GREENFIELD — A downtown pizzeria has been serving up a recipe that’s been in Greenfield for more than a half century and has found success under multiple owners.
But even classics need a makeover every once in a while.
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Under its latest owner, who may be new to the title but not to the restaurant, Hometown Classic Pizza has been updating its appearance and modernizing its business.
Julie Bartlett took over the restaurant, located at 12 W. Main St., in April 2018.
“It needed updating,” Bartlett said, adding no extensive changes had been made since her mother, Jill Johnson, and Johnson’s husband at the time moved the restaurant downtown in 2011.
Hometown Classic Pizza recently got a fresh facade, with new awnings soon to follow, with the help of Greenfield Main Street’s Downtown Improvement Grant Program.
Inside, the restaurant got a new paint job and faux brick. Walls in one of the several large eating areas have been covered in movie posters, and another has posters of bands and musicians. The “movie room” is also covered in famous film quotes and the restaurant’s front window displays have a cinematic theme, including one with Chewbacca and Han Solo costumes.
Bartlett said the new image reflects the family’s personality.
“We talk in song lyrics or movie quotes regularly,” she said.
The restaurant now offers online ordering through its new website, hometownclassicpizzagreenfield.com, which an employee designed for a class at Greenfield-Central High School. Its new point-of-sale system can accept electronic gift cards. New seat cushions and a new logo are on the way as well.
Hometown Classic Pizza seats more than 100 and also offers games like pinball, ski-ball and bubble hockey along with a collection of board games. It staffs 15 to 20, including many of Bartlett and Johnson’s family members. The plan is to one day pass the business down to yet another generation — Alec, Bartlett’s son.
Johnson started out with the pizzeria doing pickup and deliveries on Pennsylvania Street, continuing a business that’s known multiple names since its start in 1966. After deciding to add dine-in, it moved downtown in January 2011. By March, it had outgrown the space and the owners expanded into a neighboring property.
When Johnson first took over and it came time to decide on a business name, she chose one she felt best fit the recipe’s longstanding reputation.
“It was a hometown pizza,” she said. “Everybody knew that pizza.”
The secret to the pizzeria’s longevity, Johnson said, is that recipe and the way the business is represented.
“It’s not rocket science,” Johnson said. “It’s pizza and customer service.”
Bartlett agreed.
“We’re always in here,” she said. “You always see our faces.”
