Al’s Pizza
Al’s Pizza Celebrates 50 Years | May 2019
By Maria Landry
Listen to Skowhegan locals give restaurant recommendations, and you’re bound to hear about Al’s Pizza. Located at 20 Waterville Road, the pizza shop is going strong under the ownership of brother-sister team Chad Partridge and Marsha Toth.
Al’s has been in Chad and Marsha’s family for 50 years, since 1969. Their father, Barry, worked at Al’s in the ’60s during his college days at the University of Maine at Farmington, where he was studying to become a math teacher.
“He decided teaching wasn’t really for him,” Chad said. “The opportunity came up for him to buy the pizza shop, and he did and the rest is history.”
Both Chad and Marsha grew up in the business, starting out by folding pizza boxes, filling the cooler, and helping stock shelves. Marsha began working at Al’s in high school, “and I’ve been here ever since,” she said. “I worked here through college. It’s a job I love. It’s different every day. You never know what to expect.”
One thing they can count on? The people coming through the door.
“There are people who have been coming for years, and we’re so grateful,” Marsha said. “We have a lot of regulars. Some we see every day, some we see once a week. That’s something that we take pride in and don’t take for granted.”
With that in mind, they’re thinking about celebrating their 50th anniversary this year with a customer appreciation week sometime this summer.
“We want to show appreciation to the community for supporting us for that long,” Chad said. “As a small business in a small community, it seems kind of natural to give back to the people who make us so successful and the reason that we’ve been at this for fifty years.”
They are also running a fundraiser to support one of their regular customers, Mike Adams, who was in a serious motorcycle accident on May 11.
“Playing on our 50th year in business, we have decided to give 50 cents of every MA’s whoopie pie sold in June to him and his family,” Chad explained, noting that MA’s are mini individually wrapped whoopie pies.
“What many people don’t know is they are actually named after Mike Adams,” Chad said. “About ten years ago he campaigned hard for us to sell those individually—at that point we only made them for our eight-packs. We finally gave it a try, and they have been a hit ever sense.”
Al’s whoopie pies are a pretty big deal. Made from scratch daily, they won in two categories at the Maine Whoopie Pie Festival a few years ago. Doughnuts and cookies are also baked on site daily, while pizza dough and sub rolls are made from scratch at Waterville-based Cappza’s, which Chad and his wife own.
So what’s the most popular menu item?
“Pepperoni pizza is always a go-to, although it’s losing ground a little bit as far as being the favorite,” Chad said. “It used to be far and above, but the specialty pizzas have gotten much more popular in the past few years.”
He and Marsha agree that the buffalo chicken pizza has become a heavy hitter.
Chad says the pizza business can be challenging, but “it’s fun and it’s rewarding to make people happy.”
“Who doesn’t like pizza, right?” Marsha said.
Helping them dole out all that pizza is a group of employees including several who have been with Al’s for more than 20 years.
“Our longest employee has been here for 40-plus years,” Marsha noted.
Chad says that the Al’s team lives by the company’s mission to “deliver an exceptional, quality experience that is so good, they can’t wait to come back.”
“It kind of speaks for itself,” he said, “but we work hard to instill in our team that everything we do and every interaction has an effect on the customer experience. Our team does a great job of going above and beyond. … That’s really what has gotten us through the first fifty years and will guide us through the next fifty.”
Learn more about Al’s on their website and Facebook page.
