New owner trying to keep Sunseri Pizza afloat amid coronavirus crisis
Chris Staub loved working at Sunseri Pizza while he was in high school and college, dreaming that one day he would own the small business on Custer Avenue in Baldwin.
When former owners Sam and Cindy Sunseri put the pizza shop up for sale, Staub couldn’t resist the opportunity. After working eight years as a steamfitter, he bought Sunseri Pizza in December 2018 so that he could continue the tradition of running a local landmark known for its pizza and hoagies.
“I didn’t want somebody else to buy it who didn’t know what they’re doing,” said Staub, 37, of Baldwin. “It was important to the community for so many years. If somebody didn’t work there before, they wouldn’t have kept it the same.
“People asked me, ‘Are you going to change this or that?’ If we would’ve changed things, the old customers wouldn’t have come back. We added some things, but didn’t change the pizza dough or sauce or the meats for the hoagies.”
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, it’s business as usual this week at Sunseri Pizza. The takeout/delivery shop has no dining area, so it has remained open while many bars and restaurants are being forced to shut down to prevent the spread of the virus.
Sunseri Pizza has so many regulars that Staub and his employees typically know the order by the name on the caller ID. The shop has customers who place orders multiple times a week, sometimes ordering the same food on certain days.
Such customers are the lifeblood for small businesses, especially now, so Staub wants to continue serving them.
“We’re trying to stay open as long as we’re allowed,” Staub said. “They only started shutting the sit-down restaurants on Sunday (March 15), so it hasn’t dropped off at all. They could certainly shut us down, but they know how important these small businesses are to a community. People are definitely tired of cooking every night.”
Sunseri Pizza workers are taking greater health precautions since the start of the coronavirus pandemic by using disposable plastic gloves for food preparation and sanitizer for safety. It’s a small storefront, so Staub’s biggest worry is about squeezing anywhere from five to seven employees inside its kitchen and keeping customers from lingering at the counter.
“We’re changing gloves every time we touch money,” Staub said, noting that they are constantly cleaning. “We’re visible in the kitchen, so customers can see everything we’re doing.”
Another concern is the difficulty of finding food supplies. Sunseri Pizza uses homemade meatballs for its hoagies, but ground meat is becoming scarce. That’s forcing Staub to search at multiple stores for his inventory, sometimes paying premium prices instead of buying in bulk.
“I haven’t run out of anything yet, but I can see it coming,” Staub said. “I’m not as worried about supplies. It’s more the health issues.”
Fridays are always the busiest night of the week, and Staub is expecting them to become even busier now that the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has closed churches and shut down popular church fish fries like the one at Holy Angels Church in nearby Hays, regarded by many as the best in Pittsburgh.
What worries Staub is the possibility that Sunseri Pizza could be shut down during the covid-19 crisis, knowing that the business is providing not only a community service but an income for himself and his dozen or so employees.
“It’s scary,” Staub said. “Obviously, somebody can come in that has it. We’re trying to stay afloat.”
Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.
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