Local Domino's owner started as a delivery driver

Whoever called pizza delivery a "dead-end job" never met John Eckburg.

The 49-year-old owner of seven metro-area Domino's Pizza restaurants – including the new 13th Street store in downtown Augusta – started working for the company right out of high school.

"I wasn't good at school and I didn't like school, but I loved Domino's pizza," Eckburg said. "I got a job as soon as I turned 18 and I've been with Domino's ever since."

Eckburg will celebrate his 31-year journey from delivery driver to manager to multi-franchise owner when he cuts the ribbon on the new store at a "grand opening" celebration with the Augusta Metro and North Augusta chambers of commerce June 27 at 4 p.m. The restaurant will have a limited-service "soft opening" on Sunday, with full-service starting Wednesday.

The 1,200-square-foot restaurant is the first national pizza chain to open in downtown Augusta. The new restaurant at 13th and Reynolds streets is walking distance to Augusta University's Nathan Deal Campus for Innovation and within a five-minute drive of most parts of the central business district and downtown North Augusta.

Eckburg said the new site will allow, for the first time, service to east Augusta factories and neighborhoods on the other side of Gordon Highway, such as Olde Town. The area was previously considered a "dead zone" because it fell outside the nine-minute delivery window of his next closest stores on Wrightsboro Road and Knox Avenue. Customers in those areas who placed online or smartphone orders – which account for 60 percent of all Domino's transactions – were informed service was unavailable.

"My goal is to serve customers in downtown Augusta and North Augusta better," Eckburg said. "This area has really taken off; I wish I had bought the property four years earlier."

The small corner lot, brokered by Presley Realty, was originally a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. It has been occupied by several businesses in recent decades, including a lottery-ticket retailer, a title-pawn shop and a roofing company. The store features a conveyor-belt oven capable of cooking 200 pizzas per hour for delivery, drive-through and walk-in orders.

The company has changed quite a bit since Eckburg started as a driver in Memphis, Tenn. With 16,000-units and $13.5 billion in sales, Domino's last year unseated Pizza Hut as America's largest pizza chain.

"I just loved delivering pizzas because I liked driving around and listening to the radio," Eckburg said.

His foray into management began 2½ years later when the then-corporate chain asked him to be an assistant manager in Memphis. He boosted store revenues within six months by aggressively distributing neighborhood fliers and pounding the pavement with waffle-board signs.

His success prompted his previous manager to offer him a job in Augusta in 1991 managing the Washington Road store, then located near the Whole Life Ministries complex across from the Augusta National Golf Club. Store managers who put in one year are given a chance to buy into their stores.

"I said, 'I need to become an owner; my owner doesn't do anything,' " Eckburg recalled with a laugh. "I found out that wasn't true."

By 1994, Eckburg owned an 8 percent stake in the company's Augusta-area stores; a few years later that increased to 13 percent. What turned him on to full ownership was meeting Domino's founder Tom Monaghan during a trip to Columbia, S.C. Monaghan started the chain in 1960 as DomiNick's in Ypsilanti, Mich.

"It was motivating to me," Eckburg said. "I was a part-owner, but that drove me to say, 'Maybe I can do this.' And that's what led to this dream. I'd like to say I planned it all out, but honestly I always just enjoyed the rush of making pizzas. I thought if I just worked harder, I will hopefully succeed."

Eckburg stuck with the company as it weathered its lean years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His company, Lead Dog Pizza Inc. , now owns seven Domino's franchises in metro Augusta and four in the Columbia area.

Besides the new downtown location, Eckburg owns Domino's stores in Augusta on Washington and Wrightsboro roads, two in Aiken, one in Midland Valley and one on Knox Avenue in North Augusta, which he plans to relocate to the Sweetwater Square shopping center at Interstate 20's Exit 5. The Augusta area's other Domino's locations – Evans, Tobacco Road, Fort Gordon, Thomson and Belair Road – are owned by another franchisee.

The June 27 grand-opening event will include a reception for chamber members at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1579 building across the street.

Eckburg has lived in Augusta and Aiken, but now resides in Columbia. He said he still works in the restaurants on a daily basis – sometimes even making and delivering pizzas himself.

"I won't tell an employee to do anything I won't do; I'll do whatever needs to be done," he said. "It's not an easy job or anything – and that goes for anybody owning their own business – but we've been very blessed."