Editor’s Note: This feature originally ran on February 22, 2025 in the 2025 Progress edition (Troup County Is…). The Progress edition is a publication produced annually by the LaGrange Daily News. If you would like to pick up a copy of the 2025 Progress edition, please visit our office at 115 Broad Ste 101.

Feature by: Jeff Moore

Johnny’s New York Style Pizza at 712 3rd Ave. celebrates 15 years of serving delicious Italian food in West Point in June this year.

For owner Ben Hamilton, the journey has been more about the people — his customers and his team at the restaurant.

Hamilton’s parents, Frank and Donna Norman, opened the family-owned operation in 2010 and he was the general manager from the start up until 2018 when he purchased the business.

Hamilton got his start in food service in 2006 as a server at a restaurant that is no longer open.

“As a server there, I enjoyed it as fun and fast paced,” he said. “You get to interact with people.”

He said he was a server at the time his parents decided to open Johnny’s in West Point.

“They asked if I wanted to join them and I said yeah sure let’s go for it,” Hamilton said. 

It continues to be a family operation today.

“My mom still works with me every day, so it’s not one of those things like they just stepped out,” he said. “They’re still here every day.”

Hamilton said the family has been blessed by the community and they are excited for year 15.

“We’ve been fortunate along the way,” he said. “So we’re hoping for at least another 15 years, maybe even more if possible.”

Since its opening, Hamilton said he grew a lot, progressed through his role as general manager and ultimately fell in love with the business.

“It wasn’t necessarily the business,” he explained. “It was everything that goes with it. The customers and the ability to impact and change peoples lives, employees specifically. I’d say 90% of our employees are in high school and college. So you get to make a difference in those people’s lives.”

For those working at Johnny’s in West Point, it is more than just about the pay check.

Hamilton said those who are still in school have the chance to learn accountability and customer service.

“Everybody should work with the public in some way shape or form,” he said. “It’ll really change your reality of expectations from people…You don’t know what somebody else is going through when they’re here so you have the opportunity to make a difference in their world just by being a smiling, pleasurable face.”

Focusing on the customers is what they try to do each and every day.

The food and excellent service keep the customers happy and coming back.

“One of the biggest things we do is make as much as we can in-house,” Hamilton said. “Our dough is made in-house. Our sauces are made in-house. We cut fresh veggies. This is a daily process so we try to do as much as we possibly can.”

He said that fresh makes a big difference for those dining at Johnny’s.

“We make our lasagna here in-house,” he added, noting it’s not frozen. “We do two things that a lot of restaurants across the country do: Buffalo chicken dip and spinach dip. Ours are not frozen. We make ours from scratch multiple times a week.”

Hamilton said he believes that having fresh products makes a big difference in what customers see in our food.

Johnny’s has a pretty broad Italian menu, he noted, featuring more than just pizza.

“I would say our top selling pizza is gonna be our Johnny’s Deluxe — our supreme,” he said. “A lot of people go to our chicken bacon ranch pizza. People love that once they try it.”

Their Hawaiian Luau that features Canadian bacon and pineapple is another popular pizza customers like.

“We do a lot of Italian dinners,” Hamilton said. 

He said that obviously there is Johnny’s lasagna, which is the number one seller every year without a doubt.

He said the Creamy Calabrian Spaghetti is their second most popular dish.

“I believe it is our best pasta dish,” Hamilton said. “A lot of people don’t try it because they don’t know what Calabrian is. My Calabrian is just a specific type of pepper that’s my favorite. It’s a spaghetti sauce with Alfredo, pesto and some hot peppers.”

Then customers can pick their choice of protein for the dish — chicken, sausage or bacon are the main ones, Hamilton noted. Once people do try it, he said it often becomes their favorite that they order again and again.

The range of items served at Johnny’s keeps customers coming back.

“I have several regular customers that come in three to four times a week and they just strictly get salad,” he said. “They love our salads. It’s fresh.”

Then there are the subs and wraps.

“Our steak and cheese sub is in the top favorites,” he said, adding the customers also favor the club sub and Johnny special sub.

“We’re blessed. I mean, we have a pretty broad menu,” he explained. “Customers do enjoy being able to change it up so they can come here multiple days a week and not have to eat the same thing.”

Much of Johnny’s business is dine-in, but the restaurant does offer carryout and delivery options.

Hamilton said the deliveries are made by third parties — DoorDash and Jackrabbit Deliveries.

Ordering can be done by calling the restaurant at 706-645-2010 or online at JohnnysPizza.com by picking the location on the website.

Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday. He said the restaurant is closed on Sundays.

Another big part of the business is catering, Hamilton said.

“We have a Kia manufacturing facility in our town in West Point and so with that also comes lots of suppliers and some other manufacturing facilities,” he noted. “We are fortunate that we do a lot of catering.”

He said they also cater for other businesses in the community and in the schools.

The restaurant also has a banquet room that was added in 2015 where they can seat 50 people. The room can be reserved for parties, celebrations and meetings.

“We do business luncheons for the Rotary Club,” Hamilton said. “The city of West Point uses it a lot of times for their renewal time of year for insurance. So they’ll do meetings here. We have other companies that’ll do a meeting here just to get out of their normal office.”

Hamilton said the room’s biggest use is for birthdays and anniversaries.

He added that they love to see family and friends gathering to visit and enjoy their time together.

From the beginning, Hamilton said Johnny’s supports a lot of activities in Troup County, along with nearby Harris County in Georgia and Chambers County in Alabama.

“We support schools as much as we possibly can in sponsorships,” he said. 

One of the biggest and most fun ways of giving back is through Johnny’s Spirit Nights that they do for local schools and other entities.

The biggest of those is for West Point Elementary School, which has held the Spirit Night event for seven years.

Hamilton said the school encourages the children to come out to have fun. Along the way, Johnny’s donates 10% of its total receipts, including for catering, on these special days.

“Starting in 2010 with my parents, we went about structuring business and sponsorships. What we were looking to do, our goal, was to be a community pillar,” he explained. “And in order to do that means sponsoring a lot. That means having the ability to teach and grow kids and a lot of times, you’re impacting people that you don’t realize.”

Johnny’s has also come to the aid during natural disasters that have hit the community.

“In 2023, we had a tornado touchdown in town just less than a mile from our restaurant and we didn’t hesitate to jump in feeding first responders,” Hamilton said.

The fact the tornado hit on a Sunday when the restaurant was closed didn’t stop them from doing their part.

He reached out to team members and all of them wanted to help too, so they rendezvoused at the restaurant and started cooking.

“They need food and that’s one thing that we can do, so we always jump in,” he said. “My staff jumps in anytime that we’ve done anything where I say does anybody wanna volunteer? I have never not had team members join me in volunteering to make something go.”

Hamilton said it is their mission to bless people in the community as much as they can by giving back.

“I’m a firm believer in giving,” he said. “We have built our business on that we give as much as we possibly can, because this community does support us. Being a smaller rural community, I think that it gets noticed a little bit more than we would if we were in a bigger city.”

An even bigger part of what they do every day is teaching life to those who work at Johnny’s.

“A lot of times we want people to realize that life is not always easy,” he said. “And things come at you that you least expect. How you deal with those, how you react to those situations, can really change your mindset in life.”

Hamilton explained that this isn’t saying that everything’s always 100% right because that is impossible.

“”But we do our best to showcase a life full of ups and downs,” he said. “But at the end of the day we gotta keep plugging along and do the right thing. Doing the right thing ultimately wins out. It’s not always the easiest thing, but doing the right thing ultimately is the best thing.”

Hamilton said he often receives praise and credit for what the restaurant does.

“The credit is not for me,” he explained. “The credit is for our team, because without them and without our community, we don’t exist. That’s one of the biggest things that I always try to remind people of. Yes, the credit a lot of times falls on my back, but it’s not me. I’m just blessed and fortunate to be in the situation that I’m in and have the team that I have had currently and over the last 15 years that allows us to do what we are able to do.”

Hamilton calls teaching his staff and helping the schools in the community “the ripple effect.” 

“That’s my favorite thing to do, to mentor and help kids, writing letters of recommendation for employees and seeing them get scholarships and see them go on to succeed in those scholarships and careers,” he said.

Hamilton recalled a recent visit from a guy who was on the first team hired at the restaurant.

“He’s in here last week with his family and it’s just great to see him,” he said. “Now we see him 15 years later. They’ve got kids that are growing up. It’s just great to see that. That’s one of the benefits of being in a small town.”