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DeFelice Brothers Get Cooking at New Moundsville Location

photo by: Emma Delk

Moundsville DeFelice Brothers Pizza owner Tony DeFelice prepares a pizza for a catering order at the business’s new location on 10th Street.

DeFelice Brothers Pizza has begun slicing pies at a new storefront in Moundsville located at the former Marshall Dairy building on 10th Street across from the Grave Creek Mound Historical Site.

Moundsville DeFelice Brothers Pizza owner Tony DeFelice said the move from the original location on Lafayette Avenue was motivated by his desire to open a permanent location in a building he owned.

“We just needed a permanent home,” DeFelice said.

With 10 DeFelice Brothers Pizza locations in the Ohio Valley area, DeFelice noted the business’s ties to the Moundsville area, as a DeFelice Brothers Pizza opened in Glen Dale in 1993. In 2000, DeFelice purchased the Glen Dale location from his father, T.J. DeFelice, one of the original founders of the business, and moved the storefront to Moundsville.

DeFelice said the new location would be familiar to many locals who visited Marshall Dairy, noting that he frequented the business as a child in the 1990s. The new building has 14 dining seats as well as delivery, carry-out and catering.

DeFelice began searching for a new location a year ago, noting he originally wanted to stay along Route 2 due to the traffic flow, but there was no available space within his price range. He said the former Marshall Dairy building attracted him due to its capabilities to attract out-of-town visitors from the Grave Creek Mound and the nearby West Virginia Penitentiary.

“There’s been a lot of positive feedback from people in the town so far,” DeFelice said. “I think locals actually like the new location better because they don’t even have to go out onto the highway. I’ve noticed more families with younger kids coming in so far.”

The building had been empty for more than a year before DeFelice moved in. The last business to occupy the space was Johnny Rockets. DeFelice began preparing the building for the move three months ago, including installing an exhaust fan, plumbing and sinks.

DeFelice said the new, larger location has expanded the business’s catering capabilities. The new location’s main level is 400 square feet larger than the former building.

“I’m hoping we can handle a little more volume, especially around graduation season and Christmas season, when the catering really takes off,” DeFelice said. “We have this whole other area that we didn’t have before that we can use for catering while still operating a regular kitchen in another area. The space will also come in handy during the ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre,’ as I call it, when we sell heart-shaped pizzas because that can be chaotic all day long.”

The business only had to close for one day on Jan. 6 for the move, as DeFelice said he and employees spent “the entire blizzard” moving items to the new location.

“We were able to open back up on Tuesday morning, so we were only down for 24 hours,” DeFelice said. “Most of my employees here have been with me for over 15 years, so they didn’t want to shut down for a week and lose income. We did our best, and the move could not have gone better besides the snow.”

Though the location has changed, DeFelice said the menu offers the same pizzas, calzones and salads made with the same fresh ingredients.

“If we have a slow day, whatever we don’t use gets thrown away, so we start fresh the next morning,” DeFelice said. “All of our dough is made fresh every day, and we don’t use day-old dough. We cut all the vegetables fresh — the onions, tomatoes, green peppers, everything.”

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