Derby’s oldest restaurant turns 50, is the cherished legacy of owner ‘Pizza John’

It was the 1960s, and young John McCulloch, fresh from the military, was working the counter at Bikes Burger Bar in Midwest City, Oklahoma.

A pizza parlor opened across the street, and McCulloch watched a steady stream of diners pile in every day. Maybe there was something to this pizza craze, he decided.

In 1969, McCullouch and a friend teamed up to open a little pizzeria in Derby, which was then a one-stoplight town with no place to eat out except The Embers Restaurant. Both men put up $1,500, and they called their place Pizza Derby — “purveyors of “round meals and flat snacks.”

Now, 50 years has passed. Derby has many stoplights and many restaurants (though The Embers isn’t one of them.) But Pizza John’s, as Pizza Derby would later be renamed, survives and thrives in its original spot at 208 N. Baltimore, largely unchanged from March 10, 1969, the day it first opened.

This month, McCulloch’s daughter, Kristina Roby, and her husband, Jason, quietly observed the milestone for the restaurant, which is now Derby’s oldest still-operating eatery and a place many Derby-ites consider an essential part of their lives.

McCulloch, now 75, has health problems and hasn’t been to the restaurant for about 10 years. Kristina and Jason run the place, though it’s still John’s restaurant, and he handles the finances (and occasionally calls to harangue the staff about making barbecue pizza, an addition to the menu he did not approve.)

Kristina and Jason didn’t really acknowledge the big birthday. It’s not something that John would have liked.

“We just let it pass quietly in the night. That’s what dad says,” Kristina said. “It’s kind of superstitious for him. He’s never really celebrated an anniversary.”

Jason agreed, sharing a couple of other “John-isms.”

“Don’t toot your own horn. Don’t get too big for your britches. Just keep your nose down.”

Pizza John

The cult of Pizza John’s, a no-frills throwback pizzeria with captain’s chairs, wooden booths and stained glass light fixtures, was built largely around McCullough’s personality, his daughter says.

He was well known in Derby as a hard-working businessman with a gruff exterior but a soft heart. In his younger days, he was squirrelly, and in the 1970s he was famous for the sometimes risque ads he’d place in the Derby Informer. Kristina still has a yellowing collection of them, many featuring a younger photo of her father with his mouth wide open, the words “Pizza Derby” printed in the void.

For a while, McCulloch had four Pizza John’s restaurants, including one in Augusta, one in Haysville and one in Wichita near Central and Tyler. They didn’t last past the early 1980s, Kristina said. But the flagship restaurant stayed busy, even when Pizza Hut moved in across the street in the 1970s. John fretted the day that Pizza Hut opened and celebrated the day it relocated to Rock Road.

As he aged, he was known as a reliable employer of local teens, who he managed with his no-nonsense style. They feared him, but when it counted, they’d realize he cared about them, Kristina said. He was old-fashioned, and he made rules and insisted they be followed.

“If they were starting to get outside the lines, he would haul a person outside and stand in front of the sign that says Pizza John’s,” Kristina remembers with a laugh. “He’d say, ‘What does that say?’ And they’d say, ‘Pizza John’s. ‘ And he’d say, ‘Exactly. Now you get your butt back in there and get to work.’”

Customers liked McCulloch. He was always there, always wearing his Florsheim dress shoes, his dress slacks and his button-up Pizza John’s polo shirt.

“He just had a way about him,” Kristina said. “He was fast at what he did. He was very neat. He was personable. He always said, ‘You have to wear 15 hats down there. You have to be a politician. You have to be an actor. You have to be a clown. You have to be a therapist. And you have to wear all of them all the time.”

Customers also loved his pizza, which is thin-crust only and baked on homemade dough, made twice a day. And they loved his corny sayings. At the cash register, McCulloch would often ask a customer, ‘Do you want to donate to the Bald-Headed Pizza Maker’s Association of America?’”

Kristina said she doesn’t remember exactly when her father changed the name of the restaurant from Pizza Derby to Pizza John’s, but it was after he bought out his partner. And the decision was really made by the customers, she said.

“The town kind of named it in a weird way,” she said. “They’d say, ‘Let’s go down to Pizza Derby and see Pizza John.’ He was always here. He’d open. He’d close. And he was Pizza John.”

‘It’s his legacy’

In 1974, Pizza John met Pizza Donna. They married two years later and had their daughter, Kristina, two years after that.

Kristina’s childhood was spent in the restaurant with her parents. At age 8, bored and looking for something to do, she started washing dishes. Her father would stack cases of beer up for her to stand on to reach the sink. In her teens, she became a server.

But Kristina, like many kids of restaurant owners, had other plans. She wanted to be a teacher.

“He told me I was nuts,” she said. “I was still going to school, and he kept on asking me, ‘Why would you want to do that? Don’t you want to do this?’ But he’d never offered anything.”

But in 2009, Donna was diagnosed with cancer, and McCulloch, who had already retired, needed help. He asked his Kristina to work at the restaurant, and later, he asked Kristina’s husband, Jason, as well. Jason left his job at Spirit to help run the place. The couple has been in charge of day-to-day operations ever since. (Donna eventually recovered.)

The Robys haven’t made many changes to Pizza John’s. McCulloch really doesn’t like change, his daughter said with a laugh. It took years of begging from customers before he’d even agree to serve barbecue chips with his hoagies instead of just plain Lay’s.

Kristina and Jason did add baked spaghetti to the menu — and that controversial barbecue chicken pizza. But they’ve tried to keep things the way Pizza John wants them.

“It’s his legacy,” Jason said. “I just work the place.”

Over the years, Pizza John’s has become a central meeting place for people in Derby celebrating births, mourning deaths, looking for a reliable “round meal,” Kristina said.

It’s also become a favorite of many local media celebrities, including one of the restaurant’s most vocal supporters — Derby native and Wichita sports writer and broadcaster Bob Lutz.

Lutz started eating at Pizza John’s as a teen. He was working across the street at the newspaper and had a crush on a cute girl who worked nights at the restaurant. The crush passed, but Lutz’s love of Pizza John’s remained. He still dines there every time he goes to Derby, and his old friends are now advertisers on KFH, where Lutz had a weekday sports show called “The Drive.”

“It’s a great atmosphere, it’s a huge part of Derby, and the food is second to none,” Lutz said.

Once, as a teen, Lutz got a little rowdy in the restaurant, and McCulloch tossed him out.

Pizza John told that story for years.

“Dad always liked him, though,” Kristina said with a laugh. “When Bob started getting some notoriety, dad would always say, ‘I kicked him out once.’”

This story was originally published March 21, 2019 at 3:40 PM.