Hi, my name is Michael Harr. I’m the owner of Little Caesars in East Belleville. I’ve lived in this area my whole life. I grew up on a farm just outside of Columbia IL., and still live there today. My family has lived in this area for over 100 years. I can remember the stories of how my grandparents, and great grandparents would take a horse, and buggy across the frozen Mississippi to sell butter, eggs, and honey at soulard market. That torch was passed down to my generation.
I can remember growing up at the market. At the age of 8, I finally got to wait on my first customer alone, adding there order, gathering it up, and making their change in my head. I continued to work with my parents year around every Saturday for the next 4 years until my brother turned 16. At that time my parents started passing the responsibilities of the market down to us. My family’s philosophy was “Keep the family business alive, it is your heritage.” My grandparents, and great grandparents are all gone, but there linage lives on through the work they started…
At the age of 13, I started working with my dad through the week after school in a few other businesses, Used Lumber, Concrete Forms, and the Door and window business. I continued learning all of these trades until 2002, when I decided to go back to school for my structural engineering degree, and my real estate license. I studied hard because anything less than an “A” I felt I wasn’t doing my best.
Then on a Friday night me, and a friend decided to go fishing. He worked for another friend of mine that owned a few Little Caesars franchises. I arrived a little early for our fishing trip, so I ordered a pizza, and sat in the lobby. I watched everything that was going on, and it looked kind of fun. They were a little short handed so I offered to help, and little did I know, but I was falling in love with the fast paced, high demand of the fast food industry. I couldn’t get enough of it. I would day dream about it while I was working my other jobs until finally I called, and started the franchise process.
At this time there was only 9 stores in the St.louis market. I went, and visited each store to see as a consumer what the drawing force was. Hot-N-Ready was a fairly new concept so not many of the stores had fully committed to it, but I liked it, and felt that it would revolutionize the industry. So I scheduled a meeting in Detroit with the franchise department, for my dad, and I. I left that meeting a franchisee, and came home looking for a sight.
I knew that location was everything, so I went driving, and found the building of my dreams. It was an old gas station that closed down 3 years prior, and was all boarded up. But it looked like with some blood, sweat, and tears it would make the perfect site, so my family, and I rolled up our sleeves, and began construction. It was a massive project, and the only way to afford it was to do the majority of the work ourselves, so there were many 16-18 hour days, and not one corner was cut.
By doing it ourselves we saved on labor cost, which allowed me some extras, like Geo-Thermal heating and cooling, and concrete parking lots. Finally after 2 years it was completed, and on 10/18/2005, I opened the doors to the eager crowd. There was such an overwhelming response from the community that it broke the record for Highest Grand Opening Sales since Little Caesars opened in 1959. My Family, and I can’t even begin to express our gratitude to all of our customers who made this possible, and who have continued to support us over the years. We love good pizza, and make it our goal to provide our customers with fresh, delicious, quality, pizza at an affordable price.
Come visit us…
Michael & Shiloh Harr