Photo by Emily Featherston.
ironstone
Bill McPherson and Jim Walsh stand outside IronStone just before its September opening.
In a world of standard, delivery-chain pizza, a new fast-casual restaurant is hoping to make its mark.
IronStone Pizzaworks opened its doors last month at Vestavia Hills City Center on U.S. 31.
The restaurant, owned by Bill McPherson and operated by Jim Walsh, is a design-your-own pizza concept, where customers can build their own pizza from the dough up with seemingly unlimited combinations of ingredients.
Alternatively, customers can choose from a variety of existing pizzas and entree salads.
“You’ve got the chance to be your own artisan chef, but we’re also excited about our own signature pizzas and signature salads,” Walsh said.
McPherson said he thinks that the warm and inviting interior with an upscale feel will be an environment that will keep people coming back.
The restaurant’s interior is something Walsh also said is important to the goals of IronStone.
“What we were going for was, we want to give you a very affordable experience, but it feels upscale; it’s warm; it’s very comfortable,” he said, “We wanted you to feel like you are getting a better experience for a similar price point.”
McPherson lives in Mississippi, but has ties to the Birmingham area with both his daughter Dr. Taylor McPherson Banahan and her husband, Dr. John (Johnny) Banahan, doing their residencies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and staying in the area to practice medicine.
Now the Banahans have a young daughter, Anna Chamberlin, and McPherson visits often.
It was this close connection to the area, plus McPherson’s observation that Vestavia has an engaged population that he said led him to decide to bring the business to the city.
“We just knew that Vestavia was a thriving community,” he said, and said he could tell that it would be a welcoming one as well.
When the restaurant was still under construction, Walsh said people would stop by and peek in, asking when they planned to open.
Walsh said the process to bring the restaurant to life began in late 2015, when McPherson began pursuing a pizza restaurant.
Once McPherson decided on a concept and had a location in mind, Walsh said the team made a trip to California to get a feel for the design-your-own pizza industry.
While there, he said they tried 15 to 20 different stops in two or three days to explore the options already out there.
“It’s not nearly as fun as it would sound, eating that much pizza in two days, but we looked at different atmospheres and what we liked and didn’t like,” Walsh said, adding that the experience encouraged them to shoot for a more upscale feel in the restaurant.
Walsh has been connected to the McPherson family ever since he met McPherson’s oldest son, Will, and after working with the family in different ways over the years. He will act as the project manager for IronStone.
Eventually, both McPherson and Walsh said they hope to expand IronStone to additional locations in Birmingham and the Southeast.
“We want to grow in general, but it makes really good sense to try to grow in this area,” Walsh said. “It’s a food area.”
