Marco’s Pizza shows how leaders are made

Leaders are somewhat like pizza dough. It must be made correctly in order for the surrounding ingredients to be their best. And the Paulding County Marco’s Pizza shows how leaders are made. Here’s the story of Jason Romano, District Manager of MH Pizza locally known as Marco’s Pizza.

Jason is not a household name yet, but he is well on his way. MH Properties/MH Pizza first heard of Jason from an employee, Spring Reid. She is the Director of Operations of Reflections Learning Academy, another MH property business.

The right place at the right time

Jason was already an employee of MH Properties, as a member of the maintenance crew. He had even mowed the yards of both of the owner’s mothers. Yet, the future district manager was still an unknown commodity to the restaurant. They learned later that he enjoyed his first slice of Marco’s pizza, while mowing one of the yards at Marco’s.

As fate would have it, one weekend a new Marco’s location went through a traumatic change after an overwhelming week of events. That week ended on a Sunday, during dinner rush, with a power outage from a major storm. This left pizzas in the conveyor oven, and the new managers bewildered. As a result, the restaurant lost both their general manager and assistant manager that evening. The store owners were unsure if they even had any employees left to open the next day.

The owners immediately went in the action to recruit a staff to open Monday morning. They called employees from all of their companies, including Spring Reid. Miss Reid mentioned that the company already someone working for them on their maintenance crew that had restaurant and bar management experience.That someone. was Jason Romano. The owners reached out and asked Jason if he would help open the store the next day. He excitedly accepted the challenge.

On Monday morning, Keene Murphy (one of the owners) and three employees with other jobs in the company including Reid and Romano opened the restaurant. The pizza business is kind of like the donut business from the standpoint that one must first make the dough. It is the foundation of the product. The dough must be mixed, made into dough balls and placed in the cooler within 45 minutes. Failure to hit the time limit means it will still be a good pizza. But good pizza is not what each Marco’s strives for – they want to produce the best pizza.  Newbies Keene and Jason looked at the job aids on the kitchen wall to learn how to make the dough. Working together as a team, the dough was mixed, balled, covered and in the cooler in 42 minutes.

When Keene witnessed how well, Jason understood the need of the moment, how fast he worked, and how well he worked as a team he knew what needed to be done. He asked Jason to leave the maintenance crew and come to work for Marco’s Pizza.

Jason’s skill set quickly took him from working in the store to becoming its general manager. After running that store very successfully for a couple of years, he was then promoted to his current position district manager over several stores.

Jason is active with the Paulding County Chamber of Commerce as one of their brand ambassadors. He also recently joined the Freemasons, an organization greatly known for giving back. Jason’s wife Brooke also gives back, as a schoolteacher for the Paulding County Board of Education. The couple has two children, Brayson and Lizzie. You will see him at the soccer field rooting his children, often in his Marco’s shirt that he wears everywhere proudly.

Jason is known by the school principals and teachers county wide.  He’s the type of person that will be there to help whenever possible. He is also someone that can assist in the food planning for an office pizza party, inventory day, can’t make it to lunch or any school event. According to Keene, “Jason is probably the very best person we have at conducting our fun packed field trips. During those times you will learn about our sauce made fresh in the store daily, the real cheese we use and all the other meals and desserts that Marco’s offers.”

 Jason is looking for an apprentice to learn all things Marco’s Pizza. If you’re interested go to marcospizzajobs.com.  Be sure indicate, “I am interested in the apprenticeship.”

The Marco’s owners want to publicly thank Jason for all he does!