Business and Finance

Dave Difani had no desire to use his engineering degree when he graduated from college. Instead, in 1986, he chose to gamble on revamping a rowdy biker bar in the Tower Grove South neighborhood in St. Louis. The bar was old, small and disliked by neighbors because of fights that would spill out of it at night.

But Difani used a family inheritance to buy the building and committed to turning his new bar, Black Thorn Pub & Pizza, into a respectable establishment. His entire life became about the bar. He worked evenings and late nights before retiring to the basement for rest. He learned to fix the old building’s plumbing and electricity to save money. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was his.

It took years, but Difani said he was able to change his clientele by making prices high enough to drive out the bikers but cheap enough to attract college students from St. Louis University. He later developed a softball league, 10 years after starting the business, began selling one of St. Louis’ most well-known pizza pies. Black Thorn’s deep-dish pizza is known as much for flavor as for the time it takes to cook (often more than an hour).

In the past five years, Difani has allowed his staff to run most of the business’ daily operations. He said he often stops in to help maintain the 100-year-old building, but Difani is usually gone in time to pick up his kids from the school bus.
How hard was it?

The early years were fun. There were three apartments upstairs which helped make the mortgage. I had a mattress downstairs right under the bar, right next to the boiler so I’d be warm in the winter time. … I spent two years downstairs. I rigged a shower over the drain in the the concrete floor because every cent that I had was going into the business.

How did you turn the corner to a new clientele and image?

In 1988, I sponsored a softball league, which played out of Tower Grove Park, and that was probably what saved us. It turned my worst season into my best season. The summer season had been bad in 1987, because all the students and my friends were gone. Business had dropped off the table and I didn’t know quite what to do about it cash loans in 1 hour. … By the time I quit the league (after 20 years) and turned it over to a friend, we had 52 or 54 teams playing at four or five different parks.

Why did you choose to make thicker pizzas instead of a traditional St. Louis-style thin crust?

The St. Louis style pizza is a wonderful invention. But when you’re starting a business and you have no money, and you’ve got $20 in your wallet and you want dinner, if you spend that $20 you’re going to want dinner from it, lunch tomorrow and probably dinner tomorrow.

… As much as I enjoyed the St. Louis style, it didn’t fill me up and I didn’t feel it was a cost-effective way to spend $20. And I never wanted anyone to feel that way about my product.

How have you been able to overcome the long time it takes to make your pizza?

To this day, it amazes me. … It’s nothing to ask people to wait an hour or hour and a half. As a matter fact, we have had waits go over two and a half hours and have had people say that’s OK.

Personally, I wouldn’t do it! (Laughs) … That is what I mean when I say that once somebody desires your product, telling them it’s a two-hour wait, is not necessarily bad. It brings it in perspective: This is what people will do to have my pizza.

How have you been able to let go and spend less time running the business?

The simplest way I can think to explain it is you hire trustworthy people and then you trust them. I love my staff, try to take care of them. They take care of me. Numbers don’t lie; there are accounting processes that you go through to make sure not too much is lost due to spoilage or things of that nature.

… I have moved on to a point where I love the time I’m able to spend with my family. … My advice is when you get to the point where the business can sustain itself, then allow it to, because there is so much more to life.

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