Little Caesar's from Wealthy Street. /LEJ Studios
Rodney Wallace, assistant manager, promoting specials on opening day. /LEJ Studios
Workers preparing for expected crowd on opening day.
Grand Rapids residents Joan and John Kulesa opened a Little Caesar's at the corner of Wealthy and Fuller in the former location of Sandmann's on Tuesday, July 16. The franchisees currently own eight established stores in the Grand Rapids area and a total of ten regionally. With this new addition, they will be the owners of 11 pizzerias.
Little Caesar's restaurants can be run through their corporate company and disassociated with the areas surrounding the locations, but the Kulesa owners are local and say they are hoping to enrich the community with their newest addition. They prefer to have a hands-on approach to running their businesses and want to run this store in the same manner.
“We are involved in the community; it’s really important to us,” Joan Kulesa says. She says she is proud to be able to open an establishment that can add jobs to the area and is proud of the work she and her husband have accomplished.
The first six stores the Kulesas acquired were existing locations, and this is the third property they have acquired to turn into a new location. They were unaware of the previous location’s demise and didn’t even start looking at acquiring the location until about a year ago.
According to Joan Kulesa, it was in July of last year that they became interested in the property but were unable to close on the property and get the green light until this past February. Kulesa says they are looking forward to bringing what they hope will be a unique and great place.
“It’s going to be a really cute store,” Joan Kulesa says. They are operating the Little Caesar’s out of the building on Wealthy Street with unique building design unlike any other stores that they run.
They changed the entrance and parking lot to make the parking lot a cut-through for customer’s ease. They plan to operate this location with convenience and customer satisfaction as their highest priorities.
“Convenience is really important to us. It’s important to Little Caesar’s as well,” Joan Kulesa says.
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