GOFOR Pizza has its roots all the way in New York where one of the owners, Kent Schoonover, grew up.
When he came to Kentucky he tried to find a familiar pizza, but never could. “He [Kent] came up with this pizza recipe over the last 10 years, just playing around with it, trying to mimic the recipe that he grew up with in upstate New York,” Meg Schoonover said.
In time it evolved and they started making their own pizzas, and they started giving them away. As more and more people tried it they let people leave donations if they wanted. Eventually, they made the decision to start charging for it which led to them getting a food truck that they named Ethel.
The Schoonovers had been running the food truck for about two years before they came to Murray.
“When our youngest child graduated from high school we went through the whole empty nest thing,” Schoonover said. “My husband was a chiropractor, before this we had a home-office combo and I worked for him doing insurance, billing, and things like that. He had been doing chiropractic for 23 or 24 years and decided that he was ready to do something else and so we sold everything and moved to Murray.”
When they moved they brought their recipes with them and decided to elevate their business to the next level: with a restaurant.
To reflect Kent’s desire to recreate the pizza recipe he grew up with they named it GOFOR (pronounced like gopher) Pizza. This is an acronym for good old fashioned original recipe pizza.
While the Schoonovers own the restaurant, they are not the only people who help run it. Managing a restaurant with only two people would just not be feasible, so they have people who work for them.
“It’s a big time family business,” Schoonover said. “We have four children and our third son is the main pizza cook here. He cooks all the pizzas. Our daughter is our fourth child and she goes to school at EKU and she comes on summer and on weekends and steps in and helps out. And then I have an oldest son who is starting to help out a little bit.”
GOFOR Pizza offers a large variety of pizzas with 16 specialty pizzas and 15 dessert pizzas.
In the future, they see themselves staying where they are, but they want to add lunch hours and expand the building with a pickup window.
If you want to try it, you can find GOFOR Pizza at 317 Chestnut St.
