Originally from North Central Ohio, the couple grew up having the taste of East of Chicago Pizza, a small-town Lima-based restaurant chain offering selections of pizza, buffalo wings, sub sandwiches and more.
“Since relocating, we’ve often thought about and now have decided to bring that great taste to our local communities,” said Nate Ujvari, of Loveland.
East of Chicago’s 1,200-square-foot West Chester storefront will serve up seven pizza crust styles that include an authentic Chicago style, a signature Flash-Pan, Loaded Crust, Sheet Pizza and more.
There also will be 12 specialty pizzas, including Taco, BBQ Chicken, Buffalo Chicken, Chicago Melt, Chicken Bacon Ranch, Double Stacked Pepperoni, 7-Layer Veggie and other unique fare.
East of Chicago menu items are made fresh every day and give guests “more than a typical pizza shop,” Ujvari said.
“We offer 12 different (oven-baked) subs, a variety of pastas … (and) seven different signature sauces with our regular or boneless wings,” he said. “We pretty much are all encompassing as far as an Italian/pizza restaurant.”
The eatery will also offer five different salads and feature numerous add-ons, including pizza foldovers, breadsticks, garlic cheese bread, garlic pizza bread, cheesy sticks, loaded nachos, spaghetti, mac-n-cheese, french fries and Chicago cheese fries.
Desserts will include dessert pizzas in three sizes, plus apple foldovers, CinnaPOPs, ApplePOPs, and Oreo Brownie Bites.
East of Chicago got its start in 1982 as the Greenwich Pizza Barn in Greenwich, Ohio, and now boasts 75 restaurants in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Michigan and South Carolina.
West Chester got the nod as the Greater Cincinnati East of Chicago franchise’s first location because “it’s a growing community and vibrant with a lot of activities and youth sports organizations and things like that” and because of the opportunity to do business in a much-traveled area, Ujvari said.
A second store likely will open in Loveland next summer, Ujvari said, with three more locations likely to open between then and some time in 2017.
East of Chicago is looking to hire between 10 and 12 employees. Applications may be downloaded from www.gceoc.net, then filled out and sent to eocwestchester@outlook.com
Hours of delivery will be from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
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