Business Spotlight: Scratch Kitchen

Three-year-olds don’t often name restaurants.

But in the case of PaPPo’s Pizzeria and Pub, that’s exactly what happened.

Searching for names, owner Chris “PaPPo” Galloway adopted his granddaughter’s nickname for him. The name stuck, and it turned out to be a fitting moniker for his pizza venture.

“If you’ve ever tried to name a pizza place or a band or anything, it’s hard,” Galloway says. “We found out it means to prepare food carefully or to gobble up in Italian, and so that’s the name we used.”

True to the company’s origins, PaPPo’s Pizzeria is largely a family affair.

When searching for a suitable location, Lake of the Ozarks resident Galloway had a Columbia site picked out and ready to go. The allure of the Queen City came into play when his stepdaughter Briana Mathews living in Springfield asked him to check it out. He was sold on downtown’s charm.

In November 2012, PaPPo’s opened its first restaurant at 221 E. Walnut St., the former home of Gallery Bistro, with leadership by Mathews and her friend Jonathan Swisher. Galloway leaned on his son Warren to open a second restaurant in Osage Beach in 2014. Early this year, he opened a St. Louis brewpub, and within months his son Jamie is seeking to become the company’s first franchisee.

Fresh cuts
A former pizza franchise owner and longtime restaurant worker, Galloway sought to distance himself from what he considered substandard products.

His restaurant concept starts with the basics. Fresh ingredients, without preservatives, are important to Galloway, and he’s done his research.

“We are what you’d call a scratch kitchen,” says Galloway, who’s Italian on his mother’s side. “Our goal was to make everything we possibly could from scratch.”

At the Springfield restaurant tucked in between Hotel Vandivort and a parking garage, 20 employees work with three different freshly made crusts, eight sauces, 15 cheeses and 46 toppings. The menu has 26 specialty pizzas, including the most popular, the Kitchen Sink, which is topped with Canadian bacon, Italian sausage, green peppers, olives and more.

One of PaPPo’s suppliers says Galloway doesn’t hold back when chasing freshness and quality.

“Unfortunately, we don’t see that in all of the accounts that we furnish,” says Joe May, a U.S. Foods Inc. territory manager who personally has 35 clients. “Many customers try and save their way to success.”

In the food industry, May says customers may suffer when owners care more about the money than the final product. Pizza places in particular can be offenders.

“When you’ve got a Pizza Hut out there selling garbage, comparatively there’s no nutritional value,” he says, adding his work with Galloway is refreshing.

“Anything that is actually clean food is what they want first and foremost,” he says. “He’s constantly got me shopping for better this and better that with regard to less preservatives.”

Missouri and more
Declining to disclose revenue, Galloway says the Springfield restaurant makes up about 25-30 percent of the company’s sales.

“Springfield sales are starting to go up,” says Galloway, who recently completed a renovation and expanded the menu with wings, calzones and cookies.

In January, Galloway opened his newest restaurant at a former Falstaff Brewing Co. plant in St. Louis. In the buyout last summer of the faltering Six Row Brewing Co., Galloway recruited brewmaster Evan Hiatt to lead beverage development at what’s now PaPPo’s Pizzeria & Brew Co.

PaPPo’s restaurants sell eight house beers, and Galloway says the brand represents 30-50 percent of beer sales.

Next up is franchising.

Galloway’s son Jamie, a Christian missionary with a Facebook following of 12,000, is targeting a summer launch in downtown Greenville, S.C., for the first PaPPo’s franchise store.

Jamie Galloway, whose daughter indirectly came up with the company’s name, says the restaurant is an extension of his Jamie Galloway Ministries.

“Business is one of the best ways to impact your local community,” says Galloway, who moved to Greenville about six months ago after six years pastoring in Philadelphia. “I think our concept is a sure thing.”

PaPPo’s charges royalties of 5.5 percent of sales starting six months after the restaurant opens. There is no franchise fee.

“He knows the franchise business like the back of his hand,” Galloway says of his father. “He knows what’s fair. That’s a huge incentive as a franchisee.”

The elder Galloway has plans to expand PaPPo’s with both franchise and corporate stores – targeting the south side of Springfield, as well as Columbia, Jefferson City and the multistate Kansas City area.

“If PaPPo’s can become a vehicle for you to achieve your dream, that’s powerful. That’s more powerful than any amount of money you can pay somebody,” he says.