Pizza Shack

In 1985, John and Claudia Simmons, along with their siblings David, Glen, and Darren Kiely started Pizza Shack in a small house equipped with little more than a KitchenAid mixer and residential oven. Our hope was simply to make good pizza and other staples that we missed from the East Coast. The beginning was not without struggles but our family was determined to make something out of this venture. None of us took a paycheck in the beginning and the days were filled with working other full time jobs and putting in constant effort to continue to improve and grow. We soon recruited another relative, Jim Simmons, a trained chef from the Culinary Institute of America in New York, to perfect other dishes as the menu slowly grew. By 1997, we grew enough to build a freestanding restaurant just behind the Pizza Shacks original location in Willis. In 2003, our Montgomery location was added along with a full catering division, Danellos. We are still very much family owned and operated with J...