tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption

CHAIN -- Happy Joe's Pizza & Ice Cream Parlor
Owner -- Privately held
Primary Operating Region -- IA, IL, MO, MN, WI, ND
Number of Locations -- 60-plus

The racket worked like so...If you were a radio announcer in Grand Forks, ND in the mid-80's, and you wanted pizza, you called a select list of places and offered to plug them on the air in exchange for a free pie.  Shakey's and Godfather's were usually up for this.  Happy Joe's was not only always up for this, if you DIDN'T make the offer when you called, they would.  And sometimes if they were bored, they'd call YOU and make the offer.

So Happy Joe's was the local king of the prime time plugs.  As long as your station manager didn't care (and there was NO way they could argue when they were paying you like $12,000 a year tops) you were set for pizza heaven.

So can too much of a good thing be a problem?  Can you get sick of somebody's pizza?  It happened once for about a week.  There's a book out there devoted to national "days" of celebration.  Every day of the year is seemingly appointed as a day recognized as "national (something) day"...So one day the phone rings, and it's Happy Joes.  "In recognition of National Pizza Day, we'd like to send a free pizza your way."  "Cool!"  I was working a VERY long air shift because I was seemingly the only healthy staffer.  Everybody else...announcers, management, marketing...was sick.  I was the only person in the building.  A free pie was right up my alley.  The problem was that it didn't stop at one pie.

Every hour, on the hour, Happy Joe's brought another pie.  Pie after pie after pie.

So it was me and the pies.

It made for a great running joke on the air (which probably just fueled the arrival of more pies), but I was sick the next day.

The Happy Joe's pizza is a thin crust in the Shakey's/Round Table tradition.  Happy Joe's does some great specialty pizzas and are probably best known for the Taco Joe.  There are several Mexican pizzas on the menu, but it always comes back to the Taco Joe.  My favorite is the "BLT", which is exactly that...Bacon, Canadian bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and cheese.  There's also a "Spaghetti" pizza.  Happy Joe's also has a line of pastas, sandwiches, and ice cream sundaes, floats, and more.

Click here to return to tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption