The Pizza Business, the Pizza Life

For 24 years, Mike and Kathy Giakoumakis have been tossing dough, hand-making sauce, chopping fresh ingredients, greeting customers and otherwise making a life out of pizza.

The Giakoumakises own and operate Liberty Pizza, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pizza place known as much for its community involvement as for its handmade food.

It’s 2:30 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, and Kathy has a few minutes between the lunch and dinner rushes to catch her breath and enjoy a cup of water. Mike, who often arrives at the restaurant hours before Kathy to prepare the ingredients for the day and do some cooking, has taken the afternoon to schedule some non-pizza related appointments for himself.

Don’t worry, he’ll be back early the next morning for another day of cooking up his life’s work. And Kathy, well, she will be at the restaurant until it closes. In fact, at least one of the two owners is always – always – at the restaurant during open hours.

“This place is more of a home to me [than my house],” Kathy says. “I just sleep at home. This is not a job to me.”

Kathy doesn’t make the claim flippantly, she (and her husband) live and breathe for this business. But, at the end of the day, it isn’t about the pizza.

It’s about the people.

“The people [keep me in the business],” Kathy says., grinning. “Everyone that comes in here – I know their family, their kids, their grand-kids. I just feel so connected to this town.”

The Giakoumakises aren’t from Wayland. Mike is originally from Athens, Greece, and his life belonged to the pizza business long before he and his wife bought Liberty Pizza in 1986. Kathy, in fact, says her husband has “always been in the pizza business.”

In 1986, the Giakoumakises, who had been working at Liberty Pizza for the prior owners (the business has been around since 1965), jumped at the opportunity to buy the business when the owner wanted to move on.

They are the third owners of Liberty Pizza and by far its longest caretakers. And, if Kathy has her way, they will continue in that streak for many years to come.

When she looks around the small restaurant, taking in the walls plastered with sports posters given by area athletes and awards presented by area customers, Kathy doesn’t see anything she would change.

What Kathy sees for Liberty Pizza 10 years down the road is, “Hopefully the same thing I see today.”

There are no plans to expand – “The location is perfect” – nor expectations to open new locations or to franchise – “Sometimes you’re better off leaving well enough alone.”

“My husband and I just love people,” Kathy says, adding that one of her favorite tasks is the rare opportunity to personally deliver the pizzas because they are busy or short on drivers. “We’re a team, we always have been. We always seem to have the same goals.”

And for now those goals are just to make the best-quality pizza they can make and to help the town in whatever way they can.

This time of year, one of the chief ways Liberty Pizza helps out is through the college scholarships it funds for a Wayland High School student.

“Everyone can use a little help when they go to college,” Kathy said, adding that she and her husband read each of the application packets and make the recipient decision together.

“I’m very fortunate,” Kathy says, adamantly adding that she has no regrets when it comes to the long days and busy life of a pizza restaurant owner. “I’ve made a lot of lifetime friends.”

In spite of their parents’ obvious passion for pizza, the Giakoumakis kids, Kathy said, have no interest in taking over the business someday, but that really doesn’t matter.

Kathy has no intention of ever giving it up.