Hometown Pizza is “Business of the Year”

For Rod Desjardins, making pizzas is more than a job, it’s a way of life.

His “Hometown Pizza” restaurant was honored last Thursday by the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce as the local “Business of the Year.”

Desjardins’ first job as a teenager was in a Seattle area pizza parlor, and he’s been at it nearly ever since.

Always modest, Desjardins lays the firm’s success and last Thursday’s honors directly at the feet of his employees. “They are the ones being honored,” he said.

Desjardins has created 10 pizza parlors in his career, building them up and then selling them. He points to his present place, near Four Corners as “very successful.”

He actually comes from a “pizza family.”

His brothers own Hometown Pizzas in Oroville, Omak and Twisp, and another brother, Paul, his youngest, assists him at the Grand Coulee location.

Are all the brothers into pizza? “No, one’s a builder,” Desjardins noted.

He had his eye on Grand Coulee for a Hometown Pizza location 10 years ago, and finally found a place next to Sunflower Graphics. He was there for three years until he purchased his present building and moved to where he could attract business near Four Corners.

“Location - location - location,” is a truism that has proven itself.

“We are very busy here,” Desjardins said. “I’ve never been so busy in my life.” And this is his 20th year in front of a pizza oven.

The menus at the Hometown Pizzas throughout Central Washington are primarily the same, Desjardins said.