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Quadco to open Mama DeLuca’s Pizza® shop
Quadco Rehabilitation Center will soon be serving up pizza along with additional training opportunities for the individuals they serve in a store next to their SUBWAY® Restaurant in Stryker. The members of the Quadco joint board voted to proceed with plans to open a Mama DeLuca’s Pizza® shop when they met in regular session on Tuesday, June 24.
Mama DeLuca’s Pizza® is a quick-serve pizza restaurant that has been established as a co-brand with SUBWAY® Restaurants. The restaurant features a no-wait 14-inch pepperoni or cheese pizza that is ready for customers when they walk in the door, as well as custom-made pizzas such as the deep-dish Big DeLuca or an extra thin-crust flat bread pizza.
Quadco Executive Director Bruce Abell said the new pizza shop will go directly next door to the present SUBWAY® Restaurant in Stryker in the building that is owned and operated by Quadco. Plans call for a wall to be removed so that customers will be able to walk between the stores on the inside of the building. Like the SUBWAY® Restaurant, it will be both a restaurant for the community and a training center for the individuals with disabilities served by Quadco.
Mr. Abell said the center signed the franchise agreement at the end of last year and had an engineer prepare the plans for the store that the state then approved. He said contractors were contacted for bids, and a local contractor, Lange Custom Builders, Inc. of Archbold, has been selected for the work.
Now that the board members formally approved the project, Mr. Abell said financing will be secured and he expects work to begin soon on the store.
“I think it’s going to be great for Quadco, the consumers and the community,” Mr. Abell said. “Building on the success of our SUBWAY® Restaurant, we can expand our training opportunities for the people that we serve.”
Quadco opened their SUBWAY® Restaurant in Stryker two-and-a-half years ago. It became the first rehabilitation center to own and operate a SUBWAY® franchise as both a restaurant for the community and place to train individuals with disabilities and remains that way today. Some of the individuals trained at Quadco’s SUBWAY® Restaurant have gone on to work at area SUBWAY® Restaurants while other trainees have gotten jobs at other restaurants around the area.
Quadco officials expect the Mama DeLuca’s Pizza® shop will provide a good training ground for the workers needed at the area pizza shops and restaurants. For instance, the dough at Mama DeLuca’s Pizza® is made fresh every day. So workers will get the opportunity to learn how to prepare fresh pizza dough each day for the pizzas they make as well as preparing the orders made by the customers who come in the door.
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