ADAMS TOWNSHIP — Look up at the scoreboard at the Mars Athletic Complex Friday night and among the names of businesses supporting the Mars Area community is a familiar one: Supremo’s Pizzeria.
For owners Don and Gayle Speicher, having their name there represents something larger than advertising. It is another way of giving back to a community they credit with helping their family business succeed.
“We believe in giving back,” Don said.
The relationship with the community goes back 17 years.
In 2009, Don and Gayle opened their first Supremo’s Pizzeria on Brickyard Rd, then moved to their current location on Route 228 beside the Adams Area Fire District station in 2022. It was a leap that would eventually grow into a three-location family business.
Don’s path to owning a pizza shop didn’t begin with plans to become a restaurateur. He started by running his children’s concession stand and discovered that he enjoyed working with food. He later delivered pizzas, became a manager and eventually decided to open a shop of his own.
Gayle brought a different set of skills to the partnership. After working at Duquesne Light and later for a small business, she had experience with the administrative side of running a company.
“I knew nothing on how to open up a business,” Don recalled. “She did. I knew how to run the business.”
The business, however, quickly became much more than Don and Gayle. Their three children eventually became involved and are now part owners in the family’s other locations. What started as one pizza shop has grown into three businesses, including a second Supremo’s location and Pizza IQ in Cranberry Township.
Don said he never envisioned that when they started. “Never would have thought I would have had three shops,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have three shops if it wasn’t for the family.”
Growing Along With the Community
Success didn’t come without difficult moments. The Speichers still remember one of their first Friday nights in business, when the new restaurant was overwhelmed with orders.
One customer had placed an order exceeding $100 — a substantial order in 2009 — and the fledgling restaurant struggled to keep up.
“We failed miserably,” Gayle recalled.
Don remembers taking the order to the customer and telling her he thought everything was there, but asking her to let him know if something was missing.
Her response stuck with him. “It’ll be okay,” she told him.
She remained a customer.
The restaurant survived that night, its staff improved and the business continued to grow.
The construction made accessing the plaza difficult and hurt the restaurant’s pickup business for years, they said. Delivery helped, and customers continued finding ways to support them.
With much of the highway work immediately around the business now completed, Don said things are beginning to improve.
“We’re slowly coming around,” he said.
The experience reinforced something the Speichers say they learned almost from the beginning: their business and the community depend upon one another.
“Mars really took us in and supported us,” Gayle said.
“And that’s why we like to support them,” Don added. “They keep supporting us. We keep supporting them.”
More Than Pizza
Giving back doesn’t always mean writing a check.
Don has a particular soft spot for young people who are willing to work for what they’re trying to accomplish.
When he sees kids holding a car wash to raise money for a team or organization, for example, he will sometimes send them pizzas.
“I like to reward kids when they’re working,” he said.
That philosophy extends inside the family’s restaurants.
The Speichers hire young teenagers, often giving them their first experience in the workplace. They have watched young employees learn basic job skills, become shift leaders, leave for college and sometimes return.
Some have brought their brothers and sisters to work at the restaurants. Mothers and daughters have worked together. So have husbands and wives.
Gayle believes that says something about the culture the family has tried to build.
“We have some long-term employees,” she said. “A lot of times it’s great because you get to see them grow.”
Gayle said she and Don are deeply grateful for the longtime employees who have helped Supremo’s grow and serve the community. They consider those employees an important part of the extended Supremo’s family.
For Don, teaching those young employees responsibility and work ethic is another form of community involvement.
“We teach them, they learn, and they develop and they grow,” he said. “It helps them further along in life.”
That focus on young people is also why the family supports organizations throughout the community rather than concentrating its giving in one place.
Their contributions have reached activities ranging from cheerleading and volleyball to the band and other organizations.
“It’s really about the kids,” Don said. “And that’s why we give back, because the kids are important.”
A Family Business in Every Sense
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that family became the foundation of Supremo’s.
Don and Gayle’s story together began long before their first pizza shop.
They grew up near one another and attended school together from first grade through high school. They began dating as teenagers and married five years later.
Next month, they will celebrate their 44th wedding anniversary. Over those years they raised three children, welcomed four grandchildren and built a business together.
Today, all three of their children are involved in that business. Running three restaurants can make finding family time difficult, the Speichers acknowledge. There is almost always someone working somewhere.
But Gayle said seeing something they built together become successful — and seeing their children become part of it — has been one of the most rewarding parts of the experience.
“It’s just a family thing that we’re all so connected,” she said.
And despite the growth, Don’s hopes for the future are relatively simple. He wants the business to continue doing what it has done for nearly two decades.
“As long as it stays where it’s at, and it keeps serving the community well,” he said, “that’s really what it’s about.”
For a family whose first pizza shop was embraced by the Mars community 17 years ago, the Supremo’s name on the Mars Athletic Complex scoreboard is one more expression of that relationship.
The community supported them.
Now, the Speichers are making sure they support it in return.
