Mark Williams, owner, Marco's Pizzeria

I make my own dough, and right now I’m mixing my own sauce. The sausage, the pepperoni and some of the other things come down from Chicago. I’ve met a lot of people from Chicago that are down here. I feel like I know when they came down, why they came down, what they used to do in Chicago.

You are an engineer, so how did you end up in the pizza business?

Back in high school and in the early years of college, I worked in the kitchens at country clubs. After we closed down the kitchen, we’d go out and have pizza, and in my hometown, there were some really good pizza places. We thought it’d be real fun just to have a pizza place, but 30 years later is when I’m actually doing it.

How do you like being downtown? Any regrets about your choice of location?

I don’t have any regrets about being downtown. I think downtown’s going to continue to grow, and there are good opportunities downtown. The thing that’s confusing to me is the days that we’re busy and the days that we’re not busy, for no rhyme or reason. I think every restaurant downtown goes through that. It’s just bewildering.

When do you get most of your crowd?

Lunch crowds are OK. One of the flaws, I think, of this restaurant is that it cannot seat more people. I think that hurts for lunch and for dinner. If I had a little bar attached like some of the restaurants do, and some larger seating, I think I could have some larger crowds, and I would be a little busier from time to time, too. It’s hard when people have an hour for lunch and they walk over here and we’re full. I’ve expanded my hours, open late Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and we open up on Sunday now.

You’re coming up on the first year of your three-year lease. Since you can’t grow your location, what changes are you working on to grow your business?

Since I can’t bring the people in here, I’m going to do more delivering. We’re just starting to deliver. But not being one of the other large pizza places that specializes in delivery – there’s a learning curve with it.

Will you hire your own delivery driver?

I don’t have one yet, but yes, I will. Whatever it takes, but the delivery business has to be there, and I have some people who can do delivery for me, and I do some delivery myself, but it’s just not quite enough yet. It’s a single facet of the business that I have to expand on. I’m going to concentrate right now, probably from Sunshine to Division and Glenstone to Kansas for delivery.

You recently added your outdoor seating, which you’d been planning. Does that help?

It wasn’t as large as I had hoped … because I’m right at the meeting at the crosswalks and there are new regulations. I consider it more advertising than seating, but on the cooler days here in the fall, it’s nice to just sit outside.

Do you have any hopes of opening another location in addition to your downtown spot?

Yes. I want to have a rather large restaurant as a second restaurant. This one is kind of to iron out some of the distribution problems, get some of the recipes down. I’d like to have a larger kitchen so that I can add a few more menu items. But I am going to add a couple of pasta dishes to the menu that will be kind of quick for lunch if somebody doesn’t want pizza or something like that.

If you could give one piece of advice to people who were thinking of opening their own business, regardless of whether it was a restaurant, what would you say?

You’ll put in more hours than you ever imagined you could, which is what I’m doing at the moment. It’s not uncommon to work 80- or 90-hour weeks right now. It won’t always be like that; there’s just so much to do. And the other thing is, I think you really have to consider very carefully if you want a partner. I don’t have a partner, and I think depending on the type of partner, it really would have helped in terms of some of the workload or in different ways. The last thing is, don’t go in undercapitalized. I ran all my projections, and I probably underestimated some things in the business plan.

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