‘We’re pizza lovers:’ Mighty Fine owners celebrate 10 years with historic business

PETOSKEY — Petoskey’s 1st pizza shop, which opened in 1966 at 222 E. Mitchell St., has had about 5 homeowners in its much more than 50 a long time of business. Recent homeowners and everyday living-lengthy Petoskey people Earl and Ambre Flynn are celebrating 10 a long time of owning the small business.

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Earl, who also operates as a teacher and mentor for the Petoskey faculty district, was a Mighty Great staff as a superior university pupil. His outdated boss, Bill Schmidt, contacted him 10 decades in the past and asked if he would be intrigued in using over the organization.

“I wished to consider around a pizza position,” Earl said. “And then Monthly bill named me up, and it getting this 1 here that is been in this article considering the fact that ‘66, it was a no brainer for me.”

Earl’s wife, Ambre, grew up about pizza, as her father owned the Very little Caesars in city.

“I never ever assumed I might be doing the job pizza all over again,” Ambre mentioned. “And my husband was like, ‘Hey, you want to have a pizza retail store?’ I was like, ‘Not definitely.’ He (explained), ‘Yeah, I do,’ so I (said) ‘Alright, let us check out it.’ Even though, it is been awesome.”

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Like with quite a few new business enterprise owners, Earl stated it was hard at initial doing work at the college all through the day and Mighty Fine at evening, but now that they have developed up a responsible team, his workload has gotten considerably more manageable.

Aspect of that personnel is the Flynn’s four kids, Lily, Riley, Bradley and Garrett. Their oldest son Garrett will help deal with the retailer and Earl said he hopes one of them will consider it about at some point.

“When we very first took above the kids ended up youthful and (we have been) just hoping to train them a operate ethic. To get in in this article and do the issues that they have to do to be profitable,” Earl said.

Part of getting around the retail outlet was inheriting the primary pizza recipe from 1966, which Earl and Ambre have stuck to in order to retain the pizza that so quite a few are nostalgic for.

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“The rationale I took more than wasn’t to make cash,” Earl mentioned. “Obviously you do want to try to, but at the same time, it’s just attempting to maintain what Mighty Great is, as significantly as the ingredients, the freshness, all this, that and the other factor, which is more significant. And offering our workers an option to prosper as properly and make a decent residing.”

Ambre mentioned one particular of her favourite pieces of owning Mighty Wonderful is obtaining clients that come in to get a slice of their childhood or relive reminiscences of viewing Petoskey. However, she credits their calendar year-spherical achievements to the locals.

“The community actually supports us all via the winter,” Ambre claimed. “You know, we have a ton of small business all through the summertime with persons that appear up below, seasonally, but through the winter, we just have some really amazing clientele that continue to keep coming again, so they hold us jogging by the winter season as well. (If) we failed to have that then we most likely wouldn’t even now be open.”

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Speak to reporter Tess Ware at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter, @Tess_Petoskey 

This short article initially appeared on The Petoskey Information-Assessment: Entrepreneurs of historic downtown business celebrate 10 a long time