Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
The venerable Imo’s Pizza (imospizza.com) turned 50 this year. To get the inside dish on the House of Provel, we tracked down Imo’s manager and delivery driver Charles “Dutch” Guidici, who has been with the company for 27 years.
• I’ve been with Imo’s since my junior year of high school in ’87. I’ve done it all. I started out as a pizza-maker. I learned how to take orders; make other food like sandwiches, salads, and pastas; and make deliveries. Then I became a store manager.
• I grew up on The Hill near the Imo family. Around there, when you turned 16, if you wanted a job at an Imo’s, you could probably get one. All the kids on The Hill ended up working at Imo’s.
• I’ve delivered Imo’s to lots of rock groups. When the St. Louis Arena was still standing, there were a lot of times after concerts, the band would order pizzas. I got to deliver pizzas to Def Leppard and Neil Diamond. We also delivered to the St. Louis Aces’ tennis matches in Forest Park. I got to bring pizzas to Anna Kournikova. And I got to film commercials with Torry Holt and David Freese.
• When Jon Hamm and Jimmy Kimmel had their argument about Imo’s, I responded to Jimmy and invited him to come to our test kitchen next time he was in town. That was good for us. Anytime someone mentions your name, it’s good. We sent him Imo’s pizza, hats, and T-shirts after the last time he mentioned us. We’re trying to convert him.
• I once delivered to St. Louis Children’s Hospital and had a doctor give me a $50 tip, because he’d put himself through college as a delivery driver. People give really generous $20, $25 tips all the time. People are generous because we take the work out of it. We make and bring the food. Everybody loves the pizza guy. You ring the doorbell, and you hear kids running like it’s a stampede.
• Sometimes, we have very big orders. Recently, we fed 2,300 people at The Pageant. That’s 300 pizzas. Last year, at the First Robotics after-party at the Saint Louis Science Center, we delivered about 500 pizzas. For an order like that, we use several stores and tag-team, so everyone can get hot food.
• If someone stops in front of you and you have to jam on your brakes, the pizza can fall onto the floorboards, and it jams up into the corner of the box. Then you call the store and get another one. And you may wind up eating the one that fell. But I wouldn’t jam on the brakes on purpose just to get a free pizza.
• In my years of delivering pizza, I have never had a naked person answer the door, but I have had guys in towels answer the door.
• Over 50 years, we’ve gotten stronger. From day one, we’ve had a quality product, and we have good service. That hasn’t changed. None of the toppings are ever frozen. We slice vegetables every morning. We have over 90 stores now.
• The first Imo’s was at Shaw Boulevard and Thurman Avenue, down the street from the Missouri Botanical Garden.
• Some Imo’s stores offer little containers of Ted Drewes for dessert. Now that would be great, if we could get Ted Drewes to start carrying Imo’s.
• The most popular topping is probably pepperoni. We sell a lot of pepperoni.
• I’m a meat person. I like sausage and bacon. Every day I eat an Imo’s.
