Before deciding on a name for his business, John Gutekanst considered tsunamis, hurricanes and plagues. I wanted something large that you get clobbered by
said Gutekanst, who finally settled on the name Avalanche for his Athens pizza business.
Gutekanst said he chose the name because his restaurant offers an avalanche of choices and deals. His extensive menu, which boasts 20 specialty pizzas and 50 toppings, as well as his three pizzas for $15.99 deal, have made Avalanche Pizza, 329 E. State St., one of Athens' most well-known restaurants, selling more than 133,000 pizzas in 2005.
Gutekanst's creative business style recently garnered national attention when Avalanche Pizza was featured on the Food Network's Recipe for Success. Gutekanst said Food Network producers contacted him out of the blue with interest in featuring his business in an episode after seeing Avalanche Pizza's Web site.
The show, which was filmed over four days in November 2005, premiered Saturday, Feb. 25. Each episode of Recipe for Success follows the lives of people creating a food-based business from scratch according to foodnetwork.com.
From Avalanche's beginning, Gutekanst and his wife, Debra Rentz, have encountered plenty of struggles, including almost not getting their business off the ground. After moving to Athens from Washington, D.C., in early 2000, the couple had difficulty securing a loan to open their business.
We were told there were too many other pizza places in town that we would never make it
Gutekanst said.
But Gutekanst said his business is different from others because corporate pizza places typically use limited toppings and frozen ingredients. His biggest competitor, he said, is actually people's perception of small businesses. Many people only order from big corporations because that's all they're used to, he said.
After finally securing a loan, Avalanche Pizza opened in April of 2000. Gutekanst and Rentz enjoyed a few months of great success until they encountered a new challenge: Their business slumped in June when most Ohio University students went home for the summer.
Rentz estimates that business drops about 30 percent each summer. Rentz said the first few summers were especially bad, but the past few years have been better.
We love the summer for a few weeks
Gutekanst said. Without so many students around, the couple enjoys walking Uptown with their 2-year-old daughter. But, Gutekanst said, Athens just is not the same without the OU students. There's no liveliness (in town). There's no energy.
Recently, rising gas prices have inflated the costs of many of the foods they use, forcing the couple to switch purveyors for many products.
Despite struggles, Gutekanst has managed to keep Avalanche Pizza not only thriving, but expanding. Last April, the couple opened a branch in Lancaster.
Gutekanst said the new location has done well in its first year and that Lancaster is all pepperoni. Most Athens orders, on the other hand, are specialty pizzas. The Godzilla
which is made with chicken, spinach, feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, is probably the most popular, he said.
Gutekanst has no plans of franchising Avalanche Pizza. I don't want to turn into one of those corporate places
he said, I'm too much of a control freak.
In 2004, Avalanche's Director of Operations Brynne Humphreys, who has a pizza tattoo on her neck, won the Best Pizza in the U.S.A. award for the Godzilla. Another Avalanche staff member, OU junior Max Rhinehart, received second place.
Gutekanst is planning on taking members of his staff to the World Pizza Championship this spring in Italy and intends on winning, he said. Humphreys will be making an Italian shrimp pizza, and Gutekanst hopes his wife, a voice professor at Marietta College, will sing an aria while Humphreys is cooking.
Humphreys said that although they are her bosses, she considers Gutekanst and Rentz to be her friends. I don't know where he gets all of his energy and ideas
she said.
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