“When we opened up Fairfield, which was a much bigger store, it kind of sucked customers away from our east side Hamilton store,” she said.
Richard’s Pizza still remains strong, said Underwood Kramer, which now has four locations: Main Street in Hamilton, Fairfield, Trenton and Monroe.
The location that closed the last weekend of December was in a former Arby’s, four blocks south of the original Richard Pizza that opened in 1955 in a small plaza. That first store, called Richard’s Plaza Pizza until the late 1980s, had five booths and three off-street parking spots and no ability to expand.
Underwood Kramer and her sister Gayl Underwood, who took over ownership from their parents in 1987, relocated that original store in 2012. But that store suffered as it split the service areas of the Main Street Hamilton location (opened in 1972) and the Fairfield location (opened in 2006), which are about seven minutes apart.
“There were just too many Richard’s in one area,” Underwood Kramer said. “It just really never kept up.”
The now-closed Richard’s location will eventually be put on the market, though Kramer said she didn’t know when. She also said they would be open to adding a fifth location back to their portfolio of pizzerias, an idea that she and her sister had tossed around since before the COVID pandemic.
“We kind of thought we’d move the restaurant out somewhere in Fairfield Twp., or Liberty Twp., or West Chester,” she said, “but the past few years has not been the best for buying real estate and doing construction.”
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