Photo by Erin Nelson.
Robert Sullivan, owner of Donatos Pizza, at the store in Vestavia Hills.
While an autographed portrait of Brett Favre hangs on the wall at Donatos Pizza in Vestavia Hills, it isn’t the first thing owner Robert Sullivan talks about.
He does talk about the picture, about the time Favre walked in and ordered pizza while in town for his daughter’s volleyball tournament.
And he might mention how PGA Tour professionals Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and University of Alabama graduate Justin Thomas stopped in for some square pizza while they were in town for Vestavia Hills High School alumnus and fellow PGA pro Smylie Kaufman’s wedding.
But the celebrity sightings and signed jerseys on the wall aren’t what have come to define the 20-year-old business, nor Sullivan’s tenure as owner, which began in 2012.
What defines Donatos are the students from nearby Vestavia Hills Elementary East who take field trips to the restaurant to learn how to make their own pizza, and who inevitably come back years later as adults with families of their own, still remembering that field trip. It’s the numerous youth sports teams that Donatos and Sullivan have sponsored over the years, and the regulars who Sullivan said have been loyal to Donatos, that make it one of the longest-lasting and most successful businesses in the city.
“Every town needs to have their own place they can call their own,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan moved to Vestavia in the early 1970s when he was in seventh grade from Fort Myers, Florida, at the time when Vestavia was just evolving as a city and the school system had just been formed. Sullivan was part of the first graduating class of Vestavia Hills High School that went all four years at the school.
After graduating, he went to Auburn and then started working for Bristol-Meyers as a pharmaceutical representative. He moved back to Vestavia in the early ’90s and retired in 2011 after working for Bristol-Meyers for about 30 years.
Toward the end of 2011, Sullivan was in Donatos talking to the owner about what to do next with his life. Sullivan had always used Donatos as a caterer when he was working as a pharmaceutical salesman and was familiar with the business. The owner at the time asked him if he’d be interested in purchasing it, Sullivan said.
“Don’t ask me what prompted me to buy a pizza place or a restaurant, I can’t answer that to this day, other than I delivered pizzas while I was in college,” Sullivan said. “I always thought it was kind of fun, the camaraderie in the building.”
While there’s never a dull day, especially on Friday nights, Sullivan said he enjoys the work.
“It’s been fun; it’s been hectic,” he said.
One of the most rewarding things about owning the restaurant, Sullivan said, is if he’s out in town catering pizza or wearing something with the Donatos logo, people will stop and tell him how much they enjoy his restaurant.
When he took over the restaurant, Sullivan started expanding its reach by catering both in Vestavia and neighboring cities. He also started selling beer to attract more customers.
Along with the changes to the restaurant’s offerings, Sullivan said he has sought to be part of the fabric of the community.
“You need to do that,” he said. “Believe me, it comes back to you in dividends, by doing the right thing.”
For Sullivan, that’s meant taking part in Relay for Life fundraisers for the American Cancer Society, helping raise money for day care programs at Vestavia churches and sponsoring sports teams. It also meant reinstating a long-standing tradition: hosting first-grade field trips from Vestavia Hills Elementary East.
“It’s just a blast,” Sullivan said. “You never know what kind of questions they’ll ask.”
Students come and learn how to make their own pizza and even get to walk into the walk-in cooler, which always leads to shouts of how cold it is, despite Sullivan’s warnings, he said.
In 2018, the dividends of his years of community involvement did indeed come back to Sullivan. His wife, who was suffering from a life-threatening illness, went into cardiac arrest and was in a medically induced coma for two weeks.
“You talk about people praying for you all over the community; it’s such a humbling thing,” Sullivan said. “Even now, people will ask about how she’s doing. This town really rallied behind us. I was really, really impressed … This is a great town. This is a great little community.”
