelf counters and stools, and several small tables and chairs for those who want the camaraderie of sit-down dining, rather than the new-fangled dial-a-pizza.

And there’s a gumball machine in front of the door., with the possibility of getting a red gumball, thus winning a free slice of pizza. There’s about one to two winners each day.

Asked about retirement, Jimmy again laughs at the possibility, saying he wants to remain here until Peter is about 17 and can be given the option of assuming the business. He appreciates the generational aspect of his restaurant life now that he has two boys of his own. 

“It's a good feeling,” he said. “Sometimes Peter will come into the store and pick up the broom.”

 Avon, Jimmy said, is still a “small, tight-knit community,” and operating the House of Pizza “is not like going to work every day… You don't say 'How're you doing?' when a customer comes into the store. You say, 'Hi Joe. Hi Jack.' It's almost like a Cheers Bar type of thing.”

Jimmy's advice to a prospective business owner is “.to be prepared to make it a lifetime commitment.... almost like marriage. If you're willing to be there 24 hours... and can be comfortable and enjoy what you're doing, (great)...because otherwise you will never have success.” 

It’s deeply ingrained for Jimmy and his dad Peter, now living with Jimmy and Maria. He now gets up early not for his usual recreational activities, but to help Jimmy out by driving to buy some fresh vegetables.

And devotion and success is what it's all about, as evidenced by the many “Voted Best for...” award signs on House of Pizza's windows and inside wall space. It won a “Readers Choice Awards, 2007, Community Newspaper Company” award.

As one enters the Avon House of Pizza, one can't miss the divine aroma of pizza dough in the oven and have the satisfying notion that a Greek salad here means those fleshy, beautiful, deep red-purple kalamata olives. It's the little things.

(Do you know a family with a tradition of doing things together in town? Send in ideas for Generation to Generation to sgreen@cnc.com.)