Opportunity Knocks Twice; Chapter 11

Editor's Note: Utah Pulse is serializing the book, 'Opportunity Knocks Twice,' by Don Hale, as told to Mark Hale. We'll publish two chapters a week. You'll enjoy the wit and wisdom of one of Utah's great entrepreneurs, founder of Hires Big H. To buy the book, click here.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Litzas Pizza

Perhaps I am a restless guy, but five years after opening Hires, I started mentioning to my Dad that I wanted to open a restaurant next to Hires that specialized in pizza. My dad thought I was crazy to think of operating a restaurant based on just one product. The 1950s and 1960s were filled with all-American type restaurants serving a variety of foods. However, I thought that people liked pizza enough that it might work. It had certainly worked for a pizzeria quite close to our home which I thought had the best pizza in town—the Pizza Oven.
My dad and I went on a pizza-eating trip. We went all over trying every pizza we could find. Funny thing, my dad ended up developing a taste for pizza and became a real connoisseur of it. Then, I took my family on similar trips. We went throughout Utah trying different pizzas, and whenever I heard of a good pizza out of state we traveled there. I remember taking the family to Denver to try a pizza. My kids loved these trips.
By 1965, I thought I had found the type of pizza I liked and wanted to serve. I have always felt confident in my taste buds and thought that if I liked the taste of the product, the public would like it as well. I guess a restaurateur must have that kind of chutzpah.
We put the pizza restaurant concept together and built northeast of Hires on the original Zions leasehold. However, I still needed to choose a name for the restaurant. I wanted something with some zip—something that rhymed with pizza, and I eventually came up with Litzas Pizza. I always thought that a name with a “z” in it sounded solid. Besides, it also sounded Italian.
We started out with Litzas just like we did with Hires—slowly. But business grew, just as it did at Hires. We had developed great pizza and a great menu at Litzas.

With the addition of Litzas, the corner became known, in the early years, as a culinary corner. Having the two restaurants close to each other gave customers a couple of options, and each restaurant bred business for the other. A corner location near neighborhoods, a university, and a downtown business district, with great street access, helped make the growing businesses more successful. The real estate adage, “location, location, location” is certainly true, but what this property taught me is that a business district by day and a neighborhood area by night produces customers throughout the entire day, making the location more successful.

Things generally work out as you work at them.

During the 1960s, while we were developing and operating Litzas Pizza, my children were experiencing their childhood and teenage years. Every year we took a summer vacation, usually to California. We loved the beach and often stayed in Laguna Beach. We would swim in the ocean and travel around visiting the traditional California vacation highlights.
We have so many wonderful memories of those vacations. One of our children says: “My dad has always been so much fun on a vacation; he steps away from his business mode, has a great time, and just wants everyone else to have a great time, too. He is willing to spend money to make sure we all have fun. I remember one trip when he gave everyone $100 and told us to spend it any way we wanted.”
Here are some other things some of our children recall about me during their growing up years.
One child remembers this trip: “Papa [Parley], Dad, and I took a trip to California by ourselves. We went to the horse races, and, as we were going in, my dad asked me my favorite numbers. I told him they were six and nine. Horse six won the first race, and horse nine won the second race that day.” How about that
This child also recalls, “I remember how strict my dad was. He once got me up out of a dead sleep in the middle of the night to clean the bathroom I had said I would clean but had not.”
Another one of our children says, “I was taking piano lessons, and every night my dad sat down with me to help me practice. Piano became a totally frustrating experience for me because my dad became so frustrated when I could not play a piece correctly. I quickly lost interest in the piano and stopped after a year or two.”
One child recalls, “When I was sixteen, I backed up my mom’s new black Eldorado Cadillac out of the garage, turning too quickly and hitting the side of the garage, smashing the right front side of her car. I went in the house and said, ‘Dad, we have a problem outside. Could you come with me and look at it?’ My dad did not get angry, which I really appreciated and have always remembered.
“I remember my dad periodically taking us swimming at the YMCA after work when I was little. We always wanted to jump off the high dive, but we were too scared. He never forced us, but if we wanted to jump, he would tread water in the pool near where we would land, giving us a sense of security and safety.

“And I remember how happy I was when my dad came to my last football game in my junior year of high school. He did not make it to many of my games.”
And some of the children remember the time I got them up in the middle of the night to clean up the dog’s mess in the living room. It was their responsibility to make sure the door to the living room was shut. They had left it open, and our dog, Buff, had gotten in and gone to the bathroom on the carpet.