In Krebs, Okla., a former coal-mining town with a total area of 3.4 square miles, “There’s almost more restaurant seats than there are people,” says Joe Prichard, third-generation owner of Pete’s Place, a family-style Italian restaurant with its own microbrewery on-site.
Pete’s Place was founded in 1925 by Joe’s grandfather, Pietro Piegari, who Americanized his name when he entered the country at age 11 with his family.
The mines brought an influx of Western European immigrants, especially from Italy. Italian eateries proliferated, says Joe, 50. Joe’s wife, Kathy, 50, who grew up in nearby McAlester, Okla., recalls that “The Italian restaurants seemed bigger than life.” Today Joe and Kathy operate Pete’s Place, which remains at its original location.
After a mine cave-in that left him severely injured at age 21, Pete supported his family by serving food in his home, along with a popular homebrewed beer from a traditional recipe shared by the area’s Choctaw Indians.
“He would seat people in a room of his house—in the dining room, in the kitchen, in a bedroom,” says Joe and Kathy’s son, Zach Prichard, 28, president of the brewing operations. Though the building has since been expanded, the family still serves diners in private areas separated by partitions with pocket doors. Even with the addition of a 300-seat banquet room, the restaurant is homey, with peaked roofs, lemon-yellow lap siding and double-hung windows. Pictures of Pete hamming it up with noted guests line the walls.
In 1964 Pete turned the restaurant over to his son, Bill, who ran it until 1983, when Joe graduated from college. “He ran for mayor and handed me the keys to the restaurant, and I’ve [run] it ever since,” says Joe.
Though Prohibition didn’t end in Oklahoma until 1959, and brewing remained illegal decades longer, the family continued to brew and serve their beer‚—called Choc‚—at the restaurant. Local authorities turned a blind eye. (By-the-drink liquor sales were legalized in Oklahoma in 1985.)
In 1995 the Prichards installed a small commercial brewery to serve restaurant customers, which they expanded and spun off as a separate legal entity a decade later. “Now instead of just finding our beer in Krebs, you can find us across the state of Oklahoma, in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and western Arkansas,” says Zach.
Many beers are inspired by chapters in Pete’s life. Miner Mishap, a traditional German Schwartzbier, earned a bronze medal in the European Beer Star competition in Nuremberg, Germany, in 2010.
“Our beers tell how he lived and learned to survive in America and how it turned us into the restaurant that we are today,” says Zach’s sister Katie Walters, 25, who manages the front of house. Her husband, Josh, is a kitchen manager. A second sister, Blair, is currently working toward her degree in hotel and restaurant administration.
Eighty-seven years after its founding, Pete’s Place serves up Italian sausage, pork loin and lasagna along with bottomless bowls of spaghetti, baskets of steaming bread, and olive and cheese platters. One of the top sellers is lamb fries, essentially the lamb version of Rocky Mountain oysters, sliced, breaded and deep-fried.
Many customers drive an hour or more to visit the eatery. “You’ll see three or four, or sometimes even five generations, of family members eating together at the same table,” says Joe.
Sally M. Snell is a writer based in Lawrence, Kan.
Copyright 2011 by Family Business Magazine. This article may not be posted online or reproduced in any form, including photocopy, without permssion from the publisher. For reprint information, contact bwenger@familybusinessmagazine.com.