Knowing Your Neighbors: From Construction Worker to Lee’s Pizza Owner

Restaurant's new owner hopes to revamp.

DULUTH, Minn.- How does a construction worker get to own his own pizza shop?

By being a big fan with big dreams.

The owner of lee’s pizza in Lincoln Park is just that.

The sound of smacking dough, creaking ovens and ringing phones tell you you’re in one of the busiest pizza joints in Lincoln Park.

“Y’know, it’s just a good quality pizza.”

Thanks to new owners, and the same perfect pizza recipe.

“It’s the sauce on the pizza,” said owner Terry Johnson. “Y’know, we got our own recipe, and it’s been a recipe from Lee’s Pizza for 32 years.”

“I just fell in love with the pizza when I first started coming here.”

Johnson was once a frequent customer at Lee’s, back when the store was in darker days.

“When you first walked in here, I would say it was a little sketchy, y’know you got a little nervous, it wasn’t very clean.”

Sad to see his favorite lunch spot decline, he bought the store in November of 2018.

And started building it up.

“I first came in thinking: ok, where do I start? I had no training, no background in it and I just jumped right in,” said Johnson. And so I learned every part of the business, as making the pizza, answering the phones, taking the orders, going back making the sauce, making the dough, making the sausage.”

“I even deliver pizzas when I have to.”

With the help of his employees, he says he turned the place around.

Keeping those old customers coming back.

For some it’s the variety of pizza that keeps them coming, for their favorite type.

“The Bacon Cheeseburger pizza for sure,” Andrew Perrin, who has been coming to the restaurant for years.

His cousin Layla on the other hand, she goes traditional.

“I like Pepperoni.”

For Terry, it’s conversations like this that makes it all worth it.

“Everyday I come here and y’know I unlock that door with the key, I have a smile on my face,” he said.”

It’s about the passion and how happy people get when they eat this pizza and the way they look back at me and say this is the best pizza I’ve ever eaten.”

For delivery and menu information visit them at https://www.leespizzaduluth.com/.