Joe Bologna’s Italian Pizzeria and Restaurant opened its doors in 1973. Bologna has decided it’s time to retire as the locale’s owner.
“Even though I’m retiring, whoever I sell it to, I would still plan to work for them for a year or so as a consultant, advisor for different things,” Bologna said. “You know, I might be able to have a couple years, I don’t know, as long as I feel good.”
With the renewal of a five-year lease coming up, Bologna — nearing 80 years old — was unsure if he wanted to commit to five more years.
Bologna has been working in restaurants since he was 15. In 1965, he joined the Air Force cooking for soldiers for four years, even cooking for around 3,000 soldiers in Vietnam during his last year in the service
“After six months I had called up a general, I applied for a general’s aid job. He called me up and we talked for an hour and he said ‘You’re good to start tomorrow.’ So I went from 3,000 men to one man and from 90-100 degree barracks with 60 guys to my own air-conditioned trailer,” Bologna said.
After his four years in the Air Force, Bologna knew how to cook, but he decided he needed to learn how to manage restaurants.
When his best friend, who lived in Frankfort, married a woman in Lexington, Bologna and his wife came down for the wedding and looked up his old general in the phonebook. Shortly after, the two then moved to Kentucky.
“My wife was making bread one day and rolled it into the first pizza crust and had some neighbors over and they said ‘Well, there’s nothing like that in Lexington,’ and so I went around, trying all the pizza places and I said, ‘They were all frozen crusts and nothing was made fresh,’” Bologna said.
His father got him a loan of $2,000 from the Knights of Columbus to open the restaurant.
“With my wife working and supporting me, I’d work 16 hours a day for two years,” he said.
In his first week of having the restaurant open, he earned $635.
“We really took a while to develop, but it grew at 19% of every previous week for two years straight,” he said. “It was an experience I’ll never forget, and I’m sort of having the same rush experience now because of retirement. We jumped 35% and I’m doing more business than I ever have.”
When starting the business, Bologna said there was no quality like it in Lexington.
“I must admit that it was God’s plan because it was like no competition. There was nothing even close,” he said. “Not only are there no pizza places, there was no good place to eat on the campus. Nobody liked the cafeteria, it was worse then than it is now.”
Bologna served the Kentucky men’s basketball team in their residence hall during coach Tubby Smith’s last four years at the university.
“That was just a fun thing to do, you don’t make any money doing it, you get paid but, they got more for more value than most people,” Bologna said.
Bologna said once the restaurant was established, it was just the place to go in Lexington.
“All my senior citizens that are in their 80s, they were all college students back then,” he said. “We got a lot of customers coming from the 70s that are still coming in now.”
Growing up in East Detroit, Bologna would go to his grandparent’s house for dinner every Sunday. His grandparents came to the U.S. from Sicily. Everything his grandmother prepared for dinner was made from scratch, he said, and his grandfather made his own wine at home.
Bologna said the best food he ever had was what his grandmother cooked for him.
“Without a question, I tried to duplicate a lot of her tastes, but I didn’t have recipes,” he said.
The original location of Joe Bologna’s was across the street from the restaurant’s current location. They moved locations in 1989.
“After our first year, it was always an hour wait to get in, and we served ‘til two in the morning,” he said. “Back then, they would have a line for a five-hour wait at 5:00 ‘til 10:30.”
Bologna worked through all of those late hours with his staff.
“It was an energized place. It was small, everybody knew each other. I probably broke every fire violation there was,” Bologna said.
Bologna remembers 10-year-old Ashley Judd “working” for him.
“Her dad worked for me back in ‘74, he’d come in from time to time and he brought his little girl, and apparently, when we were talking, she’d walk up and tell people ‘Can I take your order?’ Might have been her first acting job,” he said.
Another time, Colonel Sanders visited the restaurant, describing Bologna’s popular breadsticks as “finger-lickin’ good breadsticks.”
During his upcoming retirement, Bologna wishes to travel.
“I’ve got a cousin that lives in Whitefish, Montana that I probably haven’t seen in 40 years,” he said. “I thought I’d like to see the Northwest. Might like to go back to Sicily where my grandparents grew up.”
Bologna has been getting his tomato products from a company in Southern California for 50 years, a place he said he may also visit during his retirement.
Bologna said he is grateful for his establishment allowing him to do what he’s passionate about.
“Just being here and doing what I love, and you know, so many customers coming in with stories and just being here,” he said. “Being successful doing what you enjoy doing is very satisfactory, even though you live with the ups and downs.”
The process of retiring has been sentimental for Bologna.
“When I started off I just said you know, ‘It’s just about time,’ but then as I’ve gone along, it’s becoming sentimental with so many customers that have great memories of their family, birthdays, anniversaries, the things that I’ve done for them through the years,” he said. “It just feels so good that there’s so many people that love and care about you.”